Kneehigh’s The Flying Lovers Of Vitebsk at the Bristol Old Vic
I have given relatively few productions the full five stars this past year, though I do have very positive memories of some outstanding individual performances. These include Aoife Duffin’s protean depictions of a whole range of characters in A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing at Tobacco Factory Theatres; Julian Bleach’s sardonic, malicious Barkilphedro in the Bristol Old Vic’s The Grinning Man; and Audrey Bresson’s touching portrayals of Bella Chagall in Kneehigh’s The Flying Lovers Of Vitebsk and the blind girl Dea in The Grinning Man.
Perhaps the most compelling individual performance of all was George Mann’s breath-taking piece of solo story-telling in Theatre Ad Infinitum’s Odyssey, though I was also very moved by Lois Mackie as a young woman driven to desperation by her failure to conceive a child in Theatre West’s ambitious new play, The Room Upstairs.
Among other new plays that I enjoyed I must mention Tremelo Theatre’s The Hours Before We Wake, which offered an imaginative, dystopian analysis of the perils of social media. Desperate Men’s Slapstick And Slaughter was a memorable response to the centenary of the Battle of the Somme that eschewed all conventions of narrative, character and plot – a Dadaist treat. These last three productions were all seen at the Wardrobe Theatre, a super venue that is going from strength to strength.
Poor casting marred a number of shows, including After Miss Julie at the Bath Theatre Royal, where Helen George certainly supplied sufficient glamour as the eponymous Julie, but lacked conviction when she was required to convey any sense of seductive guile or predatory danger. Another wrong-headed piece of casting was to have Tommy Steel play the title role in The Glenn Miller Story at the Bristol Hippodrome. I awarded the show a curmudgeonly two stars, feeling that no octogenarian Cockney should try to pass himself off as an American in his early twenties. Perhaps I forgot that he is one of those legendary showbiz figures who can do precisely what he likes – his adoring audience came to see Tommy, and cheerfully suspended disbelief.
A number of big productions were relatively disappointing, though I thoroughly enjoyed Rattigan’s merry farce While The Sun Shines at Bath Theatre Royal. One of the disappointments was Breakfast At Tiffany’s at the Bristol Hippodrome. It was billed as ‘a stage play with music’, yet it featured a mere two songs. I have no problem at all identifying the most bizarre experience I had in a theatre during 2016. Salvo-Conduto at The Redgrave was delivered entirely in Portuguese and cursed with surtitles so ineptly translated that they were incomprehensible. ‘The scream since in my chest I lay not to death’ has proved to be an unforgettable line, but for all the wrong reasons.
I saw two excellent productions of operas at Tobacco Factory Theatres. Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi from Pop Up Opera packed a real punch, but the show that proved to be the very best of the year was Opera Project’s atmospheric Don Giovanni. This was packed with excellent performances throughout, with the very high quality of the musicianship fully matched by that of the acting. Simply superb!
© Mike Whitton/StageTalk Magazine 2016. All rights reserved. No reproduction in part or in whole without prior permission.
