Person: Rachel Handler

Much Ado About Nothing

‘Much Ado About Nothing’ is a comedy of love nearly thwarted by villainy, and tragedy narrowly averted. It is held by many to be one of the most verbally dextrous of Shakespeare’s works, and the dialogue fairly sparkles with witty repartee, chiefly from Benedick and Beatrice, two of his most compelling and human creations.

The setting is a Sicily at war. Don Pedro, the Prince of Aragon, returns from the fighting, with his entourage, to stay with his old friend Leonato, the Governor of Messina.

While there, Claudio, a member of Don Pedro’s retinue, quickly falls in love with Leonato’s daughter, Hero. It’s a cause for much celebration, in most parts. However, Don John, Don Pedro’s bastard brother, sees only a chance to sew discord, and with the help of his two henchmen, Conrade and Borachio, they plot to break up the loving pair and ruin Hero’s reputation..

Elsewhere, another scheme is put into place, but his time it’s with chiefly good intentions. Benedick, a good comrade to Don Pedro, and Beatrice, Leonato’s niece, have known each other for some time. They trade insults, they verbally spar whenever they are together. All but they can see the spark of something special between them. And so the plan is hatched by Don Pedro to push the warring duo away from conflict and into loving reconciliation, getting the two to see each other as others see them. 

When all is said and done both couples find themselves together, but not before they run a gauntlet of lies and confusion, flirting with each other and disaster.

‘Much Ado About Nothing’ is undoubtedly one of Shakespeare’s finer plays, possibly his best comedy, edged only by ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Much of it though, if you look hard enough, makes no sense. Don Pedro is a Spanish warlord, with two of his closest companions coming from rival Italian city states, Padua and Florence. For no explained reason, they’re fighting in Sicily. Leonato at least sounds Italian, but Beatrice and Hero, not to mention servants Margaret and Ursula, don’t. And the whole of the watch, Dogberry, Verges, Hugh Oatcake etc. have clearly been parachuted in from England. Best not to dwell on it.

Talking of which, TWC has edited the Bard’s script. I know, how dare we! Well, if it was good enough for Kenneth Branagh in his 1992 film adaptation, it’s good enough for us. Really, it had to be done. A lot, and we mean a lot, of references to cuckolds and horns needed to go, and there are only so many allusions to obscure classical mythology any audience can take. And cast for that matter.

So, sit back and relax. Be taken to an island in the Mediterranean, and treated to some of Shakespeare’s finest prose. And maybe a pint or two…

Mort

Welcome to Discworld, the light-hearted fantasy universe devised by the author Terry Pratchett and unleashed upon an unsuspecting world in 1983, with the publication of the first Discworld novel, ‘The Colour of Magic’. Contained within its pages was a fleeting appearance of Death, not as a concept but as a personification, complete with hooded robe (over a seven foot tall skeletal body), scythe, sonorous voice and riding a pale horse called… Binky.

Death would go on to become one of Pratchett’s defining creations, and appeared in all bar two of the 41 Discworld novels that Pratchett wrote before his death in 2015. In ‘Mort’, the fourth Discworld novel, published in 1987, the story focuses on Death as he takes an apprentice, the aptly named Mort (‘Mort’ meaning ‘death’ or ‘dead’ in French). Mort, who prefers to be called by his full name, Mortimer, is a gangly, inattentive but well-meaning teenager whose father is only too glad to pass on to another’s responsibility.

Mort does his best of course, but allows his feelings to get in the way. One night, while undertaking ‘The Duty’, he’s called to the bedroom of Princess Keli of Sto Lat, who is about to be assassinated by an agent of the scheming Duke of Sto Helit. Rather than simply escort her soul away in the aftermath of her death however, he prevents the assassination, which sounds great, but sadly, it doesn’t end there. She may not have been killed, but as her death was already pre-determined, people are beginning to act as if she’s not really there…

Stephen Briggs adapted ‘Mort’ for the stage in 1993, and as a frequent collaborator with the author has actually adapted over twenty of Terry Pratchett’s novels for the amateur stage. TWC have performed three of them, ‘Mort’, ‘Wyrd Sisters’ and ‘Lords and Ladies’, all directed by Mike Brown.

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Lark Rise

Welcome to the tiny hamlet of Lark Rise. It is the first day of the harvest, one summer early in the 1880’s…

Flora Thompson’s autobiographical trilogy ‘Lark Rise’, ‘Over To Candleford’ and ‘Candleford Green’, describing her childhood in a remote Oxfordshire farming community has been termed English Literature’s classic masterpiece of a lost way of village life – a vivid and moving account, rich in fascinating detail.

In 1978, Keith Dewhurst’s acclaimed adaptation for The National Theatre took characters and episodes, songs and scenes directly from the books, to create two composite plays – ‘Lark Rise’ and ‘Candleford’. Each of the plays also featured a wealth of traditional music contributed by the influential British folk-rock group, The Albion Band. (John Tams and Ashley Hutchings, both members of the band, acted as musical directors for the play.)

The result is an enchanting play which, while lacking a strong narrative, does offer an evocative and entertaining glimpse into how our ancestors lived and worked in the years before The Great War, and the machine age that finally succeeded in sweeping England’s rural innocence away forever. In place of The Albion Band we have The Royal Borough Band, led by Dave Hankey, with a few of our own members helping to provide vocals.

We hope you will accept our production of ‘Lark Rise’ as a pleasant diversion fit for a summer’s evening – especially in the garden of what is still, very much, a village pub.

Oliver!

‘Oliver!’ is a stage musical written by Lionel Bart, and adapted from Charles Dickens’ 1838 novel ‘Oliver Twist’. The tale of a young, innocent, orphaned workhouse boy, who falls in with thieves and pickpockets before finding his fortune, it premiered at the Wimbledon Theatre in 1960 before transferring to the New Theatre in St Martin’s Lane (Now the Noel Coward Theatre), opening on the 30 June that year and running for what was then a record 2,618 performances. It was the first musical based on a Charles Dickens story that had actually been a success in any real sense.

The musical, very much simplified from the book, contains song after song that will stay with you, catchy beyond belief, from ‘Food, Glorious Food’, ‘Consider Yourself’ and ‘I’d Do Anything’ to ‘Oom-Pah-Pah!’, ‘You’ve Got To Pick A Pocket Or Two’ and ‘Reviewing the Situation’. ‘As Long As He Needs Me’ is as powerfully emotional as anything that has ever been sung on a West End stage.

Bart, real name Lionel Begleiter and descended from Galician Jews, was called a musical genius at the age of just six. He started his songwriting in amateur theatre, and was eventually talent-spotted by Joan Littlewood and joined her Theatre Workshop. His golden era was the late fifties and early sixties, when he wrote hit records for Cliff Richard, Tommy Steele and Anthony Newley, picking up numerous Ivor Novello awards. He wrote the theme to the James Bond film ‘From Russia With Love’ in 1963. But despite earlier successes, it was ‘Oliver!’ that made him a truly household name. Funnily enough, Bart couldn’t read or write music. The music for ‘Oliver’ was transcribed by a man called Eric Rogers, famous for writing the music scores for twenty one of the ‘Carry On’ movies. Bart would would hum the tunes while Rogers wrote down the notes.

In 1969 the movie of ‘Oliver!’ was released, and one might have thought life was good for the composer. However, Bart’s follow-up musicals had failed to recapture the glory of his most famous show, with ‘Twang!!’ (opening in late 1965) closing after awful reviews, mostly empty houses, and only 43 performances. It was the most expensive flop the West End had ever seen up to that point and wiped out Bart’s personal fortune. Nor could ‘Oliver!’ help him out. He had sold the past and future rights to his show to entertainer Max Bygraves in 1959 for just £350.

Oh What a Lovely War!

As 1914 began, Europe was a tinderbox waiting for a spark. On the 28 June, That spark was provided by a young Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Pricip, who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on the streets of Sarajevo. Not just Europe, but the world caught fire. By the time the armistice was declared on the 11 November 1918, millions had died.

It was a hideous conflict. Germany had hoped for a repeat of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, fast moving and decisive, over with complete and resounding success inside six months. It was not to be.  The stalemate of the Western Front, with miles of trenches, mud and barbed wire, is the overarching image of this period.

On Armistice Day 1962, Gerry Raffles was listening to the BBC Home Service, and a programme called ‘The Long Long Trail’, written by Charles Chilton. It was a documentary about the First World War, interspersing facts and statistics with reminiscences and popular songs of the day. He thought it would provide a good basis for a new production, and broached the subject with his partner, Joan Littlewood, the prime mover in Theatre Workshop, a group she’d set up in 1945 with Ewan McColl. She hated the idea, but Raffles had brought Chilton along, and the two played and sung a number of the songs. Eventually she was persuaded that perhaps the idea had merit after all.

The show was developed through improvisation, and Littlewood had very definite ideas about what would and would not be admissible on the stage. No khaki or uniforms for instance. Instead the cast would wear pierrot costumes, taken from the Comedia dell’Arte, in order to provide some form of ironic contrast.

The production debuted at the Theatre Royal Stratford East on the 19 March 1963 to rave reviews. However, a transfer to the West End seemed unlikely, as the official censor was unprepared to authorise it. The intervention of Princess Margaret, who having watched a performance, discreetly bent the ear of the Lord Chamberlain, changed that, and it opened at Wyndham’s Theatre on the 20 June.

A film version followed in 1969, directed by Richard Attenborough, and with a screenplay written by thriller writer Len Deighton. Filmed in and around Brighton, notably on the now derelict West Pier, it dispensed with the pierrot costumes and thoroughly embraced the military uniforms. Littlewood loathed it.

Dazzle

In a world of multi-million dollar science-fiction movies, it’s a brave amateur theatre group who takes on a supposed ‘out of this world’ musical play that was intended to parody the much-loved TV series (and subsequent movies) of ‘Star Trek’. John Gardiner also wrote ‘The Dracula Spectacula’ which Workshop performed back in 1977, and would again, no doubt (at least in part) why Chris Argles chose it to direct. However, like its predecessor, the story is only very loosely based on its source material.

At some point in a far-flung future, Sam Galactic of the Star Blade Squadron is welcomed as a hero by Sekurikor, the President of Homeworld, and entrusted with his first command, that of the starship Sunburster One. He and his crew are then given the relatively mundane task of taking the president’s daughter, Dazzle Star, to a finishing school on Procyon. En route, they are intercepted by a Red Star vessel commanded by Big Olga, and then have Dazzle Star kidnapped by spacefaring Irish pirates, before finding out the true purpose of the mission. To complete it, and guarantee the future of mankind, Sam and Dazzle Star must throw themselves back in time to the 1960’s and survive an unlikely encounter with a greasy, leather-clad motorcycle gang led by the daunting Sue Zuki.

Of course, that’s only how it started out. Though the story may have remained much the same, Workshop took exception to a lot of the treatment meted out to the various characters. In the script, the ship’s doctor inexplicably sounded like one-time world champion boxer Muhammad Ali. That went. The random Irish pirates were ditched in favour of the classic Trek villains, Klingons, with all the gags that you can imagine the name entails, and their song became a spoof of ‘Pink Elephants On Parade’ from Walt Disney’s ‘Dumbo’ (Why? Ask Mark Taylor. But it was great fun.).The captain developed a middle initial to become Sam T Galactic. The ship lost a number and gained a ‘USS’ prefix, and the set of the ship’s bridge was as close to an exact copy of the original Enterprise as our limited budget could manage. The wardrobe guidelines were thrown out too, and in came fairly faithful reproductions of the classic Starfleet uniforms.

We boldly went where Samuel French didn’t expect us to go.

Bugsy Malone

Based on the 1976 movie written and directed by Alan Parker, ‘Bugsy Malone’ is a comedy / musical about gangsters, an unlikely combination.

Set in New York during the prohibition era, ‘Fat’ Sam Staccetto runs a criminal empire, running illicit sarsaparilla and other rackets, as well as the ‘Grand Slam’ Speakeasy. When Roxy Robinson, one of Sam’s best men, is taken out by rapid-fire, whipped-cream shooting ‘Splurge’ guns, Staccetto puts the blame on the up-and-coming rival gang boss Dandy Dan, and all too quickly he’s proven right. Soon the city is gripped by a major gang war, and caught in the middle is Bugsy Malone, a none-too-successful boxing promoter, written off by Sam as ‘a nice guy…but a little too popular with the broads’. Bugsy has fallen for would-be singing star Blousey Brown, and between them they plan to leave town and head for California, but there’s the little matter of raising the money for the train tickets…

Mike Brown’s first stab at direction brought in a wealth of new young talent, with the ‘veterans’ dropped back to supporting and character roles. Containing big ensemble singalong numbers like ‘Fat Sam’s Grand Slam’, ballads such as ‘I’m Feeling Fine’ and ‘Ordinary Fool’ from Blousey Brown (Rachel Handler), not to mention ‘My Name Is Talullah’ from Kimberley Argles’ eponymous speakeasy chanteuse, the production provided a rousing evening’s entertainment and a springboard for Workshop’s younger talent.

Smut’s Saga, or Santa and the Vikings!

Panto Viking fun. Nordic myth runs riot: valkyries, trolls, dwarves – and Father Christmas!

Long centuries divide the epic Norse saga from traditional pantomime, but the two genres share some similarities. Both are ritual entertainments in which time-honoured tales of derring-do, featuring a habitual cast of larger than life characters, are performed to delight a deeply involved audience.

This is an epic Norse saga set in a land of icy fjords and cold, grey seas. A tale of longships and trolls, Valkyries and Valhalla – but incorporating all the essential ingredients of traditional panto. Boundless audience participation, corny double-entendres, ingenious special effects, men dressed up as women, women dressed up as men. And all with the added bonus of a new story set against the vivid backdrop of Norse tradition – with no opportunity missed to exploit every Viking gag imaginable!

Wicked Viking Jarl, Smut the Smug, crosses the northern sea to ravage the coast of England, only to encounter rival Viking, Svein, Prince of the Blue Fjords, searching England for his Princess bride. The villain flees with no booty, except for three exceedingly naughty children, Tum, Dickon and Harald. But Smut is pursued back to his lair in Smutland by the children’s outraged and outrageous guardian, the indomitable Dame Dustpan, joined by Prince Svein, who agrees to help rescue the children in return for help tracking down his princess. But before they can complete their quest, our heroes have to outwit the monstrous Stoneheart, Lord of the Rock Trolls, and deal with Smut’s dotty but deadly accomplice, the witch, Helga Forkbeard.

Complete with mountains and fjords, dragonships, dwarves and giants, not to mention Santa Claus, the whole rich tapestry of Viking folklore is here. Skilfully blended with the enchantment, slapstick and audience participation of traditional pantomime.

Jack The Ripper

In the autumn of 1888, the East End of London was home to a sordid, brutalised community of prostitutes, immigrants, petty criminals and political renegades.

Potentially an explosive flashpoint behind the grand façade of Victoria’s London, the panic and terror that gripped the inhabitants of the slums and tenements during the series of murders attributed to the notorious ‘Jack the Ripper’ threatened to plunge the entire East End into riot and revolution, and shake the very foundations of the capital of the Empire.

‘Jack the Ripper’ was written for the stage in 1974 and features a score by Ron Pember, with book and lyrics by Pember with Denis De Marne. A musical reconstruction of the incidents relating to the historic East End murders is told through the company of the fictional Steam Packet Music Hall in Whitechapel, a device that presents an atmospheric commentary on the murders as opposed to a historic re-enactment, with the ensemble moving between real and fictional characters.

The production was first staged at the Player’s Theatre in London, opening on June 25th 1974  It subsequently transferred the production to the Ambassadors Theatre in September 1974, followed by the Cambridge Theatre in February 1975, and earned a nomination for ‘Best Musical’ at the 1974 Evening Standard Theatre Awards. The show went on to debut in the United States in March 1979. Since the amateur production rights were released in 1976, ‘Jack The Ripper’ has remained a popular production choice with societies worldwide.

Ron Pember was a best known as an actor, with a career spanning several decades. He worked with both the National Theatre and the RSC and appeared in TV series such as ‘Only Fools and Horses’, ‘Red Dwarf’ and ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’. Coincidentally, he had a part in the 1979 film ‘Murder by Decree’ which starred Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes, as the famous detective attempts to solve the mystery of Jack the Ripper.

The boisterous nature of the show, all rough edges and black humour, has a certain appeal to Theatre Workshop. We’d performed it before, back in 1983, when it was directed by Chris Argles. And we’d do it again, in the open-air, in 2006.

The Crucible

Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ is one of the classics of 20th Century theatre. A fictionalised (or at least in part) account of the witch trials that took place between 1692 and 1693 in the small settlement of Salem, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, New England. Miller wrote it in 1953 not as a historical piece, but as an allegory for McCarthyism, rampant at the time of his writing, where people were shamelessly persecuted for alleged Communist ties, without evidence. The accusation in and of itself was considered damning enough regardless of its origin, and there was the link to that earlier, dark time.

At best, ‘The Crucible’ was an ambitious reach for Workshop, but this was a ‘troubled’ production, as they call it in some circles. Originally slated to be the Spring 1990 production, it had been proposed by Christine Blake and Wendy Cole, who, it was intended, would co-direct. However, the project was almost completely derailed when both of them left the group. This left Paul Ford, who had been drafted in as an assistant director, to carry on in their stead but with no real vision for what the show should look like. One of the immediate difficulties was the presence in the cast of the key character of Tituba. Although her ultimate origin is disputed, it was thought that she was Barbadian, i.e. from the island of Barbados. No-one in the existing membership of the time could pass themselves off as such, and even in 1991, ‘blackface’ was a no-go. And so Paul elected to shift the entire thing into space. Salem became a settlement of puritan theocratic colony on a planet orbiting a distant star. It covered off the Tituba problem, but of course caused others.

The staging was abstract, geometric shapes painted to look as if they’d been scavenged from old starship hull-plating. They could be moved to form different combinations, which would represent various rooms and locations. An over-sized fan behind a grill turned throughout, with a ever-present ‘tic’ as its malformed blades hit the grill.

Despite some eventual outstanding performances, not least from the young girls in the cast, it nearly didn’t make it. The first weekend’s performances were billed as ‘previews’ as even at that last stage, the production was not pulling together. The review picked out that there were beautiful moments, and as ever, Madgwick was right. When it worked, there were some truly excellent scenes, but overall it really didn’t do the script justice.