Simon Russell Beale – “a joy from start to finish.”

Title:                         Privates On Parade

Author:                    Peter Nichols

Director:                  Michael Grandage

Theatre:                   Noel Coward Theatre, St Martin’s Lane

Major Players:        Simon Russell Beale, Joseph Timms, Angus Wright

Out Of Five?            4.5

First produced back in 1977, Privates On Parade makes a welcome return to the West End as the first production of Michael Grandage’s residency at the Noel Coward Theatre.  And it’s set the bar extremely high for the rest of the season.

Set in Malaya in 1946 when the British were fighting the Communist insurgency from China, Peter Nichols’ play with music follows the adventures and growing maturity of Private Flowers (Joseph Timms), a new recruit to a travelling entertainment group led by flamboyant Captain Terri Dennis (Simon Russell Beale).  Initially a wide eyed innocent, Flowers soon comes to learn that there is more to being a man than just wearing a soldier’s uniform.

It must have been strong stuff in its day.  The post-war period would have been within living memory for most, if not all, of the audience and the language from the very outset is what you would expect from its army setting.  Homosexuality had only been legalised for the over 21s some ten years before and being gay was socially unacceptable, so showing a concert troupe comprising mainly gay men – some overtly so, others not – would have been both challenging and brave in the late 70s.

Not so today – which is where the play shows its age.  But it does mean that the cast have the opportunity to delve deeper into the characters and move them away from being mere caricatures.  And it hasn’t lost its authenticity – it’s based on Nichols’ own experience in National Service – and, more interestingly, its relevance.

We learn through letters from the soldiers’ families that people at home aren’t too concerned about what’s happening in Malaya: it’s far away and they have bigger worries, like rationing and re-building the country after the war.  And despite today’s media bringing us closer to current conflicts, our home front is still primarily concerned with domestic issues.  Entertainment for the troops is still as important now as it was in the late 40s, although nowadays we send out big names like David Beckham and Katherine Jenkins to maintain morale.

Despite its more serious themes and some sinister undertones, courtesy of the two native servants who convey menace while hardly moving a facial muscle, Privates On Parade is still a hugely entertaining show.  The audience often doubles as the military audience watching the concert party who, if anything, are sometimes too good!  They sing well, dance elegantly and tell some truly cringe-worthy jokes.

The star turn is, without question, Simon Russell Beale as Terri Dennis, the leader of the concert party.  He is a joy from start to finish and his set pieces – he impersonates Marlene Dietrich, Vera Lynn, Carmen Miranda (all in drag, of course) and Noel Coward – are the highlights of the show.  He revels in the gorgeous costumes and is brilliantly funny.  And his Noel Coward is wonderfully accurate.  He’s as camp as a row of tents, milking all the double entendres for all they’re worth – but there is more to his character than that. He’s caring and understanding, firstly with new recruit Flowers and then his discarded girlfriend.

The other performance of note is Angus Wright as the Major, the nominal commanding officer.  He’s swallowed the propaganda manual whole, repeating it at every opportunity and, with no understanding of the men in his command, he is dangerously ignorant of the situation they are all in.  It’s a well-judged performance, with elements of both Blackadder Goes Forth and more than a hint of John Cleese in his one and only dance routine.

And, while I could have wished for more of a Brummie accent from Corporal Len Bonney (John Marquez) who’s impoverished origins in Smethwick were frequently mentioned, the rest of the troupe all turned in good performances.

In case you’re wondering, Privates On Parade was preceded by It Ain’t ‘Alf Hot Mum which was, by comparison, a much softer version of much the same story.  It’s easy enough to find the TV series on DVD, but revivals of Peter Nichols’ play are much harder to come by, so grab the chance while you can.

This review is now available to download as a podcast at http://www.cyberears.com/index.php/Show/audio/5984

There’s plenty of light-hearted campiness going on (had Mrs Slocombe’s pussy found itself on the set, it would have felt right at home). But the first in Michael Grandage’s season of five plays at the Noel Coward Theatre also features strong language (a lot) and nudity (a little – though that’s no reflection on the size of the actors’, ahem, parts).

We join the action along with Private Steven Flowers, a young man as green as his name suggests. He’s been sent to mingle with the members of a morale-building song and dance unit in South East Asia during the Malaysian campaign at the end of the Second World War.

He rubs along nicely with the performers – who, for the most part, prove to be a gay bunch – and soon falls in love with beautiful Welsh-Indian singer and dancer Sylvia Morgan. But it’s not all fun and games. When unpleasant Sergeant-Major Drummond goes on the attack and idealistic Major Flack moves them closer to the front line, Flowers and co find themselves in real danger.

Privates is very much Simon Russell Beale’s show – it was really only John Marquez, as the bluff corporal who could fill a swearbox single-handedly, who stood out among the supporting cast.

As cross-dressing Captain Terri Dennis, Russell Beale’s comic timing is impeccable (even if you can’t apply the same adjective to his backside in an eye-wateringly tight thong). But he also brings depth and sensitivity to the role, as he reminisces about his lost love, who was killed in action, and helps Sylvia find her way out of a terrible predicament.

The show did occasionally lack verve the night I saw it. Davina Perera, on in place of Sophiya Haque (who has since passed away), acquitted herself well, but Christopher Leveaux, covering the role of Flowers, was less sure-footed, at times fluffing lines and seeming unsure of what was happening next.

The subject matter and, more especially, the language in Peter Nichols’ 70s-penned, 40s-set play occasionally made for uncomfortable viewing. The modern audience was audibly uneasy about the racial epithets thrown at Sylvia, Lee and Cheng.

However – without giving too much away – the worst offender gets his comeuppance, while Lee and Cheng are shown to triumph in the end.

If you can set aside the unreconstructed dialogue as a product of the play’s time and setting, there is plenty to enjoy about Privates on Parade. The interplay between the lads rings true and it’s nice to see Simon Russell Beale taking a break again from Shakespearean roles to have some fun. It’s infectious.

‘Privates on Parade’ is the first in a season of plays to be staged by Michael Grandage at the Noel Coward Theatre.  Written by Peter Nichols against the backdrop of the Malayan emergency of 1948 and first performed in 1977, it does not seem the most obvious choice of play.  We were therefore quite surprised to learn that this is a revival of a production first put on at the Donmar Warehouse over ten years ago.  So, is this play still fresh, and does it still have something to say?

In many ways the play’s strengths are also its weaknesses.  The scenario is now a very familiar one – a concert party headed up by the outrageously camp Captain Terri Dennis, the stupidity of the British abroad, and the insanity of empire.  These themes are instantly recognisable and ripe for satire, but they also require the play to work hard to say something new or amusing about them.  This is not a subtle or sophisticated piece, and we can imagine that in the seventies, this distinctly unsanitised version of events would have been very fresh indeed, like its language and sexual shenanigans.  Thirty-five years on, however, there is a feeling that the shock value doesn’t quite go far enough, or at least misses the mark.  There is something missing, and whether that it is the context of historical events or something intrinsic to the play is hard to tell.  Peter Nichols served in the Combined Services Entertainment with Stanley Baxter and Kenneth Williams just after the war in Singapore, and the play is based on real events and characters, so this is clearly a subject he knows about, but is it just a memoir, or something more?

This is not to say that the play is not entertaining.  It is full of humourous moments, and Simon Russell Beale delivers a stand-out performance as Terri Dennis.  He is going down a very well-trodden path indeed.  Shades of every camp cliché in the book are present, from Quentin Crisp to Larry Grayson to Alan Carr.  But in Simon Russell Beale’s hands these mannerisms and quips are truly delightful.  With a perfectly judged performance, he never holds back from a limp-wristed gesture or a mincing walk, but he does it with a warmth and humanity, and comic timing that makes his character completely genuine and three-dimensional.  Overall, the cast deliver good performances and do justice to the humour, although sometimes we found the characters difficult to tell apart.  One of our favourite moments was the use of the swear-box, brought out as a deterrent to help the soldiers adjust to life on civvy street - one of the characters cannot help himself, and having lost almost all his change in a foul-mouthed tirade, ends up by slowly tossing the rest of his coins silently into the box.  The satire on British Army life, particularly the hierarchy of the army is still sharp, and the transformation of the army drill into the song and dance number ‘Privates on Parade’ is still very funny, with its corny double-entendres and Captain Dennis’s insistence on ‘customising’ his uniform with extra short shorts and diamonte army stripes.  The musical numbers help to heighten the satire of the situation and are wittily handled.

Ultimately though, we cannot help feeling that this play does not quite speak to us.  Too radical to be a ‘museum piece’ of the seventies, and yet not quite radical enough.  If Nichols were writing this piece today, it would rightly raise concerns about the apparently uncritical depiction of sexism, racism and homophobia (although the homosexuals probably get the kindest treatment).  Which brings us on to another problem which has been raised about this play – the two silent indeterminately East Asian characters whose sole contribution to the play appears to be to serve the British characters and change the scenery.  Amanda Rogers, who has also written about the recent controversy surrounding the casting of the RSC’s ‘Orphan of Zhao’, took the bold step of writing to Michael Grandage about these characters when she heard the play was going to be performed.  Clearly, Grandage has made an effort to address this problem by giving us a sense that they are part of a bigger plan – he has them play cards over the coffin of one of the British soldiers before the interval when everyone else has gone, and at the end they are transformed into business-suited Malaysians, shaking hands in front of a backdrop of a modern city (Kuala Lumpur we presume?).  We are not sure this really solves the problem, and if anything it reinforces another stereotype, of the wily and inscrutable oriental.  And there is another cruel irony in this ‘celebration’ of modern Malaysia if you consider their current attitude to homosexuality.

Perhaps it is for another playwright to redress the imbalance in casting in the UK when it comes to ethnicity and gender, and to tell the other side of the story, but at the end of the day, a director also has choices to make about his material and we have to ask ourselves why Grandage chose this particular play – twice.

But the big differences in Peter Nichols‘ 1977 Privates on Parade are that (a) camp Captain Terri Dennis’ character is a key and sympathetic central character and (b) he’s utterly, genuinely hilarious. Unlike those other shows the audience are laughing with him and not at him. Well, OK then, we do laugh at him too, but for all the right reasons.

It will come as little surprise to hear that the Whingers have fond memories of their own splendidly striking individual Privates. Phil saw Denis Quilley’s original portrayal of Terri and Andrew saw Roger Allam’s jaw-droppingly magnificent ocean liner of a portrayal in Michael Grandage‘s 2001 revival at the Donar. We can report that both were brilliant performances. And as theatrical bonuses, the former also featured Nigel Hawthorne, the latter a young James McAvoy.

Grandage is directing it again in the first production of his much-trumpeted season at the Noel Coward Theatre. The star attraction waxing his body parts to lead an overseas British military concert party is Mr Simon Russell Beale.

The troupe are entertaining the troops fighting communist insurgents in Malaysia in the late 40s. How entertaining they are to the British lads fighting overseas it is difficult to tell. They certainly entertained us. SRB is the USP here and his ludicrous impersonations of Marlene Dietrich, Vera Lynn and Carmen Miranda are a joy. Surely someone will have the sense to cast him as a pantomime dame very soon. But despite the generous flouncing there’s also incredible subtlety. His Noel Coward transformation gets laughs with a look and the touch of his ear. One hopes he’s enjoying it as much as we are. He certainly appears to be having a ball even if his character is less successful pulling the privates.

It’s a wonder any other performer gets a look in but the rest of the cast are excellent too. Angus Wright‘s Major Flack is superbly gruff and upright, the broom handle which was presumably inserted into his uniform must be as uncomfortable as Beale’s Cuban heels. And new recruit to the troop Joseph Timms‘ Private Flowers’ initial naivety is as convincing as when he cottons on and seizes the opportunities on offer to become an ex-virgin soldier.

Under Christopher Oram‘s crumbling stone colonial buildings, which also doubles as a second proscenium (a second proscenium! We were being horribly indulged) casual racism and homophobia of the period mixes with soldierly camaraderie, romance, lust and violence. Paule Constable’s lighting is so believably tropical you can almost feel the humidity. Though thankfully, unlike here, there was no parading of the Whingers’ own privates to cool their prickly heat.

Denis King‘s music to Nichol’s lyrics are believable pastiches of the era. And to cap it all there is a real rain storm though sensibly not when any of Richard Mawbey’s glorious wigs are being aired.

The only fly in the ointment really is the uncomfortable stereotype of the inscrutable-but-probably-menacing orientals which a “last laugh” directorial twist to the ending fails utterly to redeem.

Still, this is solid, old-fashioned, mostly hugely enjoyable fare. Highly recommended.

Rating

It’s an autobiographical piece set just after the second world war in a forces entertainment troupe in South East Asia. The rag-bag of performers is led by as-camp-as-they-come (Acting Captain!) Terri Dennis. We see them rehearse and perform, plus backstage relationships, banter and abuse. There are two mute locals whose sinister demeanor tell you they are more than servants to these extraordinary masters.

If you’ve got a decent seat it works well, though not quite as good, in a bigger space – though it has aged a bit and seemed a little overlong this time. It’s a fascinating period and situation though with all sorts of issues explored and the music is completely at home given the context.

The chief reason for seeing it is a superb cast and chief amongst those is Simon Russell Beale with yet another career high. He has the uncanny capacity to act with every part of his body, striking poses that bring the house down, breaking into facial expressions that have you laughing out loud. Angus Wright is perfectly cast as the pompous Major, as is Mark Lewis Jones as the somewhat unsympathetic Sergeant Major, and John Marquez is great as the unlikely Corporal. Joseph Timms, Sam Swainsbury, Harry Hepple and Brodie Ross make a great quartet of singing & dancing soldiers. 

Designer Christopher Oram appears to have re-cycled and roughed up his design for Evita, but it works well as the frame for various South East Asian locations. Grandage’s staging is as always impeccable and there’s a fine band under Jae Alexander hiding in the upper tier on the right.

If you’ve seen the play before, go again to see a fine cast. If you haven’t, go to see a highly original play by one of Britain’s most underrated playwrights. Whatever, you have to go to see Simon Russell Beale at the height of his powers – again!

Privates on Parade is the first in a season of five plays at the Noël Coward Theatre, where the newly-formed Michael Grandage company – headed by the ex-artistic director of the Donmar – has set up camp. It is a rather starry line-up, which includes Jude Law and Judi Dench. Getting the season off to a cracking start, Simon Russell Beale plays the witty, warm-hearted drag queen, Acting Captain Terri Dennis, in this classic play by Peter Nichols.

If the thought of men dressed as women spouting innuendo doesn’t grab you, don’t worry. There is nothing flippant or glib about Nichols’ script, which negotiates the sensitive territory of his subject well, avoiding the likely pitfalls of wartime comedies by balancing humour with real insight. When a young British private, fresh from school, turns up at a British barracks in Malaysia, he finds not the model of orderliness and discipline he expected, but the chaos of an acting troupe, where homosexuality is not just accepted, but flaunted. This is the late 1940s but, unlike back in Blighty, here in the Song and Dance Unit South East Asia it’s possible to wear dresses, call each other by girls’ names and just generally experiment.

Russell Beale drives the story as “aunty”, whose dirty, acerbic punning never lets up. He brings warmth and depth of feeling to a character that could easily be reduced to a few comic turns – not that any of the humour of Nichols’ very funny script and lyrics is lost however. Songs are well integrated into the play, and Denis King’s original music, together with some believably naff choreography, brings the period alive. The light entertainment, stage within a stage, aspect of Privates on Parade informs the surrounding plot, with lyrics such as “Can you please inform us how we came to lose the war that we won in 1945?” getting to the heart of the piece. Some believable relationships emerge between the men too, while Sophiya Haque is charming as Sylvia, the only woman in the show.

Only the straight-laced Major Giles Flack (Angus Wright) is apparently oblivious to the all goings on right under his nose, even when he smells perfume on one of his soldiers. But comic scenes like this have more than one shade of dark undertone. Not only is the Major’s obliviousness a reminder of the non-permissive attitudes awaiting the men back home, it also underlines the unwillingness on the parts of the British commanders to see what stares them in the face: not just a bit of camp ribaldry but an escalating guerrilla war with the Malayan communists. Grandage’s direction brings every nuance of the play out superbly.

Personally if I was in the business of naming West End theatres I’d have one called after Peter Nichols – one of the greatest playwrights living today, in my personal opinion.

Peter Nichols (Evening Standard)

His best known show, Privates on Parade, is back again. It’s never been my favourite Nichols play – a tad too much campery for me – but it’s still a lot of fun. It is memorable mostly for its ‘panto dame’: first it was Dennis Quilley, then Roger Allam and now Simon (cannot-put-a-foot-wrong) Russell (from-Timon-to-panto-dame-in-the-flick-of-an-eye) Beale. Personally (yet again) while SRB’s performance is obviously faultless and he puts his musical numbers over as if he’s been doing it all his life, I think it’s a shame the camper-than-a-row-of-tents Captain Terri Dennis tends to overshadow the other characters, and in particular the barking-mad, teetotal, God-fearing, Empire-loving Major, played unforgettably by Nigel Hawthorne in the original RSC, 1977 production and hilariously by Malcolm Sinclair at the Donmar in 2001 (also directed, as here, by Michael Grandage).

Roger Allam, Donmar 2001 (tumblr.com)

Dennis Quilley, RSC 1977 (guardian)

What Nichols is particularly good at is telling a serious story – whether it’s about a family coping with a badly disabled child (A Day in the Death of Joe Egg), the trials of growing-up with an impossible father (Forget-me-not Lane), life and death on the NHS (National Health) or the dying days of Empire (Privates on Parade) – always with a bit of vaudeville thrown in. And even the most tricky characters – the father in Forget-me-not-Lane or the Major in Privates – are drawn with humour, affection and compassion.

“They’ve partly rewritten it!” I boldly announced to my companion at the Noel Coward theatre on Saturday night. “Updated the swear words and changed ‘queer’ to ‘gay’.” But I was wrong. I didn’t think the ‘c’ word would have been acceptable in 1977 but there it is in the original script. What is more surprising is the ‘g’ word because I swear that didn’t come in till the seventies at the earliest. I first encountered homosexuality when I first entered the theatre – which was a while ago now but nothing like as long ago as 1948, when Privates is set – and my fellow actors were either called ‘queer’ or ‘camp’ (which means something slightly different now but we knew what we meant then) but never ever ‘gay’.

Still none of this matters except to see Peter Nichols back in the West End. Along with SRB as well of course.

SRB in Privates on Parade (officiallondontheatre)

*******

On the other hand I couldn’t make head nor tail of the Royal Court’s latest, In the Republic of Happiness. It starts out conventionally enough: a family Christmas, three generations, granddaughter pregnant, father partly deaf, grandfather partly delusional, and then along comes Uncle Bob to verbally abuse them systematically one by one on behalf of his girlfriend, who then appears in a sack before metamorphosing into a shiny green frock. I had thought we might be in An Inspector Calls territory, but in the next scene there they all are lined up in the semi-circle as if at a conference, spouting abstracts, and they remain there more or less – with a few breaks for some songs – till the final scene, which takes place in a white box that appears by magic through the floor of the stage.

Confused? Totally. I wait to see what the critics make of it.

Simon Russell Beale in Peter Nichols’ hilarious Privates on Parade, directed by Michael Grandage (opens December 2012).

~

Helen Mirren as the Queen in The Audience, written by Peter Morgan, with Paul (Curious Incident) Ritter as John Major, Robert Hardy as Churchill and Haydn Gwynn as Thatcher (the play obviously covers a considerable period – Blair and Brown have yet to be cast), directed by Stephen Daldry.

~

The transfer of The Curious Incident, which means the National Theatre will have three shows in the West End, which will help the subsidised coffers no end. (War Horse has reputedly already earned the NT £9m).

]]> http://winningreview.co.uk/2012/06/16/jude-law-as-henry-v-november-2013/ Sat, 16 Jun 2012 08:23:19 +0000 laurawinningham http://winningreview.co.uk/2012/06/16/jude-law-as-henry-v-november-2013/ A long way off but……

I was fortunate to see Jude Law as a brilliant Hamlet at the Donmar last year and just booked tickets to see him many months out.  I did, however, book Hamlet at least a year in advance and it was worth it.

The show is part of a five-play season by Michael Grandage (previously at the Donmar) which also features Judi Dench opposite Ben Whishaw in a new play, David Walliams as Bottom opposite Sheridan Smith’s Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Simon Russell Beale as a cross-dressing army captain in Peter Nichols’s Privates on Parade. The lineup is completed by Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan, starring Daniel Radcliffe.

Grandage’s new model has more expensive seats subsidizing £10 seats in prime areas of the theatre.   I was eager to book a couple of the shows and didn’t see the availability yet of the £10 tickets.  You might choose to wait–but i’m not sure when they will be for sale or how quickly they will sell..  Since the tickets just went on sale, excellent seats are available.

Tickets

So, what does this all mean? Well, my multilinguistically challenged friends, it means that issue 4 of Señor Walkway, the online literary magazine presided over by Sierra Simmons and Seth Blake (one of whom is a fellow CalArtian), as well as the unflappable Seigneur Pedestrian Passage himself, is officially in existence. But who or what is Señor Walkway?

As it turns out, it has more to do with Robot Monsters than sharply dressed men with hats and fancy moustaches (and all the other accoutrements of your modern footbridge, stile, or promenade).

On the subject of translation, there’s a story of mine in the new issue, “Concerning the Unmapped Territories of the Utrecht Region,” my faltering translation of the previously unpublished journals of Dutch naturalist Jacobus ten Broeck, erstwhile naturalist, cartographer, and entrepreneur, once considered permanently lost following ten Broeck’s doomed expedition up one of the tributaries feeding the river Amstel.

A direct link to the story is here.

Once you’re finished with the story, don’t forget to read the rest of the issue. There’s work in there from Adria Bregani, Peter Nichols, and Mike Molitch-Hou, who are all people who I know. Oh yeah, and Het Begroet Aantal Manier van M. Vier.

Phil scraped a pass in his School Certificate exam which just about enabled him to cope with the basic French in The Railway Children. But Aspects of Love left both Whingers scratching their heads with entire scenes lost in translation.

If this really is the emerging theatrical trend of vingt-dix perhaps audiences should enrol in the titular Lingua Franca language school of Peter Nichols‘s new play which offers plenty of French, German and la bella lingua to get one’s tongue around. As long as one only wants to know how to say knife, fork and spoon.

Another reason for dropping in to see the school in action before it closes on 7th August is the disproportionately (to the size of the Finborough Theatre)  starry cast. Chris New! Rula Lenska! Why can’t all fringe theatre be comme ça?

They are all teachers in a rather motley Florentine language school in the 1950s where effective teaching is discouraged on the grounds that the slower the students learn, the more lessons they will have to buy.

When they’re not teaching they’re in the staff room sharing their political thoughts, somewhat heavy handedly, on post-war Europe or even more clumsily trying to cop off with each other. Oh, yes, it’s not just the languages they’re getting their tongues around.

They form a real smörgåsbord of cultural stereotypes – the English spinster, the masculine Australian sheila, the wife-cheating Italian, the anti-semitic German and the aristocratic Russian exile.

At the centre of it all is newcomer Stephen Flowers (the autobiographical hero of Nichols’ Privates On Parade) played by Chris New (Prick Up Your Ears, Bent) who is very good but why he insists on wearing cord trews in Florence – let alone in the appropriately sweltering Finborough auditorium – is anyone’s guess.

In a way, the play is quite old fashioned (that’s A Good Thing, obviously) but behind Flowers’ charm lies a cold-hearted ruthlessness which drives the play towards its surprisingly melodramatic – almost Grand Guignol ending which again is A Good Thing, although presumably a bit de trop for some tastes.

Rula Lenska‘s Irena Brentano – resplendent in a turban exactly resembling the one which the Whingers like to imagine Ms Lenska wears chez elle – is very effective although her accent seemed – to our untutored ears – to take a Cook’s tour of Eastern Europe; it was a Tuesday, it must have been Belarus.

There are plenty of other treats: Andrew turned a complete volte face vis a vis Charlotte Randle who previously had the misfortune to be in Love The Sinner but her performance here as the slightly autistic love-starved spinster no doubt struck a chord with Andrew. Ian Gelder (Max in The Sound of Music) convinces entirely as the senior aesthete, Abigail McKern‘s bluff Aussie is a treat and Natalie Walter is quite chilling as the German siren and Enzo Cilenti is so assured as the manager of the school that one really might think he were actually Italian although it turns out he was born in Bradford (albeit to Italian parents).

Director Michael Gieleta keeps it all nicely balanced and even if the play is a bit odd – Flowers’ journey from ingénue to villain leaves the audience a bit high and dry – the people and their performances do make this worth taking in.

But try and wait for a cold day. The heat was so intense that even Andrew was persuaded to part with some money for the Finborough’s air conditioning fund. If anyone has the other £9990.86 the Finborough needs, please write a cheque and send it to Neil McPherson pronto.

Rating

Set in a language school on post-war Florence, it explores the lives of its Italian administrator and expatriate teachers; the students are just off-stage voices. The central character is new boy Steven (passionately played by Chris New) who may be autobiographical (in which case Nichols has written himself as a bit of a shit!). He is stalked by infatuated Peggy (Charlotte Randle no less) but beds holocaust-denying Heidi (well-played by Natalie Walter) who had the attentions of administrator Gennaro (an excellent performance from Enzo Cilenti, whose name suggests he’s well qualified to play it!) before an anti-semitic rant. Add to the cocktail Abigail McKern’s terrifically plain speaking Aussie, Ian Gelder’s very English Italophile (who makes no compromises for living in Italy) and Rula Lenska, perfectly cast as an elegant smokey-voiced Russian, and you have a fascinating cast of characters.

The play is an interesting look at sensibilities in post-war Europe, but the narrative doesn’t  really live up to the excellent characterisation. The dramatic flow is damaged by a profusion of very short scenes and monologues and the play doesn’t really go anywhere, though it’s an interesting slice-of-life set in a period few have dramatised. Designer James Macnamara has worked wonders with  four shutters and some projections and director Michael Gieleta uses the tiny space well, with a ‘sound scape’ for the city and the students.

Still, I’d rather be in the sweaty Finborough watching a cast any West End producer would be proud of put on a play that’s better than any new play the National have done recently whilst they (and the Donmar) are pre-occupied with pointless revivals of 19th century German mediocrity. On this form, I think I’m inclined to side with Mr Nichols.

This production is directed by Michael Gieleta, designed by James Macnamara,with Lighting Design by James Smith, and produced by the Cherub Company.

I am delighted to have been Assistant Sound Designer on this production. It is not to be missed!!

Privates on Parade is written by Peter Nichols and published but Faber paperbacks in 1977.

By Peter Nichols

Reviewed by Larry Mishkar

The richly historic narrative Final Voyage explores the people, places, and outcomes leading to a fateful day in 1871 when 1,219 men, women, and children were stranded after arctic sea ice crushed their whaling boats off the northern coast of Alaska. While no lives were lost, the destruction of so many specially equipped boats and valuable cargoes was a harbinger of the coming demise of the U.S. whaling industry.

In his book, author, creative writing teacher, and yachtsman Peter Nichols goes deep into America’s first oil industry: whaling.  During the 19^th century, clannish Quaker power brokers controlled this industry from the world’s wealthiest town and the center of the American whaling industry, New Bedford, Massachusetts. Nichols says New Bedford was the Saudi Arabia of its day, a bustling port along Buzzards Bay that smelled of boiling blubber. Whale was king.

Seaweed covered whale oil barrels at Parker's Wharf, New Bedford. Courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum (2000.100.441.72; no date). http://www.whalingmuseum.org/

From the beginning, the book’s chapters weave two stories: one about the rapidly expanding New Bedford whaling industry and the other about an unfolding catastrophic scene at Point Barrow, Alaska, thousands of miles away. Each story builds until it ends in utter failure.

With his bold statement “The Industrial Revolution was greased by whale oil,” Nichols explains how whaling enlivened the economies of both England and the newly established New World, as the Industrial Revolution moved from the English countryside cottage industry into cities packed with enormous factories and thousands of workers, many of whom were recent arrivals from the same countryside. Steam from coal-fired boilers powered the machines that included forges and spinning mills. These machines needed lubrication and whale oil from the New World fit the bill. Back in New Bedford, Quakers made fantastic fortunes as boat owners and company managers, and in some instances, as owners of factories that converted whale oil into candles or illuminant for lamps.

The New Bedford whaling industry reached its peak by 1857. Approximately 10,000 men were employed by New Bedford’s fleet of 329 whaling boats. But the status quo enjoyed by captains, sailors and New Bedford businessmen alike was about to change.

For the Quakers, it was the discovery of oil coming from nearby Pennsylvania in 1859 that changed entrenched customs. Almost overnight, this new raw material pumped from the ground made a brand new wealthy class. “Black gold” was easier to acquire and easier to transport than whale oil, the latter of which required long, slow sailings by men who were now chasing fewer and fewer whales into more dangerous waters.

The decline of the whale population meant taking new risks in order to fulfill the longstanding demands of whaling: no return until the boat could hold no more. Chasing this declining resource took on a fevered pitch, perhaps despite what the whalers’ skills and intuition told them otherwise. Thus, in arctic waters in 1871, dozens of experienced captains and their crews decided to take advantage of the Coriolis effect – the earth’s spin in the Northern Hemisphere that moves sea ice thirty degrees clockwise to the wind direction. The northeasterlies moved the sea ice west, opening a large channel between the pack ice and the shoreline, allowing whaling crews access to waters rich with feeding whales.

But then the wind changed direction. The pack ice closed in around the boats, trapping the whalers between moving pack ice and the shallow waters of the Alaskan coast.

Even while their boats remained iced in, wrecked, or even grounded, the whale hunt continued as small boats pursued whales that were also trapped by the ice. Some captains bought salvage rights to the wrecked boats, hoping to later sell whatever they gleaned at rock-bottom prices.

Luckily, a few whaleboats remained outside the pack ice. Using muscle and might and the small whale chasing boats, the crews and family members sailed and rowed toward this refuge and were saved. 

Bark Lagoda at a New Bedford wharf. Lagoda, trapped in the sea ice off Point Barrow, was able to free itself and rescue many of the stranded whalers and their families. Courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum (2000.100.789; no date). http://www.whalingmuseum.org/

Nichols briefly covers other aspects of whaling, such as the life of a captain’s wife and family aboard a whaling boat, and the way the Yankees sunk whale boats at the entrances to Confederate harbors at Savannah and Charleston in unsuccessful attempts to block its Navies. In fact, the first whaling boat launched from New Bedford in 1767, the “Dartmouth,” was one of the ships later involved in the Boston Tea Party.

Much like the excellent adventure it tells, this well-written book ends with the decline of the whale oil industry and its powerful families. For thousands of out-of-work whalers in the last quarter of the 19^th century, the new industry in New Bedford was weaving, and ex-whalers now managed thousands of spindles in the newly constructed mills. These machines produced cloth needed by factory workers involved in America’s Industrial Revolution. But the Pennsylvania oil fields and not whales provided the lubricants for these new machines.

For our history-hungry readers, a previously published field notes story covering a recent NSF-funded study  of the 32 sunken whaling boats off of Point Barrow allows us to observe a working archaeologist in search of artifacts without the benefit of historic documentation. After pairing Nichol’s book with the archaeological research, a fairly complete picture begins to emerge of an entangled and provocative chapter in American history. This is indeed a rare and wonderful thing.  

Nichols, Peter. 2009. Final Voyage: A Story of Arctic Disaster and One Fateful Whaling Season. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

If you’re not in the neighborhood but you want to go, the New Bedford Whaling Museum has a lively Web site with extensive digital offerings.  At least two current on-line exhibits feature the connection between this New England community and the Arctic. Visit William Bradford: Sailing Ships & Arctic Seas to admire this 19th-century master’s paintings.  Check out Portraits of Ports, a distance-learning exhibit that features Barrow, Alaska, and New Bedford as it interprets American whaling history.

Larry Mishkar works as an archaeologist, photographer, and writer. He is an avid reader and international news junkie who loves a good adventure. This winter finds him preparing for a summer trek across Iceland.

By Peter Nichols

Directed by Stephen Unwin

Venue: Rose Theatre, Kingston

Date: Thursday 9th October 2008

The first half of this play seemed to be by Orton out of Beckett. The set was a large room in a mock Tudor mansion, with a billiards light in the centre of the ceiling, a drum kit centre back, a coffin to the left of that, complete with dead body and floral tributes, a suit of armour back right, and a chair front right facing an old TV on a small table, which had its back to us. There were other chairs and a sideboard, plus a bookcase and standard lamp, etc. The coffin was removed for the second half, which gave them a lot more room. The back wall was dark wood, presumably oak, and panelled.

The father of the family has died, and the mother, Maud, and her younger son Maurice are waiting for the rest of the family to turn up for the funeral. It’s a small group. Hedley, the elder son, left home many years ago and made a career for himself as a politician. He’s now a back-bench MP with the Labour party, and still trying to make a name for himself. He has a wife, who from the sound of things is almost as crazy as his mother, two kids whom we don’t see, and a mistress, though we don’t find out about her until the second half.

Queenie, the sister, is also Maurice’s twin. She also left home many years ago to live in America, where she became a journalist. She’s incorporated the trip back for the funeral into a three week assignment travelling through Europe to report on the situation there. This is the late 1970s, and most of Europe is going through political and economic changes (is this the only drama we’re going to get now? Economic doom and gloom? God help us!). She phones her chap back in LA, just before the interval, only to find he’s not being as faithful as he thought.

Maurice has stayed at home with his parents all this while, and has developed some strange habits. He talks to his mother by reporting what the cat says, thus allowing him to be nice to her himself, but seriously catty as the cat. He plays jazz records (still vinyl in those days), and accompanies them on his drum kit. He also deals in second hand books of a pornographic nature, judging by the short extract Queenie read from one of them. I noticed that Hedley was so horrified when he read it that he completely forgot to hand it back and shut it in his briefcase instead. Maurice also spends most of his time winding his mother up. She’s a batty old dear, what with preferring to watch the TV with the sound off so she can talk to the people she sees on the screen. She believes the sound is broken, but we learn that it’s actually fine; it’s just Maurice who’s kept it turned down, presumably so that he can play his drums.

Maud is very much the heart and soul of this piece. Played superbly well by Stephanie Cole, she comes across as old, gullible, kind-hearted, and stuck in her ways. Despite Hedley’s best efforts, he can’t get her to move out of the big mansion into a small condominium in London, so that they can sell the property for developers to do what developers do. She’s adamant that she wants to stay where she is so she can go to the local hypermarket and buy lots of things really cheaply. Like tampons. She keeps lots of packets of soup in the freezer that Hedley bought her, so he wouldn’t feel she didn’t appreciate his gift. She keeps using the old gas boiler for heating the water, even though it might blow up any minute (we hear several loud bangs to reinforce this point). I don’t know what she’s meant to represent in terms of the author’s experience of Bristol folk, but she’s enough like so many people’s older female relatives to stay just this side of unbelievable (but only just).

There’s also an incestuous relationship between the twins, which accounts for Queenie wanting her brother to come and stay with her in the States, and we learn about their father’s sexual abuse of Queenie which Maurice walked in on and which caused her to leave home as soon as she could all those years ago. All in all, it’s not a happy family, but at least Maud and Maurice are content with their lot. The play finishes with Maud chatting happily away to the silent TV people, while Maurice plays his drums to an accompanying song.

While I enjoyed this performance, I find this type of play doesn’t get me as involved as more straightforward storytelling. The surreal nature of the piece distances me from the characters, and although I found it very funny in places, there was little to engage me emotionally or mentally. And as I don’t know Bristol at all well, I didn’t get much from those aspects either. Still, the performances were excellent, and the humour was good throughout, especially the confusion between duplex, Durex, condominium and condom. I’d still choose to spend an afternoon watching a play like this over a lot of other options.

Yes, there are men in their underpants and wearing frocks, plenty of sexual innuendo and the most polite song about playing pocket billiards that has ever been written. But there are also many social issues at the heart of the drama.

Joe Alessi

The play follows a band of misfit soldiers as they prepare to tour their show. Among them are intelligent new boy Private Steven Flowers (David Ricardo-Pearce), foul-mouthed corporal Len Bonny (Thomas Paden) and mixed race Bombay-Welsh dancer Sylvia Morgan (Maria Lawson). Acting captain Terri Dennis (Joe Alessi), a camp theatre director who calls the male soldiers by women’s names, binds the cast together.

There are laughs to be had when Terri dons gowns to impersonate Carmen Miranda or Marlene Dietrich, but the finest moments come from Nichols’s script. He challenges attitudes towards homosexuality, race and class in clever dialogue that prompts a momentary jolt before returning the audience to the jollities.

Until Oct 11, Quarry Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Quarry Hill, Leeds, Tue to Sat 7.30pm, mats Thu Oct 2 and 9 1.30pm and Sat 2pm, £15 to £25, concs available. Tel: 0113 213 7700. http://www.wyp.org.uk

How does Privates On Parade reflect your own experiences?

Peter Nichols

I was in an outfit during my national service in Singapore called Combined Service Entertainment. The troupe was a mix of civilians and conscript airmen who volunteered, largely to skive off guard duties. It was known as a cushy billet.

What kind of shows did you perform?

We were all recruited in the first place to do a play, a farce called Not So Much The Heat. Then that play was suddenly cancelled. We didn’t want to go back to guard duty, so we got together a variety show called At Your Service.

What memories do you have of Stanley Baxter and Kenneth Williams, who were also in CSE?

They were both evidently talented. Kenneth Williams used to do imitations of Bette Davis. He was very funny and very strange, as he always remained. I still know Stanley. When he saw the play, he said he’d been dreading what I would reveal and, in fact, he was disappointed that it wasn’t anything like us.

When Privates On Parade was first performed, were people shocked by its depiction of gay servicemen?

I think people were quite alarmed by it. I sent it first to Bristol Old Vic and the director said: ‘I’m sorry, I’d love to do this, but I don’t think Bristol’s ready for it.’

Do you think national service should be reintroduced?

I don’t think so. I think it’s a pretty miserable affair. But looking back, in a way I’m quite glad I did it because without it, I wouldn’t have met the people that I did.

Sept 15 until Oct 11, Quarry Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Quarry Hill, Leeds, tonight 7.30pm, then Tue to Sat 7.30pm, mats Sat 2pm, Oct 2 and Oct 9 1.30pm, £15 to £25, concs available. Tel: 0113 213 7700. http://www.wyp.org.uk

‘I really love Peter’s writing,’ says Cole. ‘He and I had been talking about doing Born In The Gardens for about ten years, and we wanted to do it somewhere where it would get a little bit of the spotlight thrown on it, because [director] Peter [Hall] was 80 last year, and this is one of his favourite plays. It seemed the perfect time to do it.’

Born In The Gardens

First produced at the Bristol Old Vic in 1979, Born In The Gardens contrasts Maud’s highly eccentric traits with those of her middle-aged son Maurice (played by Allan Corduner), as they go about their daily lives in a run-down mock-Tudor house. When her older son Hedley (Simon Shepherd) and Maurice’s California-based twin sister Queenie (Miranda Foster) arrive for their father’s funeral, they try to persuade Maud to move to a modern London apartment, and Maurice to join Queenie in America, but the unconventional pair are reluctant to surrender their anomalous routines.

While Maurice stays in playing old vinyl records and poring over pornography, the eccentric Maud is even more withdrawn from reality, conversing with actors in television commercials. Cole lends her character a befuddled innocence, but has plainly found it a challenging role to play.

‘Her mind is like that of a flea, so it jumps from subject to subject,’ she explains. ‘Sometimes you have to work very hard to make the connection, but her eccentricities are perfectly believable and rather fun to do, actually. I always played much older than myself, and now suddenly I’m playing my own age.’

Arguably best-known for her turn as Dr Beatrice Mason in the BBC’s prisoner-of-war drama Tenko, Cole’s extensive career has covered stage, television and radio.

‘I’ve been jolly lucky,’ she admits. ‘When we did Tenko 20 years ago, I was also doing Open All Hours with Ronnie Barker. Since then I’ve done Waiting For God and the Alan Bennett monologue Soldiering On.’

Voted Solihull’s favourite Silhillian in 2006, it would seem that Cole is more admired than she realises.

‘It was completely out of the blue,’ she remarks. ‘I was born in Solihull, but we were bombed out very early on. They [Solihull Council] were terribly sweet and gave me a wonderful day. I felt a bit of a fraud really, because I’ve lived all my life in the West Country. There are all sorts of wonderful people who were born in Solihull who actually have more right, but I was very honoured.’

Bank Holiday Mon to Aug 30, Festival Theatre, Malvern Theatres, Grange Road, Malvern. 8pm; mats Wed and Sat 2.30pm, £19.50 to £26.50, concs available. Tel: 01684 892277. http://www.malvern-theatres.co.uk