Author Archives: Lisa Wolfe

About Lisa Wolfe

Lisa Wolfe is a freelance theatre producer and project manager of contemporary small-scale work. Companies and people she has supported include: A&E Comedy, Three Score Dance, Pocket Epics, Jennifer Irons,Tim Crouch, Liz Aggiss, Sue MacLaine, Spymonkey and many more. Lisa was Marketing Manager at Brighton Dome and Festival (1989-2001) and has also worked for South East Dance, Chichester Festival Theatre and Company of Angels. She is Marketing Manager for Carousel, learning-disability arts company.

Caroline Horton: Mess

Caroline Horton’s runaway hit You’re Not Like The Other Girls Chrissyestablished her as a writer and performer of some distinction – a gracious and engaging presence on stage with a good ear for the rhythm of prose and a natural wit.

Mess has been a harder call. A play about her own experience with anorexia, made for the Traverse and premiering at the Edinburgh Fringe – on paper it’s a challenging prospect. But Caroline has devised a method for telling the story that is clever and wise – one that takes Mess away from being a personal and inward focused piece and makes it into a play that could relate to any illness or human condition.

A cast of three, who perhaps trained at Lecoq, are going to put on a play to tell the story of Josephine who was an anorexic. The premise is that in the future this little story will be told on a big stage, with proper scenery and an orchestra in the pit and a much bigger audience. So for now we are getting Mess ‘Lite’. Josephine (Horton), is supported on stage by Seiriol Davies as Sistahl, who provides music and foleys, and Hannah Boyde as Boris, a sort of ‘everyman’ character.

Anorexia is represented by a high platform covered with white camberwick that stretches on to the floor. Josephine decorates it with a parasol hung with medals (for ounces lost), fairy lights and a duvet. Everything is white, calm, pretty and quiet up there. In a text that weaves together painful mealtimes, episodes of hospitalisation, trips to the beach and visits to the doctors there is a subtle interplay between humour and despair. Josephine is so committed to her illness she cannot see how it affects Boris or anyone else round her. She doesn’t believe she might die. ‘You will if you don’t eat,’ says Boris, quietly, walking off set.

Sistahl provides an inner voice – ‘this is the sub-text’ – and undercuts Josephine’s more haughty moments. He is the counterpoint to her role in controlling the theatricality of the play.

Mess deals with a difficult subject and one that on the face of it might not have broad audience appeal. It is a tribute to Caroline Horton and her team of producers, her director and advisors that she has produced a play that, whilst not easy to hear, is a delight to watch.

The characters are engaging, the musical accompaniment has just the right tone and the piece is elegantly lit and staged. Like the illness it shines a light on, Mess is controlled and knowing, yet playful. There is little punch in the final message. The play can’t end because that would suggest the issue of young men and woman with eating disorders has gone away. So we celebrate Josephine’s regained spontaneity and release, in the knowledge that Caroline will always be at risk.

www.carolinehorton.net

National Theatre of Scotland: An Appointment with The Wicker Man

It opens like a Farndale Avenue show. An am-dram production by the Loch Parry Players of The Wicker Man, with suitably dilapidated scenery, naff costumes and an inappropriate West End style showbiz song and dance number which is very ably done.

The core cast of familiar Wicker Man characters are assembled to rehearse, sending cues to the technician at the back of the hall, bickering and establishing their family relationships which will become integral to the subtext.

So far, so as expected. The entry of a ‘real’ actor, Rory Mulligan, a ‘TV star fromBlood Beat‘ changes the narrative to one of further intrigue and sets up the idea that the patriarchal Finlay Fothergill runs his Players with a fierce sense of self-aggrandisement and some malice.

There are several layers of theatrical conceit at work, a fair bit of slapstick, some very lame jokes, lots of Scottish jokes, and some funny ones that keep an afternoon crowd giggling. The key scenes of the film are portrayed bawdily and the songs, as ever, are delightfully twee and bonkers.

Written by Greg Hemphill, who plays Lord Summerisle, and Donald McLeary, it’s a fast-paced and ballsy production, directed by Vicky Featherstone. The performers enjoy themselves and the convoluted plot does play out to a satisfactory conclusion. The Wicker Man is actually made of metal – for health and safety reasons – and is impressive. The baddy – Lord Summerisle – gets burnt and it ends with another high-kicking song and dance routine with vivid lighting and a burst of silver sprinkles. Whilst thin on any richer satire it’s a crowd pleasing show.

www.nationaltheatrescotland.com

Silvia Gribaudi: A Corpo Libero

Silvia appears at the back of the stage, against the blacks, head down, tugging at the hem of her brightly coloured, tight fitting, slinky little dress. Too little, perhaps, for her generous frame and a cause of consternation as she ripples her body through a dance that is anything but routine.

She moves effortlessly and unconventionally, making limbs fly and land with a combination of light and weight, holding poses, dancing with her face and her fingertips. Subtle and gestural one moment, brash and knowing the next.

Playing with the spotlight she becomes more grand and in control as the light and the music get bigger. Silvia performs to us, for us.

To Iggy Pop’s The Passenger she does a wonderfully loose solo with her hair quiffed up. The music morphs into opera and the moment of ultimate freedom. Off comes the constricting garment to reveal bright green underwear; the dress gets wrapped around the head turban style. Now Silvia is free to be herself, to acknowledge her fabulous body with a proper belly dance and everything shaking. A Corpo Libero is a glorious and life affirming piece; short in length but big in heart. Everything is pitch perfect – lighting, sound, staging and choreography. A joy and a gem.

www.silviagribaudi.com

Tara Cheyenne Performance: bANGER

‘I am half man,’ says Tara Cheyenne, disconcertingly clad in lingerie, toes pointed at the end of very long legs. ‘My father is a man, and his father before him.’ Within minutes she has adopted not just the uniform of a male head-banging teenage high school misfit, but the whole physicality of him.

Acknowledging the gender appropriation and with a script that is funny and poignant in turn, bANGER is a dance-theatre piece that allows Tara to fully display her ‘awesome talent’ – as her character would no doubt say. His is a world of rock and roll fantasy, of loud guitars and war-games, of fancying unattainable girls, making a twit of himself in classes and getting beaten up in the locker rooms.

It is compelling stuff, loud and strong and danced with fierce conviction.

But once the character is established, the choreographic language becomes a little restricting, repeating signature moves of head-shaking and air guitar. This is perhaps why Tara introduces a sequence about the Battle of El Alamein, narrated by a goggly eyed English Colonel. It allows her to move in a different way and is certainly unexpected and brilliantly portrayed.

Marc Stewart’s musical score references Black Sabbath and Metallica and is pretty ear shattering in places, but never overwhelms. The lighting is a suitably full-on rock star design, serving the space well.

bANGER is a convincing portrayal of teenage angst and the characterisation is spot on, even if it does play rather to stereotype. Yes, he loves his mom, he is a history boffin (hence World War II re-enactment), he plays computer games and calls his one mate ‘dude’ – but dance gives him the freedom to express himself more fully. It’s what teenage misfits should be doing, Tara seems to suggest, as she figuratively opens her chest and throws her heart towards us.

www.taracheyenne.com

New Adventures: Matthew Bourne’s Early Adventures

The number of straight young men encouraged into ballet schools might plummet after two and half hours of brazen campery in Matthew Bourne’s triple bill. Presented to celebrate his company’s 25th anniversary, it is a timely selection for a year of Jubilee and Olympic festivities, a lighthearted, nostalgia-ladened programme of exquisitely performed classical ballet with a contemporary twist.

It begins with Spitfire. Four men in white underwear recreate the 1845 pas de quartre combined with a hint of Balanchine’s Serenade. A further influence is from advertising – the men hold poses, perform duos, solos and group interactions to virtuoso classical ballet music. Fun, lovely to watch, slightly absurd and an audience pleaser.

Town and Country hasn’t been performed since 1991 and is the full-length piece that launched Adventures in Motion Pictures as a company of national importance. Played here in two parts either side of the interval, it is an affectionate look at Middle England. Downton Abbey springs to mind, as upstairs and downstairs scenarios are played out in short, themed episodes. A puff of steam and here comes Brief Encounter: Noel Coward sings ‘Dearest Love’ and we’re into Fred and Ginger – but danced by two men. The choreography is elegant and Bourne’s eye for the big stage picture is evident even in these early works.

The country episode is equally easy on the eye and ear. This time we have a clog-dancing routine, some bucolic milkmaids, birdsong and an unfortunate hedgehog. There are lifts and leaps, solos through to ensemble dances. The basis of the movement language is pastiche but Bourne takes it a step beyond, enough to make the work feel fresh and modern, for 1991 if less so for today.

Music has always been vitally important to Bourne – hence his ongoing reinterpretations of classical ballets and opera (Car Man for example) and inEarly Adventures the pairing of music and dance is key. It is particularly evident in Shallow Brown, by Percy Grainger, sung by John Shirley-Quirk. Here the mood darkens a little in a poignant scene that seemed to preface a call to arms. A dancer held aloft and walked slowly across the back of the stage, just the head in a shaft of light high above the country scenery, was truly moving.

The set throughout has been a lush red curtain augmented by simple structures to frame the sections, and for Country a garden backcloth just like the old railway posters promoting days out to Morecambe Bay.

For the third piece, The Infernal Galop, it’s a Parisian street scene, with scale models of landmarks and a typically French urinal. This is another review piece, with vignettes illustrating an English view of the French set in c. 1940s mode. There is Chopin, Piaf and Django Reinhardt and the hint of a can-can. Cocteau inspired matelots serenade a silk-gowned merman to the strain’s of Trenet’s ‘La Mer’.

Here at last a bit of grit enters the choreography, albeit beautifully composed, as a male couple’s attempts to have sex get interrupted – twice – by a jolly band of street musicians.

The dancing throughout by the company of nine is faultless, the lighting beautiful, but although the time sweeps by effortlessly the dance becomes too familiar and lacks light and shade. I couldn’t detect much development in the style or choreographic language. There are few truly mesmerising encounters between dancers in any combination. It is, to use a proper English expression, all very nice.

Total Theatre