Bit of Culture Reviewed

Over the last few weeks there has been a kind of culture binge going on in my life. Part of it came from the Shout Festival which was a 10 day LGBT+ festival in Birmingham. Over it I saw a few things but there were two stand out highlights for me. They were Deep in the Heart of Me, performed by Ali Child and Rosie Wakley of the Behind the Lines Theatre Company and Looking for John written and performed by Tony Timberlake.

The former was a play which on one level is about a middle aged woman coming to terms with an emerging sense of her own sexuality, and doing a bit of a Shirley Valentine (but meeting a woman). However, this beautifully performed piece of musical theatre is far more than this. There is a deep exploration of the feelings around the empty nest going on. Whilst the venue it played in was the back room of a pub, which was a bit too small for the production and the audience was disappointingly sparse there was a strong connection with the audience in this piece. It was a real pleasure to watch.

Both Deep in the Heart of Me and Looking for John made good use of background images to help set the scene and increase the drama. However, that is where the similarities end. Looking for John, which was in The Door (the smallest performance space at Birmingham Rep) was an intense piece of drama which explored the life of John Curry, by focusing on a fan who was seeking to use John’s biography to make sense of his own. Whilst there was laughter there was also real pathos.

Whilst I would highly recommend both my favourite was Deep in the Heart of Me because it was really fun.

Balanced against the performance was comedy has been art. The IKON has an interesting set of installations which are on for another week, until 27^th November. The current exhibitions include work from Žilvinas Kempinas who has been playing about with moon images and steel bearings to make some mesmerising pieces.

Sara Barker’s work has some interesting shape and colour and Philippine Hamman’s ergonomic furniture for those who don’t want to get up is fun.

If you get the chance to get to this exhibition I highly recommend it.

Whilst these events have all been in Birmingham I’ve also got down to London and had the chance to enjoy the Royal Academy’s Abstract Expressionism and  Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans. Now, I’ll be honest I went because I’m a Friend of the Royal Academy which means I’ve paid for the years exhibitions. It’s a short wander from where Two:23 meet and I find wandering round gallery’s a way I encounter God more than in a lot of churches. Thus, I go and enjoy the art before heading off for formal worship. These days where I spend time reflecting on art before joining friends for worship are a real chance for me to spiritually refuel.

I didn’t expect to enjoy the Abstract Expressionism, however, I was really drawn in and enjoyed it. The Jackson Pollock pieces were the ones which really engaged me through their beauty but I liked a lot of the others too. Now, I’m not for one minute pretending I understood any of the art in this exhibition but the scale and colour within a lot of it really did have something which made you think ok, there is something going on here I don’t understand but I like.

The Ensor exhibition mixed pictures which were quite pretty, especially his early work, with ones which were down right disturbing. There were two contrasting crucifixions in the exhibition. One was darker and more traditional, with the crowd around Christ apparently praying. The other was brighter and the loin cloth almost had the feeling of a tutu. There were faces in this one which could have been the crowd or could have been the beginning of the harrowing of hell and may have been spirits. The latter one both disturbed and challenged me yet it was the more beautiful of the two.

These exhibitions are on into the new year and I would recommend them. 

Abigail's Party, Stantonbury Theatre, Review

We’ve been to see The Play's The Thing Theatre Company’s production of Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party at the Stantonbury Theatre in Milton Keynes.

The play is set in the mid 1970’s in a lounge in suburbia. Beverly (played by Dawn Murphy) is hosting a dinner party for her new neighbours Tony (Liam Tims) and Angela (Heather Johnson) and established neighbour, divorcee Susan (Kerry Willison-Parry) whilst Susan’s teenage daughter Abigail is having a party down the road. The play illustrates that whilst the expectation may be that Abigail’s party will be the one in which those attending get out of control that in their own way the adults will also be breaking social expectations.

As with most of Leigh’s work this is a play which mixes satire and sharp social commentary with the darker side of life.

It was a very well acted production with a very strong cast. Initially I was worried that Murphy’s portrayal of Beverly was going to be almost a parody of Alison Steadman’s initial playing of the character as she imitated the voice which as younger person I was familiar with as being that belonging to Pam in Gavin and Stacy. However, it was the voice which belonged with the character and added to rather than detracted from the production. This was the voice of aspiration and the voice of the part of England which two years after this play is set was to put Thatcher into power.

Willison-Parry’s understated Susan was the strongest performance for me. Whilst in many ways being a background character there was a very strong stage presence from her.

Liam Tims might have seemed to have an easy part with the almost mono-syllabic Tony but it was clearly not the case. He acted it very well, using his body language and slouch to say far more than a more developed dialogue would have done.

Angela was convincingly played by Heather Johnson as was Laurence by Andy Watkins. They, as all the actors played the parts with the right amount of passion and humour without over playing their roles.

It was interesting to be transported back to the time of my youth when the décor and social norms were so different. In many ways it was a world away whilst also being so familiar to me. The results of the 1969 Divorce Act were still working their way through as the discussions of the empty shell marriages of their parents in Act One showed. The play also highlighted how there were different attitudes to domestic violence, which Karl who was too young to have known the 1970’s was shocked at. It is not that domestic violence does not exist now, rather it is thanks to the work of the feminist movement it is now far less accepted.

It was a play I was glad I had gone to see as I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was well produced and directed by Rosemary Hill, a leading arts figure in Milton Keynes, who founded The Play's The Thing Theatre Company in 2008 and she made sure it kept true to the spirit of the original play.

My one regret was that the audience enjoying this production was so small, the theatre being less than half filled. There were a small group in there in 70’s dress and with a Tupperware container full of cheese and pineapple on sticks going for the full retro experience but all, whether in costume or not, seemed to enjoy it. If you get the chance to book and go along and see this play which runs at Stantonbury Theatre until Saturday (when there is a matinee in addition to the evening performance) I would highly recommend it. This really is a fine production which is well worth the money.

Old Times, at Stantonbury Theatre, Review

Going to see The Play's The Thing Theatre Company production of Old Times by Harold Pinter at the Stantonbury Theatre in Milton Keynes last night was a thought provoking experience.

The story is set in a remote farmhouse, the first act in the lounge and the second in the bedroom. Anna (played by Beverley Longhurst) is an attractive and apparently sophisticated woman yet her speech appears to come from a bygone age. Anna unexpectedly visits the more homely Kate (Kathryn Worth) her old flatmate and Kate's husband Deeley (Alex Reece). As the play unfolds they reminisce about their experiences in London twenty years previously. However, as the evening moves on a dark web is woven revealing, as the programme synopsis put it, "a game of power and possession as memories unfold and are used as weapons of sinister manipulation".

The play which has some very amusing one liners in amongst the darkness ends but never fully concludes and you are left to come to your own conclusion as to what exactly you had seen and heard. Pinter, we discovered, is not for the lazy; it demands intellectual engagement and left Karl and I in deep conversation afterwards trying to figure it out.

It was a very well acted production with a strong cast. Beverley Longhurst stood out as having a particularly strong stage presence but one couldn't be sure how much of that was related to the character, particularly as Anna appeared to somewhat erotically flirt with Kate, and how much came from the actress herself.

For parts of the play the character of Kate is largely silent whilst she is being discussed by the other two and so the acting required relates largely to showing reaction through facial expression and body language. Kathryn Worth played the part wonderfully and was entirely believable as the middle-aged housewife.

Alex Reece played the part of Deeley very well but was never entirely convincing. Indeed in those places which consciously referred to the events being discussed being 20 years ago his presence was a distraction. The problem was not in his acting which was excellent, particularly towards the end of the play when he is required to sob, but rather in his casting. Reece simply looked too young and both Karl and I kept thinking but he would have been about 12 then, although a look at his biography online indicates he is of the right age for the part. It was just he looked far too young and fresh faced compared to the two women he was playing alongside.  

It was a play I was glad I had gone to see. It was well produced and directed by Rosemary Hill, a leading arts figure in Milton Keynes, who founded The Play's The Thing Theatre Company in 2008. Besides introducing me to Pinter's work which I enjoyed the challenge of it introduced me to a wonderful venue.

The Stantonbury Theatre is a modern well equipped building which is part of a wider community campus also containing a school, gallery, gym and church. Beyond Milton Keynes the venue itself would be described as an arts theatre being quite intimate and putting on relatively small scale professional performances, which seem to go between the educational (Shakespeare) and the challenging (Pinter). Now I have discovered this gem I look forward to seeing more work there.