Ideal Homes are easy when renovating riffraff get glowing...

Radiant Vermin is the new play from Philip Ridley produced by Metal Rabbit & Supporting Wall, currently at the Brewery in Bristol. What can I say? No, I mean, what can I say, without giving away spoilers, about this luminously inventive black comedy. After seeing Vanilla Jungle from the same team ~ and with the same award-winning actress ~ I was avidly anticipating this production and am now trawling the thesaurus like Will Self on speed for appropriately incandescent synonyms to convey how brilliant it is. It's billed as a wickedly comic satire about the housing crisis, and to that I will only add that if Satan and the Tory Government made a game show, it would probably be like this...

Glittering praises deserved by everyone especially director David Mercatali for choreographing the frenetic mime scenes, Gemma Whelan as Jill with her (not-so) passive-aggressive 'Christian values', and Sean Michael Verey as her Rodney-Trotter-ish husband. And when you've stopped aching with laughter you'll still be pondering those disturbing questions about social aspirations and cultural collusion, and why enough somehow is never enough...  Unmissable - and it's only on till Saturday (7 March) so if it's sold out you'll have to go to Soho Theatre to see it there. 

Bad Jews and worse Bolsheviks

Stalin's Daughter at the Brewery in Bristol has received so much attention and acclaim the run was extended by three days this week so I thought I ought to go. David Lane imagines Svetlana Alliluyeva telling us the tale of her years of refuge in Clifton in the early 1990s.  Kirsty Cox in Faraway Tree socks & sandals & frock takes the role of the traumatised child of the tyrant, arriving with a caseful of terrible memories and an imaginary friend and addressing her past and present simultaneously. Kirsty's long solo performance is a praiseworthy tour-de-force especially with so many mad / bad /dead and pretend people all inhabiting her room, including a potato man representing her papa. There's a lot about fruit too and some unresolved sexual tension with a green grocer. I think. I was expecting more insight into the historic aspect of the era though.
A fantastic full moon, bloated and dazzling, hung brighter than all the street lights in an indigo sky as I drove home. Wonderful.

Bad Jews, the current production at Ustinov Studio in Bath, was inspired when New York writer Joshua Harmon attended a service for 'grandchildren of survivors' that he found 'full of sterile clichés and scarily lacking in genuine feeling.' His response is this moving family-conflict drama. It's a comedy, and exactly the kind of humour you’d expect from Jewish comedy: rapid-fire, acerbic, provocative - and very funny. In fact it's so self-consciously in-your-face Jewish it takes a while to realise that what is at the heart of the story is their ordinary human traits, not their convictions ~ their longings and losses, not their dead grandfather’s chai, a gold medallion with religious & personal significance and the focus of conflict for these three mourning grandchildren. The witty tirades keep you laughing, and sometimes wincing, but at the heart of the story are profoundly important issues about how to deal with, and learn from, the pain of the past ~ which, according to Daphna, is carried for us all by the jews. She's a buzz of vituperative rage with a tongue like a heat-seeking missile especially when she discovers the treasured chai is headed to adorn the gentile neck of her cousin Liam's girlfriend. Her exchanges with Melody are relentlessly biting: 'Where did your family come from?' Daphna asks, eyeing her like a puff-adder watching a frog, and when the artless girl answers 'Delaware', she lashes her with American history before rephrasing 'So, where did your family come from before they came to Delaware to perpetrate genocide?' Liam is Daphna's main challenger, returning fire with equal passion, enraging her with his 'Bad Jew' identity and his contempt for 'the Chosen People talk', but he finds her Nazi code of tribal purity indefensible and identifies the flaw: 'You sound like someone who’s never been in love.' And it's quiet Jonah, we discover at the end, who represents a more private and personal way to deal with the past.
I haven't a single quibble with this marvellous production. It's directed by Michael Longhurst, Ilan Goodman as Liam and Jenna Augen are riveting in the lead roles, with Joe Coen's  Jonah and Gina Bramhill as Melody giving strong support.  The set (Richard Kemp) is excellent, and lighting (Richard Howell) and sound (Adrienne Quartly) deserve a mention too. So that's it. Take five stars, everyone.

Current show at Theatre Royal Bath Ustinov studio is the UK Premiere of The American Plan by Richard Greenberg, set in the predominantly Jewish resort of Catskill in the 1960s.  This is a dazzling production of a brilliant play: the script is Wilde-ly witty and full of surprises, the set elegantly simple, and David Grindley's strong direction allows all five superb performances to shine.  Interestingly, the women seem to get the best lines ~ beautiful trapped Lili (Emily Taafee), an Alice-through-the-Glass whose mind is a sort of masked ball - you never know who you'll be dancing with next, enigmatic Olivia (Dona Croll) who says dryly being known is not part of my job, and most awesome of all Diana Quick as Eva, the mother whose simpering evil is breathtaking.  Social setting ~ the title refers to a full-board, all-you-can-eat, booking plan at the resort which says much about clientele aspirations & values ~ is fascinating and often satiric but this is primarily a psychological study of one family, and powerfully shows that great drama needs very little on-stage action if there's good story well-told. My only reservation is the final scene, which expositionally knots up loose ends already subtly tied, which could have been ommitted to send us out into the night still stunned by a sublime piece of theatre. But it was close to flawless anyway.

'Wild, crazy, devilishly funny' Gonzo Moose arrived at the Brewery this week with their current historical pastiche What the Dickens? inspired, loosely, by the bicentenary of Victorian London's most famous novelist and his penchant for fantastical characters and complex plots.  We watch agog & aching from laughter as sleuthing reporter Charles Dickens (co-founder, artistic director, co-writer Mark Conway, on fantastic form as always) meets with pickpockets and plotters, grave-robbers, soft-hearted tarts, hard-hearted lords and an enormous owl ~ all hilariously created with multi-costume change by Chris Porter and Emily Murphy. It's clever, classy, and immensely funny, and they're back at the Rondo next month so if you miss out in Bristol, book there now!

And finally...  summer officially begins at the end of this month, so if you're beginning to think longingly about holidays, and wondering where to find a fantastic location with fabulous food, good company and a chance to write too, then let me direct your attention my website which has links to two sensational options:  SKYROS HOLISTIC HOLIDAYS on the Greek island of Skyros and CORTIJO ROMERO in Southern Spain are both marvellous venues which provide a wide range of creative courses as well as entertainment & relaxation, so as well as Finding Your Voice with me, there are many other options to browse...  :-)

Ghost story aficionados probably already know the name  R M Lloyd Parry as synonymous with thrilling dramatic exposition of the genre, but to me Count Magnus at the Brewery was a total sensation. The set is perfect to evoke late 19th Century gloom and slightly sinister candlelight, and his story-telling, in the style of a garrulous club member, makes it seem that every phrase has been chosen in the moment for this particular recounting of the M R James tale. Ghoulish spookiness is entwined into the narrative with elegant sparsity ~ only the occasional hint ("Mr Wraxall paid dearly for his curiosity...") until each dreaded and dreadful occurrence, never fully described but evoked with terrible sounds... "I heard one cry out and I heard one laugh, and if I cannot cease to remember those sounds I will never sleep again." Weird shit at its best.

Story-telling of a different kind from Big Wooden Horse whose half-term offering STUCK used songs and puppetry to embellish a direct-to-audience approach in this tale a tree-trapped kite requiring imagination & ingenuity to dislodge. The show is surprisingly close to Oliver Jeffers' picture book in imagery and Stan,6 and Joe,3 gave it thumbs-up from their booster-seats at Frome's Merlin theatre: Stan enjoyed the shouting and Joe the fire-engine but my favourite bit was the orangutango-dancer.

Sometimes when the traffic to Bristol chicanes through the roadworks at zilch miles an hour in an endless ribbon and the drive from Frome takes twice as long as the play which turns out to be flat as bad prosecco, I wonder why I do it... Then I see something fantastic like Fairground Theatre Company's Bonnie and Clyde and I remember.
We have chosen to live lives less ordinary, the outlaws announce in slow unison at the start of what, it is soon clear, is their last day on the run. Less ordinary in that every simmering emotion – regret, frustration, jealousy, and love, is played out in the dreadful foreknowledge that, if not today then soon, a violent death will find them. The set, a half-derelict shack in pale cornfields, is superb both in supporting their lonely isolation and creating a childish haven, a Wendy-house where these killer children play dressing up and picnics, quarrel and fight and curl up together to sleep.
Actors Eoin Slattery and Catherine McKinnon were heartbreakingly good, brimming with bafflement at their predicament and their passions, and looking remarkably like the foyer photographs of both the real couple and the 1967 film actors. A fabulous script by Adam Peck took us to the heart of the story through succinct exchanges and lyrical monologue from Clyde as he flashes forward to the slow-motion shooting with such precision you can feel the dusty heat shimmer.
What's shown is visceral, intimate, theatrical, surreal, often beautiful, always poignant, sometimes funny, but this play engages at every level: glimpses of stifling social attitudes, and Clyde’s early idealism (Is that what we were doin’ Clyde? Bonnie wonders), and even comparisons with contemporary car-crash wannabe famous blondes but with a light touch skilful as an acupuncture needle. It's on at the Brewery till 23rd October- go see.

Another road-movie story, but I won't be reviewing A Laughing Matter at the Alma because I didn't see most of it. It wasn't the actors' fault that my coulrophobia kicked in from the opening sequence and since the suicidal mime artist stayed in costume and partial make-up throughout, my experience was mainly audial. So any attempt objective commentary would be unfair: all I can say of the script is that the journey of an 'odd couple' of anachronistic entertainers is not enough to sustain interest without characterisation, relationship, or dramatic purpose.
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Sometimes a night at the theatre transports you to a wonderful world of heightened reality, blissful or provocative, hilarious or profound, with scripts you'd cut your arm off to have written and performances that break your heart. And sometimes it doesn't.
I don't know what to say about Anything but Love at the Brewery which envisaged a late-night whisky-and-confidences indulgence between lyricist Dorothy Fields and epigramist Dorothy Parker by tacking together a random selection of Parker's quips, other than that the women did their best with a limp script and the songs were very pleasant. They didn't use my favourite Parker-bite, though: One more drink and I'll be under the host...
From Bristol to Bath: Tim Crouch's My Arm had rave reviews but maybe the impact of this overlong overly-cerebral piece relied on Tim's personal performance style. The 're-imagined' version by Greyscale didn't grab me, and the Lego alter-ego of the man who held his arm up for 30 years was disconcertingly reminiscent of Eddie Izzard as Darth Vadar in the canteen on Youtube. Though not as entertaining.
The companion piece performance What would Judas do?, developed from an idea by Stewart (Jerry Springer the Opera) Lee, was more accessible, delivered with panache and small oranges hurled into the auditorium as rewards for participating with the actor's banter. I think this flying party-bag approach was part of the company's mission statement to "engage and manipulate our audience's experience of the stories we share with them... engaging the theatrical sensibility and expertise of the actor, designer and director as a provoking instead of reactive force". But I'm not sure.
The Ustinov won't mind my mystification: their target is 'an audience that wouldn't go to the Main House in a million years', director Andrew Smaje says. I learned more about how everything dovetails together from Danny Moar, boss of the Theatre Royal Bath, for my Plays International article. Complex in both senses of the word, TRB is an impressive model of integrated theatre projects, and great for the city to have a successful venue for popular shows with a commercial producing arm that subsidises its experimental studio theatre and children's theatre and even runs an education department too.
Over in the Arts-funded world, policies seem about as popular as bankers' bonuses, so it was impressive to hear Lyn Gardner, theatre spokesperson for The Guardian, sounding so enthusiastic at the big farewell party for Seth as he steps down from his role as director of Theatre Bristol. "Theatre Bristol is marvellous - a precocious baby in the changing face of theatre. Something is stirring in Bristol, and it's been started by Theatre Bristol - it's allowed people to dream about what kind of culture they'd like, and it would never have happened without Theatre Bristol."
Seth himself spoke briefly and more sombrely, ending simply "Let's have a party", and we did, with a 10-piece band to help out. I went with Rosie Finnegan to spread the word about Nevertheless Productions, our new pub theatre venture: for us, at least, Theatre Bristol has been valuable to help us access Bristol Mothership from the small satellite outpost of Frome.

Before Alan Bennett dipped into the Joe-Ortonesque angst that produced his misnomered play Enjoy, he was part of the sensational 60s silliness of Beyond the Fringe, and it's from this place of sublime absurdity that Habeas Corpus emerged. It's a superb farce, shimmering with sexual frisson and hyperbolic parody, with ludicrous lines like 'King Sex is a wayward monarch', a story of gratuitous trouser-drops and rapacious longings, embellished with snatches of song and poetic mini-monologues at unexpected moments. Frome Drama Club did the piece proud. The cast relished the gleeful comedy, and Philip de Glanville's direction, combined with the brilliant, cleverly used, set of scarlet doors, managed to bring out the subtle underlying poignancy too, as all these lonely people struggle to connect. A strong troupe with wonderful individual moments, but the star of the show was David Holt as Arthur Wickstead, whose final dervish dance was a simply unforgettable piece of theatre.

And, before this mirage summer vaporises, here's the image that has epitomised the days for me: magnolia seems to be everywhere this year, thriving on the late-arriving sun.

A shadow from Remembrance Day inevitably lay across this month's Poetry and a Pint session in Bath (but not in my resolutely flippant guest spot, though I did wear a peace poppy.) Most impressive, for me, was Sue Boyle's beautiful cameo of a virgin great aunt bereaved by the Great War, and Jeremy Gibson's acid satire on George Bush: his manic aspirationalism and word botching too.

I wouldn’t generally enthuse about an hour spent in the company of a man whose idea of a good time was to wrench the head off a swan and drink its blood, but I’m making an exception for the current production of Normal at the Brewery. It’s sensational – in a good as well as a lurid way. Anthony Neilson based his play on the real-life story of Peter Kurten, a German serial killer executed just before WW2, and there’s a dreadful foretaste of Nazi atrocities in this electrifying production. As well as the grim realities of history and psychological harm, this is a gripping horror story where crazed toys come to life, props become murder tools, and no-one seems sane or ‘normal’ despite the courtroom verdict. The uneasy feeling of entrapment in a gothic fairground is enhanced by fantastic set & lighting (Frazer Riches), by virtuoso acting (Oliver Millingham, Michael Mitcham, and Kate Kordel), and by the truly inspired direction of Chris Loveless. Top of my theatrical unforgettable moments of 2009: the manic dance sequence between Peter and the young lawyer he relentlessly entraps in his gruesome world. There's an unsettling crosscurrent of normalcy too in the love lives of these damaged people, and perhaps what is most chilling about Millingham's psychopath is his hypnotic charm. A play that questions innocence and guilt, and resonates long after plangent music has ebbed from the stage.