The Nutcracker: a tough nut cracked

It was an unusual decision for the New Vic’s Christmas production to emulate a ballet story close to the original ballet. But a couple of audacious decisions makes The Nutcracker one of their most successful Christmas productions.

One sign that the New Vic does something right with its Christmas production: there’s so much demand it runs to the end of January. That’s also convenient for me because it’s something on my calendar in an otherwise empty month. Catching The Nutcracker at the end of its run, I was hearing a lot of praise, but there was a difference with Theresa Heskins’s latest winter play. Usually there’s a substantially different angle on the source material clear from the outset. This time, it’s not so obvious. There’s still ballet – in fact, in order to have an ensemble who can do the a ballet needed it’s almost entirely a new cast. The original music by Tchaikovsky has been kept. Is this not just a repeat of the famous ballet piece?

Not really. This piece can perhaps be described as how The Nutcracker would have been written as a theatre piece with ballet in, as opposed to a pure ballet production. Most ballet productions have plenty of set pieces dances, with the greatest ones having legendary music. But as far as the storyline is concerned … it doesn’t half go on a bit. We all love the tunes of the Arabian Dance, Russian Dance, Chinese Dance, Dance of the Reed Flutes and Waltz of the Flowers, but it’s a guaranteed fail of the “get on with it test”. And some bits of the story in act one are just … weird. Including, for some reason, a battle between gingerbread men and the terrible evil mouse queen. Theresa Heskins respond to these two challenges with two audacious decisions – and they pay off.

Firstly, the weird mouse battle. The easy and safe solution is to just cut it. Heskins not only keeps it, but ups its prominence in the story. You might think that nobody’s going to buy into a story where the villain is a mouse, but we’re in land where everything in made of confectionery. Remember, those little buggers eat everything. The first mention of the mouse queen is in the real-world opening scene, where Uncle Drosselmeyer tells the tall tale of the mouse queen’s threat to the sugar plum fairy. The setting is now an unsettled family forced to relocate by war (a nod to Ukraine families currently in Stoke), and Marie has an older sister who died, but other than that, the Act I story is reasonably faithful to the Act I of the ballet.

Interview with Deborah McAndrew and Conrad Nelson on Claybody Theatre

And now, a post I’m very excited to share with you. Following on from my review of The Card and my subsequent award as Best Production 2023, Deborah McAndrew from Claybody Theatre got in touch we me and asked me if I would like to take a look at their new space. Until now, Claybody Theatre has been doing a series of performances in ad-hoc venues (co-production with the New Vic excepted), but they are now leasing the Dipping House in Stoke for a year.

As I live in Durham rather than Stoke, this had to wait until January when I was next travelling to Stoke anyway (for The Nutcracker – good review coming), but once I was there I was delighted to take the opportunity to ask Conrad Nelson and Deborah McAndrew all about their plans – and also how they got here.

The background of Claybody Theatre is truly an extraordinary one. The husband-and-wife team of director Conrad Nelson and writer Deborah McAndrew for many years practically operated as a theatre company in its own right within Northern Broadsides, and when artistic director Barrie Rutter announced his retirement, it seems a foregone conclusion that they would take over the company. But instead, after a year as caretaker leadership, the astonished the theatre world by announcing they were leaving completely to instead focus on their side-project Claybody Theatre, dedicated to a hyper-local target audience of Stoke-on-Trent. It seemed like a crazy gamble, but last year’s outstanding production of The Card – on every bit the grand scale of their Northern Broadsides days – vindicates that decision.

So how did they rise through the ranks of Northern Broadsides. What made them surprise us all by switching to a new company. And how do they plan to use their success for the future. For fifty-five minutes, I had the chance to hear all about it.

What’s great about this place is the “found space” thing, which was a lot to do with the early doors of Northern Broadsides, finding somewhere to play. So there’s a familiar tale in finding ex-industrial spaces, they’ve got a real magic to them when you come in.

In the round: The Card and Quality Street

Skip to: The Card, Quality Street

Another catch-up of plays now, and this has been on the waiting list for a long time. Both in the round, and both close off-shoots of Northern Broadsides under Barrie Rutter. It’s a good report for one but an excellent report from the other.

The Card

Now, who remembers my review of Brassed Off last year? You probably don’t because it’s one of my less enthusiastic reviews. Fantastic film, great director, but let down by a script that couldn’t handle the transition from screen to stage. I know Conrad Nelson won’t agree with me, because this is the second time he’s directed this play, but the one observation I left it with was that Conrad Nelson did a the best job he could on integrating a brass band into a stage production. Maybe what we really needed was a script from his wife and main collaborator Deborah McAndrew. Well, we don’t have that, but we do have the next best thing: another adaptation featuring an integrated brass band, but this time penned by Deborah McAndrew herself. I guessed correctly: The Card lives up to its potential way beyond my expectations.

Alice in Wonderland: pink elephants edition

Skip to: Family album

Out goes a cute and wholesome Wonderland popularised by Disney and in comes a sinister Wonderland with danger and menace around every corner. Yes, I like it.

I know we should avoid comparing adaptations of stories to the Disney version where one exists, but for one it’s appropriate to open with a bit of Disney trivia. In the early days of Disney, there were two distinct styles of animation. “West coast” was the style that could be considered traditional Disney, with wholesome content, naturalistic drawing and usually a moral. “East coast”, on the other hand, featured morphing characters, themes of drugs/sex/death and usually hedonistic jazz music, of which the early Betty Boop cartoons are the best known example today. Walt Disney did, however, have some East Coast animators on his books, and when he let them get their hands on Dumbo, they added into the wholesome and twee story the drug-induced nightmare sequence that is the pick elephants sequence. And that is why children have had nightmares since 1941.

And so we come to the New Vic’s version of Alice in Wonderland. All of Theresa Heskins’s Christmas productions have been big successes, filling up the theatre long after most pantos have packed up, but this is regarded as the biggest success of all. (Indeed, Northern Stage picked this up for the own Christmas Production a few years back.) Having now seen this for myself, I can best describe this as how Disney would have done Alice if Walt had given this the Pink Elephants treatment. And, for the avoidance of doubt: that means I liked it.

The New Vic makes a big thing of their titular character being different from the one we’re used to. In both the book and the Disney version*, the story begins on a very middle-class rowing boat in the very middle-class Cotswolds. Theresa Heskins aims to make this more relatable to a Stoke audience by making her families who travel through The Potteries on a canal boat (Stoke, of course, having loads of canals). They live day to day and just get by. A clever bit in the town is where everyone she meets has an upcoming alter-ego in the other world. The future Mad Hatter is earning a living as a hatter (because of course), and the future White Rabbit is currently a slightly sinister magician pulling a white rabbit out of his hat. Out goes the rabbit hole and in goes a trap door in the theatre where the white rabbit magician is working.

Beauty and the Beast: back to the beginning

More ambitious than previous New Vic Christmas productions, Beauty and the Beast isn’t quite accessible to children as the others, but does a good job for the mostly adult audience it attracted instead.

The first thing I have to congratulate the New Vic for is making it through the Christmas season in one piece. I hardly need remind you of what a nightmare it’s been a second year running. Their sister theatre the Stephen Joseph, having bucked the trend last year so well, ended up cancelling half its run. From my end of the woods, only two of the five Christmas productions made it through the full run. And yet somehow, the New Vic has made it unscathed. That alone will be welcome news: the New Vic Christmas production is one of the most lucrative ones around, running well into January to cater for the school parties from miles around queuing up for tickets. This is not the first time they’ve impressed me with their resilience: when I saw The Wind in the Willows three years ago, I saw surprised to discover Mr. Toad dropped out sick, a minor character stepped in at short notice, and the rest of the cast covered his parts – and made it look like that’s how they planned to do it all along. This time round, maybe it was just luck. But well done anyway – I don’t know how how did it, but you made it.

But I digress. There are no finishers medals her, we must look at the play itself. This production, postponed from 2020 (with its small-scale replacement Coppelia itself postponed seven months), is Theresa Heskins’ take on a fairy story, but unlike a certain very popular touring show going on right now, this one goes to great lengths to avoid the Disneyfication. The 1990s film, classic though it is, took major liberties with the original plot – which is fine, but in all of the subsequent stage shows and live-action remakes Disney has an irritating habit of behaving like their animated films are the originals rather than take a second look at the source material. Heskins, on the other hand, brings back long-forgotten parts of the original book. Rather than being transformed into a Beast for refusing shelter to an old woman (which I always thought was a bit of an over-reaction), his predicament comes about from the Goblin wars in revenge for his warmongering warrior-Queen mother, which is a more understandable. And so the stage play begins with the little-known tale of the Goblins spinning their tales of mischief – mischief that unfortunately escalates rather quickly.

The outdoor era: Moby Dick and Coppelia

Skip to: Moby Dick, Coppelia

So now that I finally have the time to do this, I intend to do a big catch-up on my reviews. Now, the festival fringe and the West End may have hit the ground running in the spring and summer, but most regional theatres played it safe and waited for the autumn. However, there was a bit of theatre activity in the regions, and a lot of it was focused on outdoor performances. Although there was never a point in 2021 where outdoor theatre was permitted but indoor wasn’t, those performances in 2020 that went ahead outdoors did quite well and for some the idea stuck.

A lot of the outdoor performances happened at the Festival Fringes, particularly Brighton – those I am covering in their respective roundups. But apart from that, there were two performances that particularly caught my eye.

Moby Dick

The John Godber Company has been one of the most determined companies to perform on in any way they can, although it’s fair to say they were at a bit of an advantage here. With the Godber family themselves taking on so many roles over the years, it was an easy matter to put on a family event with Sunny Side Up. I would like to have told you about that, but the performances were very popular and sold out quickly. However, not all John Godber performances are family affairs, at to get back into the swing of things this year, they put on one of their largest productions to date at Hull Marina.

The first thing I will say is how much I love the venue. Stage @ The Dock came about from a regeneration of the Marina and presumably came about in part from Hull as 2017 City of Culture. Obviously it’s at the mercy of the weather, but on a balmy evening it’s a great place to see an outdoor-set play. With the John Godber Company having helped bring this space into the spotlight, I hope it’s not forgotten about now that indoor theatre has got going again.

For once, a John Godber Company play features writing from someone other than a Godber, for this is a collaboration with Nick Lane, who is writing most of Blackeyed Theatre’s current plays as well as many of the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s Christmas plays. The challenge of most adaptations is choosing what to keep in and what to leave out: with the exception of the shortest of short stories, it’s near-impossible to stick to original plot point by point and hope to be done in two hours – and certainly not Herman Mellville’s epic of a book. The best focus I think you can put on a stage version of Moby Dick is the suicidally dangerous obsession of Captain Ahab – and that’s precisely what is done here.

The Prince and the Pauper: all hail Mary!

Already a surefire hit for a New Vic Christmas production, the re-instatement of one historical character is a show-stealer.

Before everything got interrupted by the event, I had a a backlog of reviews, which I decided to clear as and when the respective theatres starting moving back to life. First off the mark is the New Vic, so let’s catch up on their Christmas production back in January. Before The Event. (Remember, don’t think about The Event.)

This is common knowledge to the New Vic regulars, but for the rest of my followers, the New Vic has one of the most lucrative Christmas seasons around. Whilst most pantos will settle for a run of six weeks or so, the New Vic runs for almost three months, due in a large part to attracting every school in Staffordshire (more or less). And with good reason too: artistic director Theresa Heskins has made this one of her top specialities. Last year’s Wind in the Willows showed what she is capable of producing (made even more impressive by a minor ensemble actor standing in for Mr. Toad at the last moment and making it look like the part had been written for him all along), and this year it’s the turn of the classic tale The Prince and the Pauper.

Mark Twain, best known for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, wrote this tale as a foray into “historical fiction” with his fictionalised story of boy king Edward VI and a street child he trades places with. However, being American, Mr Twain wasn’t that clued up on British Tudor history, whilst on this side of the pond every child has Divorced Behead Died etc. drilled in history lessons. As a result, some of the historical characters are people who we Brits neither recognise nor care about, whilst some better-known figures don’t really feature – and this is where Theresa Heskins takes the opportunity to make her mark. Out go a few stuffy Palace officials, and in come Princesses Mary and Elizabeth – and it’s future Mary who steals the show.

The Ike Award Hall of Fame: 2013

JoSkip to: The Thrill of Love, Jordan

Continuing the backdated Ike awards, our next year is 2013. There were only two plays to make it to the list this year, but what a two it was.

The Thrill of Love

Amanda Whittington’s play about Ruth Ellis is my favourite play of hers, but it was James Dacre’s directing that upgraded this from a good play to an outstanding one. I’ve seen three plays directed by Dacre, and the common theme he works into all of them is a sense of the unreal. It suited this play perfectly, as the world of Ruth Ellis was an unreal one on many ways: the bizarre world where so many women were expected to dive into the sleaze if they were to become famous; the hypocritical world that indulged these sleazy lives and condemned them in equal measure; and the tragic world of a woman who could not stop herself loving a man no good for her.

No play can be outstanding without an outstanding script; this is a strongest script I know from Whittington’s already strong catalogue, and telling Ellis’s story through through the women who knew year worked very well, as did the sub-plot of friend Vickie Martin, who believed the club where she worked would be immortalised by her some – such cruel irony. There was also a strong all-round cast, but Faye Castelow as Ruth Ellis was superb, making very believable act of someone apparently describes by her executioner as the bravest person he ever hanged. I am now used to high standards from Amanda Whittingdon, James Dacre and the new Vic, but it was the combination of these three that topped it all.

Jordan

It was easy for The Thrill of Love to explore what would make a women kill her cruel lover, but much harder to explore what would drive a mother to kill her blameless child. But that is the subject of Jordan, a solo play on the tragic tale of Shirley Jones. It’s a play that lays bare a reality that many people won’t consider – it is possible for someone to be depressed to the point that not only do they feel there’s no future in a life for themselves, they also feel there’s in the lives of those closet to them. Even someone convinced any child-killer is a monster would be hard pressed to come out of this play without seeing Shirley Jones for a tragic victim.

Moira Buffini originally wrote this play for herself*, but Stickleback Theatre couldn’t have followed in her footsteps better. Sian Weedon was a superb Shirley Jones, getting every aspect of her character down to a tee, from the rough and ready Shirley from Morecambe, to the broken woman after she does the terrible deed, to the fairytale story of Rumplestiltskin. The only pity was that, outside of the Edinburgh Fringe, where there is a niche for just about everything, this one seems to struggle to get an audience. And this play deserves a big audience. There’s few times I tell people to see a play for the good of society, but this is one of them: a valuable play that puts understanding and compassion ahead of knee-jerk judgementalism.

*: Technically this is co-written with Anna Reynolds, who shared a cell with Shirley Jones, but Buffini was the main creative force behind this.

Queens of the Coal Age: the last battle

This true story could have benefited from filling a few gaps, but the excellent staging makes the play an interesting insight into a lesser-known flank of the miners’ campaign.

1993, eight years after the defeat in the miners’ strike. Pit closures are continuing, and Parkside Colliery is next on the list. What hasn’t been tried to stop the closures? Anne Scargill, then husband of the famous/infamous Arthur, brings three women along for an occupation. A futile stunt perhaps, in hindsight – after all, if one of the most widespread industrial disputes couldn’t stop pit closures, what chance would this have? – but a gesture that has still been remembered twenty-five years on. It is this piece of mining history that Maxine Peake chose to write about, originally written for radio, now adapted for the stage at the New Vic.

Four female teachers* turn up for an educational tour of a coal mine. Two notable things about the tour guide: firstly, he’s mildly annoying; and secondly – a perhaps more gallingly – he’s apparently indifferent to the pit’s imminent closure, a far cry from a decade earlier. Luckily for them, his disinterest in pit politics means he doesn’t recognise one of the women as Anne Scargill. If he had, he would probably have twigged that they weren’t really teachers and that they were up to something. Another miner does and keeps schtum, but comes to light later.

Around the World with Little Voice

SKIP TO: Around the World in 80 Days, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice

Apologies to everyone who’s been waiting on reviews – I have been directing a play which just went insane with its workload, and I’ve had little time for anything else. But I’ve finally got this out of the way, and I’ve manage to upgrade  sanity level up from “gibbering wreck” to “slightly less gibbering wreck”. So now’s as good a time as any to catch up, in a sort-of chronological order.

So, in early July, I caught two plays in the round as part of a round trip involving the Buxton Fringe launch, a visit to a sister and a photo stop in the Pennines. Both were high-profile shows and both are revivals, so there’s little need for me to give either constructive advice or encourage people to come along, but here’s my verdicts nonetheless.

Around the World in 80 Days

Jules Verne’s famous circumnavigation-themed novel is a tough to to adapt faithfully. So detailed is the story that it’s next to impossible to capture the train-by-train-by-boat-by-train-by-elephant etc. epic in that level of detail. In fact, one of the biggest oddities is that some people consider the most accurate adaptation to be the 1980s children’s series Around the World with Willy Fogg. Even though all the characters are animals and they introduced extra characters such as the sneaky master of disguise wolf Transfer who tries and fails to sabotage the journey every episode, the 26-episode format meant the whole journey could be captured very faithfully. But this is theatre, where you have two and a bit hours, trains and boats on stage are not an option, and getting a lion to play Mr. Fogg is unworkable for several reasons.