Author Archives: Dorothy Max Prior

About Dorothy Max Prior

Dorothy Max Prior is the editor of Total Theatre Magazine, and is also a performer, writer, dramaturg and choreographer/director working in theatre, dance, installation and outdoor arts. Much of her work is sited in public spaces or in venues other than regular theatres. She also writes essays and stories, some of which are published and some of which languish in bottom drawers – and she teaches drama, dance and creative non-fiction writing. www.dorothymaxprior.com

At it Again!

Dorothy Max Prior meets Joan and Barry Grantham – purveyors of Eccentric Dance and Popular Theatre…

So here we are at Jacksons Lane, North London. At it again. A motley crew of professional actors and dancers of all sorts, and amateur enthusiasts of varying levels of ability and experience, all whiling away the afternoon doing soft shoe shuffles and high kicks, and channelling the spirit of Laurel and Hardy, Snake-hips Johnson, and Little Titch. We are learning steps with exotic names: the ‘Cup and Saucers’ and the ‘Knives and Forks’; the ‘Scissors’ and the ‘Suzie Q’. Our teacher is Eccentric Dance expert Barry Grantham, whose sprightliness and energy defies the decades that he has been doing this, and we are accompanied on the piano by the wonderful Joan Grantham (aka ‘Joanie, in whom the muses nine combine’ as Barry calls her in the dedication in his book, Playing Commedia).

Later in the afternoon, the ante is upped as we learn the double-act choreography for Me and My Shadow, and attempt to emulate the legendary Wilson, Keppel and Betty’s Egyptian Sand Dance. There’s a bit of singing too as we have a bash at Harry Champion’s Any Old Iron, a classic Music Hall song-and-dance number.

Joan and Barry Grantham working with Tweedy the Clown

After the class, I’m invited back to Joan and Barry’s delightful little flat in Pimlico. We talk for many an hour, accompanied by the rattle of tea cups and the munching of fairy cakes. The talk is of cabbages and kings and sealing wax and string – and of course about all the things that Joan and Barry have performed, taught, and championed over the decades: Eccentric Dance, Mime, Music Hall, Variety, Commedia dell’ Arte.

We talk, for example, of the difference between Music Hall and Variety. Music Hall came first, says Barry – late 19^th to early 20^th century – and is characterised by the ‘non-theatre’ set-up of cabaret style small tables and chairs, whilst Variety was performed in regular, proscenium arch theatres. ‘Darling, they had waiters serving beer and hot pies right through the performance!’ says Joan enthusiastically, reflecting on the informal atmosphere of the Music Hall. This was before their time, but they have a direct line to the Music Hall tradition, both through family connections and through their friendships with older colleagues in the entertainment business who made the transition from Music Hall to Variety.

Barry’s maternal grandfather, Fred Bushell, worked the Halls as a singer of comic songs. Although this was all before his time, his Granddad having died when he was a baby, Barry was brought up on stories of Fred running from one venue to another to fit in three or four gigs a night. When he retired, he opened an East End oyster bar: ‘And like everyone else who ran an oyster bar at that time, he always swore that their establishment was patronised by Edward VII and Lillie Langtry,’ says Barry. His parents were actors, meeting during a performance of The Merry Wives of Windsor. His father performed as Pierrot in a Commedia-inspired production (a revival of a play by Laurence Housman called Prunella; or Love in a Dutch Garden), and Barry himself was initiated into the theatre arts at a tender age, creating a mime scenario under the coaching of his father: ‘Really, a Marcel Marceau type thing – about Pierrot waiting for a letter… All very French, rather than Italian.’ By the age of 12, he was not only performing but also teaching at his mother’s ballet school.

At the age of 15 – ‘I had to pretend I was 16 to get the job’, he says – Barry was a very promising young dancer, who had just joined the cast of The Song of Norway, on at the Palace Theatre, Cambridge Circus, at the heart of London’s West End. ‘I came running on in my little Norwegian trousers – rum tum tum ta! – and I saw this rather beautiful girl – very beautiful girl – dancing with a pillow.’ The girl was Joan. And what was her reaction to the new boy? ‘Well,’ says Joan, ‘I do remember he had very nice legs.’

Although they didn’t become an ‘item’ immediately, it was the start of a lifelong relationship of shared work, friendship and love. Joan is a dancer, musician, and comedienne, coming from what she describes as an ordinary family (albeit a ‘very musical family’), getting her love for the performing arts from ballet and music lessons, taking her exams and grades, and picking up work where she could. In those days, she was making her living both from playing the piano (especially music from classic Hollywood films, on which her knowledge has become encyclopaedic) and dancing – after the Song of Norway, she continued with a string of West End shows, including Scheherazade with the Lifar Company at the Cambridge Theatre. Barry, post Song of Norway, reaped the rewards of being that rare thing, a good male ballet dancer, much in demand on stage and film. (He appeared in Red Shoes with Moira Shearer, amongst other glory moments.)

Joan and Barry Grantham treading the boards

At first their paths crossed only intermittently, but after a year or two there came a point when they decided to throw in their lot together. ‘The marriage license being rather cheaper than paying a pianist,’ Barry says mischievously. So a union was formed – not just a marriage, but also a dance partnership. Barry invited Joan to join him in training with Idzikowski, who worked with Diaghilev. Joan introduced Barry to popular and stage-dance forms: ‘I’m a ballet boy,’ says Barry. ‘Joan taught me everything I know about musical theatre.’ Together, Joan and Barry created an act that they took to the Variety theatres – both of them dancing, Barry choreographing, and Joan composing the music. Their influences were many and various, from the Russian ballet to musical theatre via Hollywood film – especially films starring Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire (Joan’s personal favourite). They also acknowledge the debt they owe to their friends and colleagues, such as Paddy Stone, Beryl Kaye and Irving Davies (known collectively as Three’s Company – for whom Joan wrote the music). Davies in particular was a renowned dancer and choreographer who had worked with Gene Kelly, and who choreographed many West End shows, working right up to his death (in 2012) on his last production, Sean Foley and Hamish McColl’s tribute to Morecambe and Wise, The Play Wot I Wrote.

Like Irving Davies, Joan and Barry were mostly interested in taking dance into a new direction that embraced ballet, modern, and what used to be called ‘stage dance’. They forged routines that aimed to stretch the boundaries of dance whilst still being entertaining: ‘We were breaking all the rules of Variety – we didn’t conform to the patterns that most people expected,’ says Barry. Joan’s musical compositions, he tells me proudly, were complex and unusual, often causing consternation to the musicians when presented at band call. He recalls the occasion when one bandleader, Sid Caplin at Hackney Empire, said: ‘What’s this? My bass player – 48 bars rest time? I’m not paying him to have 48 bars rest time!’

What they weren’t too interested in, perhaps surprisingly, was the form that we now call Eccentric Dance. ‘ Not at all! It’s funny that I have ended up teaching all this stuff we were trying to get away from!’ says Barry, although he is quick to reassure me that he always had great admiration for the Variety legends he worked alongside, it was just that he and Joan had different ambitions. ‘We were of a new generation’ says Barry, and Joan adds ‘Things were changing, all those old acts weren’t going anywhere, and we wanted to go somewhere different, to stick with it and do things you wouldn’t expect.’

Although Joan and Barry entered Variety at a time that it was in decline, they worked with many of the genre’s legendary figures, including Max Miller (‘The Cheeky Chappie’), who they admire greatly, saying ‘he was wonderful to watch’, being particularly impressed by his ability to single out and relate one-on-one to members of the audience, even in a large theatre. This Barry sees as akin to his other great theatrical love, Commedia – the skill in engaging the audience and bringing them into the performance action that has come down the ages from Commedia dell’Arte to Music Hall, Pantomime, Variety and contemporary Street Theatre performance. ‘He liked to have the house lights up – he liked to see the audience – he had incredible skill in talking to the audience.’

Variety bills the couple played on also featured so-called Speciality Acts such as the wonderful Adagio dance troupe The Ganjou Brothers and Juanita; and aforementioned Wilson, Keppel and Betty, whose famous Cleopatra’s Nightmare was devised as a response to the interest in the finding of Tutankhamen’s tomb in the 1920s – and was still being danced in the 1950s. At least, Jack Wilson and Joe Keppel were still dancing it. Betty Knox had long retired from the dance, and indeed had a very successful second career as a journalist, famously reporting from the Nuremberg Trial for the Evening Standard. Her daughter Patsy became Betty Number Two, and when she left there were a whole succession of new Betties. No one is quite sure how many, but Richard Anthony Baker, author of ‘Old Time Variety – an illustrated history’ claims eight or nine. Barry isn’t sure what number Betty they were on at the time he performed alongside them – what he does know is that she couldn’t hold a light to the original Betty: ‘There’s a part where the boys go and get changed, and Betty does a Dance of the Seven Veils,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t very impressed. Not at all sexy…’

Joan and Barry Grantham ‘The Old Car’ Variety Act

How, then, did it happen that Joan and Barry ended up being known as Eccentric Dancers? A life treading the boards takes many twists and turns. As well as their ‘serious’ dance pieces, Joan and Barry created comic vignettes that were tributes to film stars such as Charlie Chaplin, and the Marx Brothers (‘Joan was Harpo and I was Groucho’). They toured on the Variety circuit for a few years – doing theatres all around the country, summer seasons, and pantomime – but this was the 1950s and Variety was in decline: theatres were becoming cinemas, TV was snapping up the singers and the comics. Joan and Barry moved into cabaret and cruise-ship work. Barry also became much in demand as a choreographer, working in theatres and with showgirl troupes (often alongside choreographer/producer and renowned Can Can teacher Marie de Vere, whose comment on his work was: ‘You’re very good, but you’ll have to shift yourself’ – the expectation was for him to get four routines made a day!)

Somewhere along the way, word got out that Barry had a background in Variety, and that he knew (and had learnt from) many of the legendary comic and character dancers of the day, and so it was only a matter of time before the demand to teach the classic routines came his way. This was many decades before the advent of DVDs and YouTube, both now an invaluable source for studying vintage dance routines. Then, if you wanted to learn, say, ‘At The Ball’ by Laurel and Hardy, there was nowhere to crib from; you needed to find someone who knew it. Step up, Barry Grantham!

But there is more to life than Eccentric Dancing, and Barry is also a renowned expert in both classic Commedia dell’Arte and its contemporary successor, Commedia. That childhood role of Pierrot was reprised many times, with Barry also embracing Harlequin – and eventually all the Masks (as Commedia characters are called, regardless of whether they are actual masked characters or not). Traditionally a performer might spend his whole career portraying a single Mask but Barry is more interested in seeing how each character feels under the mask and at some point has worked on, and in, most of the famous one. Indeed, he and Joan have a show called Harlequin Unmasked in which they explore the whole gamut. His interest in Commedia burgeoned after the demise of the Variety days. He saw the renowned Piccolo Theatre from Milan (‘inspiring, incredible,’ says Barry), performing Servant of Two Masters – Carlo Goldoni’s fully scripted play, written in protest at the poor standard of improvisation to which the Commedia dell’Arte of the day had sunk – a perennial comic theatre favourite that recently re-surfaced as the National Theatre production One Man, Two Guvnors (currently touring the UK). His early interest in the form thus piqued, he took himself to Italy to study with the masters of the form, and read anything he could find about Commedia dell’Arte, forging an intensive education for himself.

Barry and Joan Grantham: Commedia dell’Arte

So we are now in the late 1960s and 1970s, and Barry (with his renewed interest in and growing knowledge of) Commedia dell’Arte is invited to teach workshops in Mime, Improvisation, and Commedia at the Oval House Theatre and the City Lit – both hot-spots of alternative theatrical activity in the emerging scene of agit-prop and devised theatre. Alongside the experiments in theatre form coming from the likes of The People Show, Lumiere and Son, and Crystal Theatre of the Saint, there was a parallel interest developing in classic forms, including: Mime, Acrobatics, Clown and Commedia dell’Arte. More than mere revival, re-interpretation and integration into new ways of working were the order of the day. By the late 1970s, an enterprising young theatre producer called Joseph Seelig had started the London International Mime Festival. Physical, visual, ‘total theatre’ was breaking through – not as a replacement of the literary tradition led by authors, but honouring actor-led theatre forms as a parallel force.

By the early 1980s a whole new generation of physical theatre-makers had arrived on the scene. Over the 1980s and 1990s, and beyond into the 21^st century, emerging artists working in the burgeoning artforms of physical and devised theatre, street theatre and contemporary circus were looking to experts in the non-literary performance traditions for general guidance and (even more vital) hard-core skills. Barry Grantham thus found himself much in demand teaching mime, movement and Commedia techniques to companies such as Zippos Circus, No Fit State, Told by an Idiot, and Gifford’s Circus. In more recent years, as physical theatre and circus entered the mainstream, he found himself working in opera (at Glyndebourne and at the Royal Opera House), for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and for numerous other notable establishments across the UK and Europe.

Barry defines contemporary Commedia, as distinct from the classic Commedia dell’Arte, as a form ‘not restricted to either stereotypes of doubtful relevance or male-dominated orientations’ (this quote taken from the introduction to his excellent book Playing Commedia). He sees it as a theatre of allusion, not illusion, and notes five characteristics of Commedia. It is a non-naturalistic form in which the physical/visual elements are at least equal to the verbal. It makes use of the multiple skills of the performer, incorporating spoken text, dance, mime, acrobatics, and music. It may be improvised but incorporates learnt set pieces. It may feature ‘permanent’ characters, traditional or new. And it may use face masks – in traditional Commedia dell’Arte, this would be the distinctive half-masks, often beautifully crafted in leather. In Playing Commedia, Barry discusses the mask as used in more recent performance. He talks of the creation of an ‘identifiable image’ and cites Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp character –replete with bowler hat and the little moustache – as a Mask: ‘A clearly recognised individual who raises certain expectations in the audience.’

Joan and Barry Grantham: Ragtime Dance

Concurrent to the teaching work, the Commedia troupe Intention (founded and led by Barry) has performed extensively, and Joan and Barry continue to present their legendary classes, workshops, performances and lecture-demonstrations on Eccentric Dance, Music Hall and Commedia. They have two touring shows: Working the Halls, which tells true-life stories from the world of Music Hall and Variety, and the aforementioned Harlequin Unmasked.

This may well be a good moment to reflect on the fact that Barry sees little distinction between his work with Eccentric Dance and Variety, and his work with Commedia. ‘It’s all one,’ he says, meaning that it is all part of the same great whole thing that is popular theatre. In this, there is an analogy (which we discuss keenly) with the Balinese approach to art-making, in which everyone is expected to dance, sing, puppeteer, and perform the Topeng masks. As Antonin Artaud, Eugenio Barba, and Peter Brook have all pointed out, the divide between ‘actor’ and ‘dancer’ is less likely in Eastern traditions. The same can be said for the Commedia dell’Arte – traditionally a ‘commedian’ would be expected to competently dance, deliver text, sing, and play at least one musical instrument.

The conversation turns to more recent examples of multi-tasking performers, this prompting a discussion on the crossover between Variety and what some people call ‘legitimate theatre’. I tell Joan and Barry that I was lucky enough to have seen Max Wall in John Osborne’s The Entertainer at Greenwich Theatre: ‘So often Variety performers like Max Wall and Beryl Reid seem to have a greater depth than the so-called real actors,’ says Barry.

For those of us lucky enough to have experienced the Granthams’ teaching first-hand, we know that we are learning in a way that has been part of theatre history for many hundreds of years. Physical warm-ups that emphasise the isolation of body parts; tricks and turns and set pieces passed down from one generation of performers to another; comic dances that play on each performer’s unique appearance and abilities; an awareness of staging and relationship to audience. Long, long before the advent of university degrees in theatre, dance and circus, this was what you learnt and how you learnt it – from the horse’s mouth (or hooves, perhaps) – and what we learn from Joan and Barry is invaluable.

When I ask Barry what his fondest moment is from all these experiences over all these years, he says ‘Doing the class this afternoon!’ Which is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but there is a seriousness here. He’s more interested in what’s happening now, in the present moment, than in anything that has happened in the past. And he’s not done yet: there are unfulfilled ambitions: ‘It’s not really about what was – I’ve got something to do. I have a vision of Commedia and I have never achieved it. I don’t mean that it’s a total re-creation, but it’s what could be: masked work with brilliant actors, dancers, musicians. That’s what I’ve got to do – and I haven’t got much time to do it. You never know…’

So there’s an artist for you – ‘I’m happy, but still striving,’ he says.

Constantly on the move, looking to the next challenge.

We wait with baited breath to see what the next instalment of the very full and eventful theatrical lives of Joan and Barry Grantham bring forth.

More about Joan and Barry Grantham:

For further information on Joan and Barry Grantham see the World of Commedia website http://www.worldofcommedia.co.uk/

The Eccentric Dance class continues at Jacksons Lane on Tuesdays 2pm to 4pm, starting 13 January 2015 http://www.jacksonslane.org.uk/

Two weekend intensives in early 2015 at Sands Film Studios, Rotherhithe, London: http://www.sandsfilms.co.uk/Sands_Films_Studio/Contact_%26_Address.html

Music Hall Techniques: 23–25 January 2015

Commedia – A Technique for Comedy: 30 January –2 February 2015

Each weekend comprising an evening slide-talk on the Friday, followed by a two-day workshop.

23 January slide-talk: Working the Halls

30 January slide-talk: Commedia – Its History and Application

Bookings and further information: email gbarry.grantham@ntlworld.com or tel 0207 798 8246

Barry Grantham will be teaching Commedia dell’Arte at the Chalemie Easter School, Oxford, 28 March – 2 April 2015 http://www.chalemie.co.uk/

Books by Barry Grantham:

Playing Commedia – A Training Guide to Commedia Techniques (NHB, 2000)

Commedia Plays – Scenarios, Scripts, Lazzi (NHB, 2006)

Both available to purchase from www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Dorothy Max Prior is a choreographer, director and dance teacher, and co-director of The Ragroof Players www.ragroofplayers.co.uk and also runs projects using popular dance and theatre under the name Dorothy’s Shoes. Her five-day residential course Eccentric, Popular and Comic Dance for Actors and Clowns is now booking for June 2015 at The Actors Space in Barcelona. Email aureliusproductions@gmail.com for further information.

1927: The Golem

Photo Will Sanders

‘We live in a world where people want for nothing, we are safe and secure, we are progressive, we believe in the new…’

For your pleasure, at their leisure, 1927 present a brave new world: a Chrome-Crome-Yellow world in which automation liberates us from mundane tasks, turning us all into middle managers; a world that engulfs and digests rebellious youth culture and regurgitates it as pop fodder; a world that purports to offer you anything you could possibly desire. Yet when you walk down the high street you realise that all the shops all look the same, sell the same stuff, and are now owned by the same multinational conglomerate. Say yes to progress!

So, what is it? Is it live animation? Is it visual performance? A new type of music theatre? That and more, so much more – this is hard-hitting political theatre wrapped up so prettily, served with such wryly humorous irony, that it is only afterwards that you really appreciate the take-no-prisoners satirical blow of the narrative. Slave or master? Who controls whom? Move with the times or be left behind!

Thus, the story of Robert Robertson (a boy ‘smelling of unwashed hair and mathematics’ and ‘always picked last at rounders’) who morphs from IT underling to – gasp! – supervisor. Along the way, he gets himself a Golem. In a new take on the centuries-old Golem myth, the lumbering man-of-clay, created to mindlessly serve his human master, fails to ‘sleep the dreamless sleep of clay’ and mutates, Pokemon style, into ever smaller and snazzier action-figure forms – taking the world around him with him in an orgy of mechanising, streamlining and globalisation. Granny no longer has knitting needles, but pulls a lumbering Knit-o-Matic machine around with her. The beautifully drawn (in both senses of the word) high street goes from a gloriously tatty jumble of butchers and bakers, bridal boutiques, and old-geezer pubs with dodgy singers, to a uniform row of Go! enterprises.

Those who know and love the company’s work will welcome the fact that The Golem, their third theatre show (with an additional opera collaboration along the way), is on a continuum – ever upward, its own wonderful self, but building on familiar territory. The form, first presented in the Total Theatre Award winning debut Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, and developed in The Animals and Children Took to the Streets, is intact: crisp and clever writing and direction by Suzanne Andrade; extraordinarily detailed graphics and animation from Paul Barritt; beautifully composed and played music by Lillian Henley; fantastic physical performance and assistant direction and design from Esme Appleton (here playing Robert’s sister Annie, narrator of this cautionary tale).

In each lovingly crafted and painstakingly developed new show in their repertoire, 1927 up the ante. The Golem sees the addition of a second musician-actor, Will Close. His brash big-beat drum-kit playing adds a whole new dimension to the soundscape, working beautifully with Lillian Henley’s piano. The creation of punk band Annie and the Underdogs as a central motif and metaphor for the show is a masterstroke. With a similar exhilarating shriek and thrash to the legendary X-Ray Spex the band belt out songs that would ‘ruin your Christmas’. By the end of the show they’ve become an identikit jumpsuit-clad New Wave synth outfit that look for all the world like a Poundland version of Kraftwerk. We are the robots!

This third show also sees Suzanne Andrade choosing to stay off-stage. The cast is augmented by Little Bulb’s highly talented actor-musician Shamira Turner, who plays nerdy anti-hero Robert, and the dark-haired nervously clipped-toned Rose Robinson who plays Robert’s would-be girlfriend Joy, doubling up deliciously as Granny Robertson. Both actors rise to the challenge of multiple characters and the meticulous interplay with the film, giving excellent performances and fitting very well into the 1927 world.

The visual joust between 2D and 3D is ever-tighter, with Barritt handing over the controls to production manager and operator Helen Mugridge, the whole show running live cue-to-cue. The film animation is magnificent: the screen work is enhanced by use of stop-frame animation – Golem 1 is an actual animated clay figure, a bit like Morph but bigger and with a willy. And I know I’ll have to see the show again just for the delight of revisiting all the wonderful visual details – street signs whizzing by, people popping up through windows and doorways, buzzing insects on-screen swatted by real-live actors. A favourite recurring moment sees a moustache on the portrait of the dearly departed Granddad Robertson turning into a caterpillar and crawling off when brushed with a duster. There is also some lovely live animation: in one clever scene the hapless Joy is discarded by Robert – who has been encouraged by the Golem to find himself a newer, younger model – leading to the Court-o-Matic speed-dating array of gorgeous girls presenting as humanette-style human heads atop of cardboard-cut frocks in a fast-moving fashion parade of desirability.

In what is a magnificent achievement there are some small flaws, mostly to do with pacing. An outside eye could perhaps have persuaded the director to lob 10 minutes or so off of the ‘Golem 2’ section, which slumps a little. It’s currently a brilliant 90-minute show that could be a near-perfect 70-minute show.

1927 – now almost a decade old – has grown over the years into a far larger family than that four-person team that won so many awards at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2007. The list of credits on The Golem includes associate animator Derek Andrade, sound designer Laurence Owen, dramaturg Ben Francombe, and producer Jo Crowley. And a word of praise here for costume designer Sarah Munroe (from The Insect Circus) who has done a sterling job.

Like its two predecessors, 1927’s The Golem will no doubt tour the world with enormous success. It is supremely satisfying to see an artist-led company creating such breathtakingly beautiful and accomplished multi-discipline ’total theatre’ work achieve the success they deserve. The future is here!

Chris Dugrenier: Wealth’s Last Caprice

Photo Julian Hughes

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity… French performance artist Chris Dugrenier, in the process of reflecting on how things will be after her death, has assembled all her worldly goods into a pile – a total of 2,201 objects, accumulated over 18 years. These are not actually here, in front of us (other than a French-English dictionary, singled out to represent the crux of her life as a French woman living in England) but are documented on-screen – the time-lapse footage showing the pile growing, and later shrinking…

The list includes 342 books, 11 pairs of shoes – and a hell of a lot of pens. She loves pens. This making of an inventory of worldly possessions forms part of an artistic investigation into the process of drawing up a last will and testament– a process that will culminate in the artist making her own legally binding will, here and now, as witnessed by audience members. To which end, she asks if anyone has a pen. I volunteer mine. ‘Nice pen,’ she says – a rare moment of direct audience engagement in a show that otherwise struggles a little with how it is pitched, the performer staying behind what feels like a glass wall for much of the time, despite the lack of stage, proximity to audience, and bright overhead lighting. The tone is performance-lecture, which at times is fine and fitting – when it works, it works well, for example, in the more poetic sections in which we are given Forced Entertainment-style lists and litanies. Ways to die, for example: piano falling on head, spider bite, falling into a crevice…

There are also short, minimalist movement sections – a candle held in a Victorian candlestick is danced with, whilst on-screen the handwritten pages of ancient wills turn, and a voice-over recites the words of a man who wishes his body to have all its fat removed and this to be made into a candle to be the light of his loved one’s life for one last time. At other points in the show, we get the story of the man who stipulates that his wife will only inherit after a substantial amount of time spent with her ‘yakety-yak’ mouth taped up. Then there’s the anonymous man who leaves a legacy in five parts, to be used to create annual awards in literature, medicine, physics, chemistry, peace, and economics. Mr Nobel, we presume…

Other sections – the more prosaic ones in which the performer tells us of her process of making her inventory, writing a will, and ruminating on what will happen to her goods after death – would benefit from a stronger, more direct engagement with the audience. Which is why the pen moment works so well – suddenly the piece feels alive, present. The subsequent signing and sealing of the will wakes us up to the awareness that this isn’t pretend, this is for real. For this is indeed a last will and testament that, with due revoking of all previous wills and codicils, and witnessed by two people who are not related to the artist and who are not beneficiaries of said will, is thus legally binding. Until it is revoked – which will happen the next time the show goes out…

Wealth’s Last Caprice shows a rich and thorough research process, resulting in a piece that is bursting with interesting facts and premises, and many well-realised aspects. But as seen here, it feels more like a showing of research than a fully developed show. I enjoy the way the content of old wills is integrated into the piece. I like that she is wearing her own wedding dress, and her reflections on what she will leave to her husband and sisters are moving. The exposure of fears about death and musing on what a will can be (farewell, postscript, revenge) are all good and interesting. I’m less engaged by the story of the objects, as there seems to be little of anything original being said. There is reflection on the pointlessness of accumulation and worthlessness of worldly goods – but we all know we can’t take it with us.

It doesn’t as yet feel that Chris Dugrenier has found the heart of the piece. Or at least, it feels as if the heart should be the making of the will, and how this relates historically to other will-making. This is the interesting aspect – the reflection on the accumulation of life’s stuff’ feels secondary. And ‘stuff’ has been dealt with so thoroughly by so many other artists, similarly pursuing a Vanitas / Memento Mori theme. To mention just a few: Kristen Fredrickson’s Everything Must Go (in which the artist creates a show about emptying her father’s house after his death) springs to mind, as does Michael Landy’s Break Down (the notorious making of an actual physical inventory of Landy’s worldly goods – 7,227 items in his case – which are then destroyed). Then there’s Geoff Sobelle’s extraordinary The Object Lesson, in which the audience are immersed in a room full of junk… The moral being: go there with complete conviction or don’t go there.

There is no director, dramaturg or outside eye credited on Wealth’s Last Caprice – and it could be that further development with a collaborator would take the show the extra mile it needs to go. There is a very good show in here awaiting liberation.

TOOT: Be Here Now

Who was alive in the 90s? asks Clare. The hands go up. Everyone! What do we remember? How about Britpop? Blur versus Oasis. Nick Cave. Kylie. And – with I-told-you-so shock and excitement – Nick AND Kylie. Together! See, I told you she was cool, I knew it all along, says Terry (whose teenage self talks to Kylie every night in his bedroom). Tony Blair and the 1997 election – everyone, but everyone, is going to vote Labour! Raves. Trance. Dance. Drugs. Hip hop. Underworld. The Fugees. The Spice Girls – love em or hate em. TOOT –Terry O’Donovan, Stuart Barter and Clare Dunn – were teenagers in the 1990s, hence their intense interest in this particular decade.

The trio are named after their first show (Ten Out Of Ten), and what looked to be a kind of friendly one-off seems to have turned into an ongoing venture. Both of the company’s shows pride themselves on their special relationship with audience, who are embroiled into the action in a gentle and unthreatening way. Whilst TOOT (the show) brought us back to the schoolroom to investigate success and failure, their second show, Be Here Now, explores the importance of pop music in our nation’s coming-of-age stories – and specifically the importance of 1990s pop music in the personal stories of the three TOOT performers. It is (inevitably) a show steeped in nostalgia – but there is always a lively and engaging tug between past and present. The balance between the universal and the individual is held well.

So how does it all play out? The audience are seated on three sides (with a great bank of cardboard storage boxes forming the back wall). The boxes are opened to reveal the contents of a 90s teenage bedroom: glitter lava lamps, portable cassette players, a portrait of Kylie, a shower of Massive Attack Blue Lines CDs, a clutter of mini-discs – including the one that Marcus (age 17) made for Clare when she was just 15. The stories unfurl in many wondrous ways. Clare and Marcus! She can hardly believe it; she never thought he’d even noticed her (especially as she was wearing that horrible jumper that she wouldn’t have wanted to be caught dead in). Stuart-as-Marcus – transformed into a cool 90s teenager with the ruffling of his hair, and the donning of a baggy jumper and slouchy walk – reads out the tracklisting on the minidisk, and Clare responds with an astute physical playing out of the emotional register of each track – walking assertively, dancing wildly, posing, relaxing as the tunes merge and mingle – 2 Become 1, Killing Me Softly – the ultimate liberated 90s girl, the world at her feet. Meanwhile Terry’s stuck in a bit of a dilemma – spinning the bottle and being pushed forward to ask for a kiss by the male friend who’s the object of his nascent gay desire, rather than the girl he’s got to kiss. All three performers are excellent, their interactions perfectly tuned. The relationship with audience is paramount – we are talked to, played with, sung to, and (in one wonderful scene) invited up to become extras in Stuart’s heartbreaking story of a fantasy encounter gone pear-shaped.

Running through it all is the notion that the 90s was probably the last era when pop music was really, really important to young people. Or maybe everyone thinks that about ‘their’ decade. Was it better then or now, the TOOT team wonder. Certainly it was the last era in which you had to wait all night for the DJ to play your tune (rather than downloading it immediately onto your phone). The last era when you desperately coveted that new single by your favourite artist, saving up your pocket money and going out to buy it on a Saturday afternoon. The last era when music was relayed on actual physical artefacts – vinyl, CDs, cassettes, mini-discs – before the download era: by the beginning of the next decade, your mate could come round to your house and swipe your whole lovingly-amassed music collection onto an iPod in minutes. How has the culture of instant gratification changed us, wonder the TOOTs. This lost world of desire and longing reassembles itself deftly before our eyes (and ears).

This is not the only interactive contemporary theatre show about our relationship to pop music: Be Here Now is preceded by Periplum’s 45 Revolutions Per Moment and Uninvited Guests’ Love Letters Straight From Your Heart, and there are (intentionally or unintentionally) echoes of both shows. But Be Here Now is no bootleg copy. It is its own unique self, with brilliant and engaging performances from the TOOT trio. All are strong physically-rooted performers – all three sing, dance, DJ, all the time telling stories of first romantic fumbles, crushes, sexual fantasies, growing awareness of being gay, romantic disappointment, serious courtship, and marriage (we are invited to film the wedding on our phones). Stuart Barter – better known as a musician – really shines as a physical actor in this TOOT show: the way in which he gently leads the whole room into a great big rave-up (we are brought in as extras of the story of How Stuart Met Julie) is truly magical. At the beginning of the show, we are asked to write down the name of a song (from any era) that reminds us of our first love. The tunes we picked at the beginning are later delivered to us in a number of enchanting ways – although if there is one small dramaturgical quibble it is that suddenly moving out of the 90s world to incorporate the choices of audience members of tunes from other eras into the show feels a little odd. Perhaps the TOOT team need to decide if they might be better sticking to their lovingly created 1990s world, rather than breaking it with musical intrusions from other eras. This aspect of the show, lovely though it is, is also the one that ties it most closely to the two other shows about pop music referenced above.

But that aside, Be Here Now is really and truly a lovely show – heartwarming, engaging, and entertaining. A hit, pop-pickers!

Sylvia Rimat: If You Decide to Stay

Why do we do what we do? Is life a series of random chaotic moments, or are we on a path of destiny? How to we make choices? If You Decide to Stay, Sylvia Rimat’s charming and endearing new show, is about the here and now: a celebration of the fact that somehow life has conspired to bring this particular set of people together in this particular room at this particular time. Sitting in these particular seats. To shake things up a bit, to challenge destiny (perhaps) and to wake our brains from the usual theatre-seat passive slump (certainly), she asks us to look around, then if we wish to change our seat. To have a second chance to make a conscious decision about where we want to be sitting. The space is charged with energy, people giggle and chatter, there’s a fair bit of moving and shuffling – and as everyone settles down in a new ‘seating constellation’ there is a far more alert feeling in the room. This, we realise is not going to be your usual sort of theatre show. Sylvia congratulates us: ‘You’ve made it!’

We’ve only got an hour but that hour is a riveting one: time flies when you’re having fun. Sylvia mixes assured and engaging address – she has the confident and relaxed vibe of a stand-up comedian or a music hall artist, making everyone feel that she is talking directly to them – with video footage (stars, maps, meadows ‘ there’s a meadow in my head’), and pop songs (Mick Jones’ Should I Go or Should I Stay? is a perfect soundtrack for the show’s theme). There’s a comfy chair, on which she sits to read a letter to her would-be psychotherapist, Sue. There’s a blackboard on which she writes mind-bogglingly long numbers reflecting the statistical possibilities of seating arrangements. There are voiceovers from mathematician Dr Gaurav Malhotra, helping us to understand something of the nature of chance and statistics, and from neuroscientists and astrologers, giving opposing – or possibly complementary – views on the workings of our minds and our relationship to the universe. Again and again we return to the amazing, wonderful realisation that regardless of how and why – we are here. We are here – now!

The absurd is always close to hand: at one point the artist, reflecting on the decision-making processes in creating the show, ponders on the possibility of introducing a live cockerel into the stage setting. She opts instead for a white rabbit costume – or at least, she offers us a choice: white rabbit, or St Martin – the saintly Roman soldier much admired in her native Germany for sharing his cloak with a stranger. We choose the rabbit – perhaps all audiences do. It’s a very foolish rabbit suit, with floppy ears and a bobtail and she looks very becoming in it. Sylvia asks for an audience volunteer to play St Martin, and a gentleman in the front row is dutifully kitted out in helmet, cloak and toy sword. This and other moments of audience interaction are handled with great charm and warmth. Much later in the show, another audience member is sent off to the Co-op next door to buy snacks, after a collection (rather like the offertory at a mass) to raise funds.

Some shows hit you over the head with their ideas – some slip them to you gently using humour and warm personal engagement. If You Decide to Stay is certainly in the second category. It’s a total delight from start to finish. And yes – we get to eat the snacks. I’m very glad I came. I’m very glad I stayed. I hope, sometime before the world ends, to find myself once again in the same place, at the same time, as Sylvia Rimat.