By Gary Owen. New Ghosts Theatre Company. Director Lucy Clements. Flight Path Theatre, Marrickville, Nov 12 – 21, 2020 and online Nov 16 – 28.

Reviewed : 11 November, 2020

Meg Clarke doesn’t have to worry about social distancing in this performance. She’s the only one on the stage – for over 80 minutes. It’s a difficult script, word and emotion heavy, in which her character, Effie, talks the audience through a time she wants them to understand – acutely. Skilfully she draws them into her story, making them laugh at times, shocking them at others, seeking their empathy, but never letting them get too close. There’s a reason she’s got them together and she’ll draw them in until she’s ready to tell them why!

Welsh playwright Gary Owen has set the play in his hometown of Splott, a suburb in south Cardiff. In fact, Effie lives in the street where Owen himself used to live – and he makes the Splott of today an intricate part of her story. Gone are the old farms. Gone are the steelworks that provided employment for so many. Effie describes a suburb of high-rise flats, vacant shops, a burnt out bingo hall. Life obviously isn’t easy – and Owen’s short, pithy descriptions set a graphic scene.

As do the words he has given to Effie to introduce herself. She describes vivid vodka-fuelled nights, pain-filled three-day-long hangovers – often paid for with money she accepts from her seventy-year-old “Nan” who works shifts in the supermarket. Until something changes … and Owen leaves that to Effie to explain in a series of carefully interwoven scenes that lead to an unexpected conclusion.

Meg Clarke epitomises the Effie that Owen’s words suggest. She makes her brash, street-wise, but innately intelligent. She does it through her walk, her stance, a shrug of the shoulders, a graphic gesture. She does it in her voice, her carefully rehearsed Welsh accent that heightens her colourful language, her bitter experiences, her telling throwaway lines. Clarke uses carefully judged pauses to emphasise effect – to shock, or relieve, or to re-engage.

She, and director Lucy Clements, know Effie intimately. Together, it seems, they have deliberated over every phrase, every punctuation mark, every implication and every turn of direction of this intricate script. And Clements has used a minimalist set and judiciously defined blocking to accentuate its impact. Three stepped platforms take Effie to the highs and lows of her story. She crouches or leans against a wall to reflect – or walks close to the audience to make a point.

Lighting (Jack Saltmiras and James Smithers) subtly enhances her changes of mood. Chrysoulla Markoulli matches this with a sound design that emphasises the shadowy places Effie inhabits – though the opening sound effects were really unnecessarily long.

Clarke and Clements have developed a gripping production. Though long for a one-hander, the audience is kept absorbed – so much so that the final words of the play are certainly a surprise.

Clements says in her director’s notes that once staging a play in 2020 was again possible, she knew that she “needed a show that was strategic, powerful, current, and could be adapted as both an in-person and on-line experience”. Iphigenia in Splott is a perfect choice. Tickets for the on-line performance can be purchased at: https://events.humantix.com/iphigenia-in-splott.

Whilst the company has a QR code, and hand sanitising equipment, and mark their seating to provide social distancing, there is need to be careful of social distancing in the foyer. Fortunately on a fine night, patrons can wait outside until the auditorium is opened.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

Written and directed by Warwick Moss. Presented by the Rev Bill Crews Foundation. Ashfield Uniting Church – NSW. November 9 – 14, 2020.

Reviewed : November 11, 2020

The Rev Bill Crews has a reputation for feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, nurturing the vulnerable. He’s also always been an innovator – and COVID-19 has inspired yet another new idea. To accommodate more socially distanced space for services, he’s taken all the pews out of his “grand old church” in Ashfield and put in brand new carpet. But that’s not all. “It is also perfect for bringing the wider community together as an Arts and Performance Space,” he writes. And that’s what he’s done!

With its nave, aisles, transept and altar opened up, the church is a blank canvas for an imaginative director – and Bill’s old friend and biographer, Warwick Moss, had just the play. “When Warwick suggested The Silver Tunnel to launch the space, I was a little sceptical,” Crews says, “but when I read it, what a swashbuckling hoot. A play about suicide. Set in a graveyard, heaven and hell. Performed in a church! What could be better to launch our brand new performance space for Sydney’s west!”

With the audience sitting in the nave on properly ‘distanced’ swivel chairs, Moss directs this production using the altar and both sides of the transept. The stained glass windows of the apse are the backdrop and the arched vault provides perfect acoustics.

His play begins on an oppressive, stormy night in Sydney’s oldest graveyard. Here the caretaker, Harry, played by Ric Herbert, stands amidst seven weathered headstones, all suicides from the First Fleet. Harry has been tending these graves for 34 years. They are special to him. He knows their stories well. He talks to them – and they talk back:

What do ya think about that, Cap’n?

Are you still here?

Bloody want to be after two hundred years, eh?

Then there is Jason (Tim Matthews), a young man just out of school, but suffering from the rejection of the father who has ignored him all his life:

At first I used to run home on weekends; hoping that just once, he’d want to come to the park with me, or go to the cricket, or just sit around; talking.”

Jason is lonely, dejected, depressed and, sensing his destructive intent, the old spirits have called him to the graveyard. How will Harry react? Will he be of any help? Why is he no longer able hear the voices of these graveyard ‘friends’ he has watched over for so long? And how come Jason can?

Although The Silver Tunnel is a conversation about suicide, it’s a very different conversation. Years apart in age and background, Harry and Jason’s dark thoughts are exposed – and with the clever work of sound and lighting designer Sam Taba, Moss lets them see the glowing red prospects of ‘hell’, on one transept of the church, and the ecumenical possibilities of a brightly lit ‘heaven’ on the other.

Depends where ya from.

Got Hindus here; Buddhists, Bahais, Moslems….

Stacks of Catholics. Real tossed salad it is.

Communists; agnostics; atheists….The works.

Ric Herbert creates the character of Harry with convincing clarity. He’s a man who has seen much, suffered a lot. It’s there in his walk; in the way he holds one arm a little stiffly. It’s there in his quick temper; in his eyes that search the space around him, seeing beyond what is really there. His brusqueness only partly covers his vulnerability and sensitivity.

Matthews finds all the pain and anguish of desolate youth in his depiction of Jason. He is hesitant, easily offended – but he keeps coming back, drawn by the voices that give him some comfort and a little confidence.

Moss has given both actors the chance to bring their own interpretation to the characters he created, and directs them sparingly, allowing them to use the space effectively and reach across it to connect with each other … and the audience.

This production has proved a perfect vehicle to demonstrate the potential of this new space. Using three separate acting spaces, creative sound and lighting design, a different seating arrangement, it shows thee possibilities are boundless – like the imagination of Bill Crews himself. Harry could well be describing him in these lines from The Silver Tunnel:

Can you feel it boy?

Can you feel the power?

The wisdom. The lessons man has learnt?

There are plans to take the play on a regional tour – leaving the chance for another production to make use of this creative new performance space.

First published in Stage Whispers magazine

By William Shakespeare, Directed by Roslyn Hick; Technical Director Thomas G. Burt. Streamed Shakespeare www.streamedshakespeare.com August 21 – 23, 2020.

Reviewed : August 23, 2020

As Coronavirus struck Australia, closing theatres all around the country and in the process darkening the lives of all those involved in arts, actors, directors, creatives, technicians and administrators were suddenly out of work and facing an uncertain future. But hope and the possibilities of technology soon stirred creative minds, and a small wealth of theatrical ideas emerged.

One of these is Streamed Shakespeare, founded five months ago to give “performing arts professionals much needed opportunities in a suddenly dark world of cancelled contracts, dwindling savings and career chaos” (Artistic Director Holly Champion). By August they had become a group of one hundred creative artists in an online theatre company that reached beyond Australia. They are now creating fully rehearsed ticketed productions. The first of these, The Merchant of Venice, aired from 21-23 August.

A skilled production team, led by director Roslyn Hick and technical director Thomas G. Burt, take sixteen actors to a virtual contemporary Italy via the skilled video editing of David Castle. Incredible organisation is involved in such a production. Think “zoom” with a team of dedicated, patient actors and directors, backed by a “whizz bang” technical team, who are just as dedicated and patient.

The result is a very different form of ‘live’ theatre, playing to a much ‘distanced’ audience that watches Shylock and Antonio arrange their strange business deal across streamed screens in ‘home theatres’. The absurdity of their agreement is just as improbable. The racism it exposes – and unfortunately condones – is just as disturbing. Through careful direction and skilled editing, the cast take their audience into a world of business, family dysfunction, romance and prejudice that could sound a tiny bit familiar.

For actors, this new theatrical genre requires a re-adjustment of movement and expression. They need to be contained, restrained, yet still portray the varied emotions and reactions of the characters. They need to be constantly aware of proximity to the screen, lest features be distorted, and intentions lost. They need to appear to be listening to a fellow actor speaking in a totally different frame.

Geoff Sirmai, as Shylock, is very aware of all of this, and uses both his stage and film experience to good effect on this new small screen. Sirmai’s Shylock has a very “lean and hungry look”. I know, wrong play, but Sirmai finds both the wiriness and grasping determination needed by a man struggling to sustain his place in a bigoted, mercenary society, epitomised by businessmen such as the cool, unfazed Antonio played by Haki Pepo Olu Crisden, who is confident of risking a ‘pound of flesh’ bond for his needy friend Bassanio (Jamie Collette).

Collette uses the small space allowed by the screen effectively to create a character that listens carefully and reacts accordingly, whether supporting his benefactor – or courting his Paduan prize, the discerning Portia, played by Jess Loudon. Both react believably across their screens, Loudon more effectively in her restrained but entirely contained delivery of the courtroom scene.

Both Holly Champion (Nerissa) and Adriane White (Gratiano) skilfully pare their acting to infuse their characters with both emotion and humour. Shakespeare uses these two characters to bridge the social barriers, and both performers find the complexities written into the roles despite being contained to a small screen and restricted responses.

It being Shakespeare, there are many other characters – hence a great choice for involving more actors – and these are enthusiastically played by Jacqui Greenfield, Samantha Winsor, Jim Southwell, Chiara Charlotte Osborn, Kim Jones, Susan Jordan Meredith O’Reilly, Abdeed Razzouk and Jessie Trompp. All bring eager energy to their characters, some doubling and even tripling their roles.

It may take some a little while to adjust to this new genre – but innovation seems to be more important than ever if we are determined to combat the theatre-less effect of this pervasive virus – and the too apparent lack of sympathy or empathy with the arts. Fortunately, innovation and the arts have always gone hand in hand, and Streamed Shakespeare is as determined as Shylock, as innovative as Portia.

Keep in contact with what they are planning at www.streamedshakespeare.com

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

Kathryn Selby with violinist Harry Ward and cellist Timo-Veikko Valve. Celebrating Ludwig van Beethoven 250th birthday. Filmed at the Sydney’s City Recital Hall. Streaming from July 4, 2020.

Reviewed : July 4, 2020

Pianist Kathryn Selby’s second concert since lockdown was recorded in Sydney’s beautiful – but sadly empty – City Recital Hall. With violinist Harry Ward and cellist Timo-Veikko Valve she presents a special tribute to celebrate the 250^th birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven. The concert is “centred on Beethoven’s revolutionary ‘Ghost’ Piano Trio, bookended by his much-loved C minor Trio Opus 1, No. 3 and Beethoven’s own arrangement for piano trio of his spectacular Symphony No. 2”.

It is strange to watch the performers walk on to the stage without the applause with which they are usually greeted – and to see them complete their performances with the usual flourish, but without the customary bow and appreciative ovation. Despite this, they presented an intensively rehearsed and emotionally charged concert to delight their performance-starved audience who, via the clever work of the camera crew, were able to follow closely the concentration and muscular intensity required by Beethoven’s compositions.

Opus 1, No 3 begins softly, eerily moving into a jaunty lightness that becomes more complex, making the musicians work hard, fingers speeding, watching each other for changes in cue as the emotion builds. It’s almost a teasing composition, taunting both musicians and listeners with variations on the motif and the way they branch away and dart back. Changes in tempo and mood are reflected in the faces of the musicians as thy respond to the growing strength and power that is almost strident before unexpectedly returning to a gentle more reflective conclusion.

The Ghost Piano trio was composed when Beethoven was working on an opera based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth but his friend and pupil Carl Czerny felt that it reminded him more of the appearance of the ghost of the king in Hamlet. Thus, the origin of ‘The Ghost Trio’. It begins strongly, the strings and piano melding in fast tempos that change to lighter variations that seem to flit through the movements until they are sustained into controlled passages that evoke moodiness and unrest.

It must have seemed strange for Timo-Veikko Valve and Harry Ward to be performing Beethoven’s Piano Trio in D Major (an arrangement including every note of his spectacular Symphony No. 2 version condensed into a trio) when only a few months before they had played the symphony with a full orchestra on the same stage where, with Kathryn Selby, they now played to an empty auditorium. This time the violin and cello would play their parts, and in Valve’s words, Selby at the piano “would pick up all the parts of the orchestra”.

The composition is fast-paced and demanding in its changing tempo and emotions. The musicians reflect this in their faces. As the camera moves closer to them it is clear that their concentration is intense and enormous energy is required by the intricacy of the composition. It is an exciting piece that captures the imagination of the listener because of the changes in mood and pace that build evocatively through the movements.

At a difficult time for the arts, it is important that entrepreneurial artists such as Selby are able to find ways to keep sharing their art – and keep reminding audiences of the many artists that are “waiting in the wings” for a real rather than virtual audience, and a more lucrative living.

Carol Wimmer

www.selbyandfriends.com.au

First published in Stage Whispers magazine

Kathryn Selby, Andrew Haveron and Umberto de Clerici in concert. Streaming Online. Playing to ticketed customers from May 2 – 10, 2020.

Reviewed : May 2, 2020

As a reaction to the closing down of arts venues by the coronavirus, pianist Kathryn Selby took one of her ‘Selby and Friends’ concerts to the screen. With violinist Andrew Haveron and cellist Umberto de Clerici, she presented three of the most loved Piano Trios in a concert recorded after only two day’s rehearsal at Sydney Grammar School.

Despite the difficulties of complying with social distancing, very clever camera work follows the music sensitively, close up shots of the musicians revealing their expressive joy in the music and the sustained energy that the pieces demand.

“Reaching out through music has always given comfort and solace – and elevated the soul”, Selby said of her decision to record the concert. “Being able to bring Selby & Friends concerts to music lovers in the safety of their homes was a satisfying goal, worth striving for… and well worth the challenge of overcoming technical hurdles. I am grateful to our loyal subscribers and my colleagues and friends in the industry for helping make this new initiative come to life!”

This reviewer is not a musician – and though I could rely on research to augment my review, I decided to write about what I heard in the music and saw revealed by musicians more closely than on a concert stage. Hence, expect language that describes feelings rather than expertise! Thought stream reactions if you like, possibly stemming from being at home alone watching and listening, rather than being constrained by the proximity of a larger, closer audience.

Mozart’s Piano Trio No 3B flat major exhibits the quirky complications one expects of his work: contrasting tempos, changing inflections, challenging changes in mood. Slower and more romantic moments show the contrasts in the instruments, especially the deeper voice of the cello as it converses with the lighter voices of the violin and the piano.

The third movement is faster, seemingly more intricate than those before it, a delicate motif that somehow allows itself to become more substantive and suggestive, sometimes even a little strident.

Beethoven’s Piano Trio in E flat minor allows the instruments to blend yet exposes their different tones. At times the piano is soft and persuasive, at others emphatic. Lightness in the movements becomes more vibrant. The instruments echo each other, one leading the others into variations of the motifs that are underscored by the deeper voice of the cello.

In this piece particularly, the camera picked up the oneness of the musicians – with each other, and with the music. Close ups of the piano showed Selby’s delicate finger work, intricately delicate at one moment, restrained reaction and more atmospheric at others.

Dvorak’s Piano Trio No 4 in E minor’s shorter but poignant six movements show the different ‘faces’ of the composer and his close understanding and feeling for the instruments. In the first movement, a strong introduction by the cello invites a response from the violin. Together they invite the piano to join them in incredibly strong changes in tempo and mood. Later, in the third movement, the piano draws the strings into a range of emotive moments, gentle at times, more fluidly energetic at others.

At times in the fourth movement there are moments of almost complete silence and stillness, and in the fifth the instruments seem to whisper secrets that are picked up, embellished and retold. The final movement blends the tones of the previous movements but here the violin seems to declare the mood and changes in pace that are picked up willingly until the instruments merge in a final, uplifting series of notes.

If the language is a little flowery – and emotive – I don’t apologise! It reflects a reaction to the music – and to the inspiring work of the camera operators who helped bring Selby and Friends to us so uniquely in the artistic void that has been forced upon us.

www.selbyandfriends.com.au

First published oinStage Whispers magazine.

Music by Claude-Michel Schönberg. Lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer. Original French text byAlain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel. Additional Material by James Fenton. Adaptation by Trevor Nunn and John Caird. Packemin Productions. Riverside Theatre, Paramatta. February 14 – 29, 2020

Reviewed : February 14, 2020

This is a brilliant production! The standing ovation it received on opening night was thoroughly deserved. The direction is brilliant. The voices are superb. The action is dramatic. It is everything a production of Les Misérables should be – and what one expects of a Packemin production. The fact that the season is almost sold out is indicative of the esteem in which the company is held by its western Sydney audiences.

Victor Hugo’s story of the luckless Jean Valjean, condemned to hard labour for stealing bread for his sister’s starving family, and his journey from prison to redemption pursued by his nemesis, Javert, has been immortalised in this musical theatre drama. This production does it proud.

Lit by a high spot above the orchestra pit, musical director Peter Hayward leads his musicians in those first unforgettable notes of Claude-Michel Schönberg’s stirring introduction. The curtain rises on a hazy stage where ropes hanging from high above are pulled by the hapless prisoners below. Light diffuses through the haze as guards pace menacingly.

Luke Joslin directs the production with impeccable attention to the timing and pace set by the music – yet still manages to ensure the cast finds the complex dimensions of the characters that are evoked by the lyrics.

Daniel Belle brings Jean Valjean to life once again in a stunning performance that finds all the power of the music as well as the growth in strength and character of the man in the seventeen years over which the story occurs. From aggrieved prisoner he emerges as redeemed factory owner, caring adoptive father and forgiving opponent. His flawless performance of ‘Bring Him Home’ pulled every heart string. His duets, whether with Javert or Fantine or Cosette, demonstrate the experience and talent of this very popular Australian tenor.

Robert McDougall brings similar conviction and power to the role of Javert. He finds the unwavering conceit of the man in a compelling performance that leads to his confused reaction to Valjean’s mercy and the agonising notes of his final ‘Soliloquy’.

Fantine is played with pitying poignancy by Matilda Moran, and Georgia Burley brings hope and a little joy to the production in the role of Cosette. The wistful character of Eponine is played by Emma Mylott, whose understated performance finds the touching melancholy of the role.

Brenton Bell is Marius in his first performance with Packemin. He finds the complex emotions of this role – his love for Cosette, his brotherly affection for Eponine, his idealistic politics – in songs that move from gentle caring to rousing rebellion.

That rebellion is epitomised by Noah Rayner in an impressive depiction of Enjolras, the student who leads his followers to The Barricade. Raynor’s expressive face and contained sense of rage and injustice brings believable passion to this role.

The humour of Les Misérables is found in the characters of the ruthless, bawdy Thénardiers, the innkeepers who have ‘cared for’ Cosette. Alex Cape and Prudence Holloway give these characters the energy and oomph that lift the ‘spirit’ of the story whilst still depicting the seedy under-class of nineteenth century France, where poverty and greed thrived. They are particularly captivating as they celebrate surviving yet again in their song and dance routine to ‘Beggars at the Feast’.

These performers are supported by a very talented and committed ensemble who depict the many French characters that Hugo built into his novel. Valjean’s fellow prisoners who “look down” because they know “sweet Jesus doesn’t care”; his factory workers who know that “the end of the day” will bring no change; the low life of Montreuil-sur-Mer who torment Fantine in ‘Lovely Ladies’; and the people of Paris who ‘hear the people sing’. They are a formidable chorus who act just as effectively as they sing.

The whole production is a credit to producer Neil Gooding and the combined flair of Joslin, Haywood, associate director Courtney Cassar, choreographer Madison Lee and associate musical director Rachel Kelly. It is a rousing, yet emotive production that will echo in the memory of its audiences for more than ‘One Day More’.

There are still some seats in the circle and gallery left, but they too are selling fast!

Also published in Stage Whispers Magazine

By Robert Louis Stevenson, adapted by Noah Smith. Castle Hill Players. The Pavilion Theatre Castle Hill. Jan 31 – Feb 22, 2020

Reviewed : January 27, 2020

Robert Louis Stevenson’s macabre novella about a dual personality, one good, one evil, was first published in early 1886. A year later the first adaptation for the stage opened in Boston. Many adaptations have followed, both on stage and screen. This adaptation by American playwright Noah Smith is a chilling science fiction thriller that demands meticulous direction, precision acting and accurate, split-second sound and lighting operation.

Director Paul Sztelma’s production at the Pavilion achieves all three. The action is fast, exacting. The characters are strangely disturbing. The lighting and sound effects, created by Sean Churchward and Bernard Teuben, are menacing, sinister. Theatrical teamwork such as this relies on trust and dependability, consistency and confidence. The sort of collaboration one expects of professional theatre – and this production is probably as close to that as community theatre gets.

Sztelma sets the play along a tall, dark diagonal wall.  Small, high windows draped in cobwebs allow in eerie, angled light. Large wooden crates, three chairs, a laboratory bench are the only furnishings. The stage is gloomy, bathed in an eerie haze. Two doors become symbolic of Jekyll’s dual personality … and the places it leads him.

On this set, his cast move with rigorously rehearsed precision, their characters clearly delineated, their voices clear, their emotions tightly contained. The atmosphere they create is scarily surreal. Their ethereal faces emerge from shadows with an unnatural glow. Their costumes, designed by Annette van Roden, meld with the darkness of the set. They are immaculately of the period, but are sombre, a little dusty, almost ghostly.

Dimitri Armatus plays Jekyll – and Hyde – transforming on stage from one to the other in a series of contortions and cries that are alarmingly unnerving. As Jekyll he is social, amiable but sometimes a little remote, a little unbalanced. As Hyde he is just the opposite: scarily energetic, deranged, controlled by the evil that drives him. Sustaining two such disparate characters is a challenge that Armatas meets with strong, convincing realism, finding the very different dimensions of each clearly and believably.

Scene changes occur accompanied by ominous sound effects and rapid lighting cues. With a clunk as if from a huge camera shutter, the stage is plunged into momentary darkness. From the mist two gothic chorus characters emerge in shadowy light. Together, as saturnine narrators, they move the grisly tale along – and, in so doing, establish the necessary pace of the action.

Nicole Hardwood and Robert Snars work in perfect tandem in these roles – and many supporting roles, including the pernicious voices that whisper in Jekyll’s head. Whether working from opposite sides of the stage, with light jumping from one to another, or re-setting chairs as they take the audience to the next scene, they are in tune, biting cues fiercely, relating to each other as closely as if they themselves, like their master, are also two parts of a whole.

Jekyll’s trio of friends are played by Hamish Macdonald (Hastie Lanyon), Jonathan Burt (Gabriel Utterson) and Adam Garden (Richard Enfield). Though these characters represent learned respectability, each has flaws that come to light with the effects of Jekyll’s transformations. All three actors sustain the pace that the rising tension of the production demands – and their frailties reveal the ‘good and veil’ that Jekyll (and Stevenson) believed is intrinsically part of the human personality.

Faith Jessel is Cybel, a socially aware prostitute who is the symbol of Enfield’s failing, but is Hyde’s champion. Sassy, in lacy red knickers and black fishnet, Jessel finds the feistiness of the less ‘respectable’ aspects of Victorian society.

Enfield’s fiancée, Helen, is played by Vanessa Purnama, who depicts Helen’s growing confusion with the turmoil in which she has become involved.

Sztelma’s production is indicative of the creative talent that abounds outside the mainstream theatrical scene. Directors, actors, designers, operators who live their ‘other lives’ rehearsing, building sets, developing effects, to bring performances such as this to community theatres across the country.

Get to see this one! Take the new Metro line to Hills Showground – the theatre’s just up the road from the station and trains run late into the night.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine.

By Graham Linehan. Genesian Theatre, Sydney. Jan 18 – Feb 15, 2020

Reviewed : January 18, 2020

This play is an adaptation of a 1955 film of the same name where Alec Guinness starred as a bogus ‘Professor’ who led a gang of hardened criminals on a bank heist – and met a sad end in the home of Mrs Wilberforce, who had unwittingly rented them a room in her bomb-damaged house near a railway line.

Peter Capaldi was ‘Professor’ Marcus in the first production of the adaptation in London in 2011 – and Marty O’Neill returns to the Genesian Theatre to play that role in this black comedy about deception, a phoney string quintet, a parrot called Major Gordon … and a very long scarf.

O’Neill is joined by veteran actor Pamela Whalan as the elderly but astute Mrs Wilberforce – and Rod Stewart as a London Bobby. Stephen Doric, Doug Wiseman, Paul Rye and Barry Nielsen play O’Neill’s nefarious but very asinine partners-in-crime who, toting instrument cases, pretend to be members of a string quintet.

Setting this play, designer Grant Fraser has transformed the Genesian stage into an old, two storey London house suffering ‘subsidence’. On the second floor there is a hall to the bathroom, and a bedroom with a window overlooking a railway line. The living room downstairs has an exit to the kitchen, a stairway to the upper floor – and a cupboard deep enough to hide the ‘quintet’!

Obviously, the sight of five grown men crammed into that cupboard is a funny moment of the play – as is the concert the ‘quintet’ is compelled to play for Mrs Wilberforce’s friends. The humour continues through the second act – but to describe the cumulation of the antics of the robbers would give too much away. There are some running gags, a money-heavy double bass case … and the increasingly precarious very long scarf.

Walter Grkovic directs a busy production that has people coming and going, doors opening and closing, the criminals scheming and arguing, and the parrot squawking. The ‘concert’ scene, for example, has the five ‘musicians’, Mrs Wilberforce and her neighbours – played by Pauline Gardner, Eve Lichtnauer, Susan Carveth and Rod Stewart – crowded into the living room.

Marty O’Neill and Pamela Whelan bring an abundance of experience to this production. O’Neill creates a Professor Marcus who is smarmily smooth and controlling. He uses comedic timing, and his scarf, very effectively.

Whalan’s Mrs Wilberforce may appear to be a little dotty, but she is also a shrewd observer who is never actually taken in by Marcus’s blustering. She portrays Mrs Wilberforce as a post-depression, post-war stiff-upper-lip Englishwoman with convincing appeal.

Pace is always vital in a comedy, especially one that verges on farce, and as the cast becomes more relaxed in their roles, the pace of this production should ramp up making the events of the second act as funny as they could be.

Also published in Stage Whispers Magazine