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Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Saturday, December 12, 2015
Saturday, December 12, 2015
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Thursday saw me battling a monumental hangover. Things had gotten a little too late in Camden the night before, resulting in a day where my eyes felt like dried prunes, my teeth rattled in my gums and my brain was squeezed like a sponge. It wasn't your typical hangover, it was monumental, I'm talking giving talks in schools about it bad.
Needless to say I wasn't in the mood for a Christmas show. Especially not one that seemed to revolve around gimmicky puppetry. But I trekked up to the Rosemary Branch regardless, hoping that whatever Clementine's Seasonal Spectacular turned out to be, it wouldn't be extraordinarily painful.
With that grim sense of foreboding that arises when you're welcomed by a puppet I took an anonymous seat in the third row, huddling down and sipping at a blessedly alcohol-free orange juice. The first number begins: "Hey, this might be tolerable after all..." I think. Soon a gigantic cockerel puppet is working through a sexualised Tom Jones parody ("Huh, that's good puppetry"). By 15 minutes in I can feel the misery draining out of my frontal lobes and I manage a chuckle - the first positive emotion I've felt all day.
As the second half begins I'm positively upbeat and (at Grumpy Gay Critic's urging) have migrated to the front row. As the show ends it's as if my grey matter has been thoroughly expunged of all the booze-soused misery I entered with. I'm a new man. That's what a good night at the theatre can do for you.
'Clementine' is the brainchild of Mark Mander. Slathered in slap, false eyelashes fluttering and his smile a perfect white slash, his head hovers above a diminutive doll's body. The Barbie-like rest of him, twiggy arms expressively puppeteered creates an initially eerie effect. You get used to it in a couple of minutes, the combination of the tiny body and Mander's impressively expressive facial expressions adding up to an attractively amusing comic creations.
Clem is the figurehead of a night that features randy cockerels, bulimic bluebottles and a smattering of the spookily supernatural. Split into two halves, the first follows the backstage drama =themed, segmented into a series of musical numbers with video wraparounds.
The second half descends into panto proper, with the story of a post fairytale Snow White (as played by Clem) . This proves to be a loose James Bond parody that takes her under the sea, skiing through the mountains and into a classically styled volcano base where an evil Maggie Thatcher-a-like plots the demise of all happiness in the world.
Throughout the show there's an easy and friendly atmosphere. Appropriately for panto, Clem leaves the fourth wall in tatters and, naturally, the story is never taken particularly seriously. But the unpretentious atmosphere shouldn't be mistaken for carelessness, this was one of the most rigorously designed and performed shows I've seen in quite some time.
Highlights are some genuinely impressive props and costumes. During the undersea sequence Clem emerges within a glittering submarine, surrounded by friendly fish. It's one hell of a piece of stage design - to look at it is to understand that whoever created this has a spark of talent backed up by a seriously strong work ethic. More surprises come in the shape of a full-size Chinese dragon puppet and an all-singing all-dancing feather-filled finale. The video interludes are of a similar quality - produced with the kinds of 3D animation that you generally don't expect to find in shows above pubs.
All this is performed with whipcrack timing and big heaping barrels of personality. Aside from Mander, the cast are Steve Nallon (a Spitting Image alumni who does an uncanny Thatcher impression), burly bodybuilder genie Jack Jefferson and puppeteers Stewart Fraser, Lesa Gillespie and Clare Pointing. All are straightforwardly excellent.
The only nitpicks I have is that the lengthy video interludes, while entertaining, aren't particularly theatrical. Similarly, the decision to have practically all the dialogue pre-recorded and lipsynced sucks a little spontaneity out and introduces a mild artificiality into evening. I can understand that co-ordinating puppetry, music cues and video must be a colossal pain in the arse, but it somewhat defeats the purpose of a theatre watch a projected video.
That said, Clementine's Seasonal Spectacular entertained me from tip to toe, kindling a genuine spark of Christmassy-ness inside me. I stepped out into a drizzly night with a spring in my step and a song in my heart, the miseries of the day wiped clean. Right now this is my bone-fide 'check this out' Christmas show recommendation. I can't imagine anything dislodging it in a hurry.
★★★★
Clementine's Seasonal Spectacular is at the Rosemary Branch until 10 January. Tickets here.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Monday, December 15, 2014
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With a drag queen downstairs belting out Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner, a tinsel-decked pub filled with the fruity aroma of Christmas pudding and rosy-cheeked customers clinking glasses of mulled wine The Old Red Lion makes for a warm backdrop to Dickens' classic. I've never actually seen A Christmas Carol staged before (my main exposure to it is of The Muppets, Blackadder and Bill Murray variety), but then this tale is as baked into the British consciousness as the Nativity.
As soon as we enter we're warmly greeted by the mittened and bobble-hatted cast. At our feet Bob Cratchit (Liam Mansfield) stamps away at an endless heap of documents, above him the thunderous face of Ebenezer Scrooge (Alexander McMorran), quick to scold if he dithers in his work. All too soon mean old Scrooge is being plagued by the spirits. First the chain-clinking Jacob Marley, and then then procession of the ghosts of Christmas past, present and yet-to-come.
Considering that we're about to embark on a supernatural journey through time and space the set doesn't look particularly otherworldly. A Christmas tree has been unceremoniously stuffed into a wheelie bin, boxes of trash lie about the place and every corner is full of junky looking detritus. The ensemble cast (Elizabeth Grace-Williams, James Mack, Rhiannon Neads and Cat Gerrard) huddles in tatty winter clothes, keeping a running commentary on events like a street urchin Greek chorus.
As we explore the past, present and future of Scrooge's Christmases the ensemble keep things moving in tick-tock rhythm. From the clunk of Cratchit's stamp on paper to the tinkling of Scrooge's chain right through to the stomp of feet on wooden board, there's a the sensation that we're peering into a clockwork universe. Choosing to proceed at such a deliberate pace runs the risk of robbing the material of spontaneity, shackling the performers to the beat. Fortunately the cast are a uniformly talented bunch, able to improvise at short notice (including coping with Tiny Tim's crutch breaking!) and work with cool, confident precision.
At the centre of all this is McMorran's Scrooge. At first I was a little wary of a 33 year old actor playing one of fiction's most famous mean old men. Can a relatively young performer really capture this bitterness? Scrooge has a petrified soul so seeing even the remotest glimmer of youth would threaten believability. But McMorran deals with this ably, planting early seeds in the character that blossom as his eyes are opened to the worth of charity, empathy and humanity.
In his early, grumpy guise; rejecting charity, talking about "surplus population" and celebrating the existence of the orphanage and workhouse Scrooge comes across as a quintessentially Farage-esque figure, smugly curling his head up his arse. The performative magic trick is to gradually peel these misanthropic layers away, yet keep the character recognisable.
McMorran succeeds brilliantly. In his face you see a candle flicker to life as he watches his younger self celebrating with his family. This is gradually kindled into a fierce fire, making his eventual emergence as a huggable Christmas teddybear entirely believable. Most importantly, we see the faint vestiges of the old Scrooge in the new one, a continuity of character being preserved right up until the final curtain.
Given the minimalist set and small cast, A Christmas Carol relies a lot on lighting to evoke mood and atmosphere. There's a wonderful sequence early in the play when Scrooge hunts for the ghosts with a torch. The stage is dimly lit and the air thick with dry ice, meaning the arc of the torch is clearly defined as it swoops through the air. The effect as unsettling as it is visually dynamic. Similar care is taken later on, when the actors are blocked so as to obscure spotlights behind them. As they move bright shafts of light pierce the fog, as if the sun has risen behind them. It turns out that this is all courtesy of Matt Leventhall, which makes this the second day in a row I've praised his technical skills.
I guess the ultimate aim of A Christmas Carol is to fill its audience with the festive spirit. If that's the barometer of success then this production achieved it in spades. Being jostled down Oxford Street with the leering face of Ben Stiller staring down at you it's all too easy to grow a cynical shell and regard Christmas as an exercise in conspicuous consumption. But Metal Rabbit Productions dragged me kicking and screaming towards genuine cheeriness. And with Tiny Tim (an excellent Cat Gerrard) happily exclaiming "God bless us, everyone" I actually felt a mote of dust in my eye.
The modesty and reduced scale of the production works in its favour, boiling the story down to its core and relying on the audience's imagination rather than pyrotechnics and glitz. As I left I felt exceedingly festive, and what better recommendation can I give than that?
A Christmas Carol is at the Old Red Lion Theatre until 3rd January. Tickets £14 (£12 concs) available here.
Friday, November 28, 2014
Friday, November 28, 2014
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Get Santa is probably the only Christmas family movie that raises this question: could Santa be a child molester? The scene comes early in the film, when precocious moppet Tom has discovered a creepy, bearded man passed out in his garden shed in the middle of the night. Calling his dad excitedly, Tom explains that he’s chatting to a strange man who “wants to show me his plan.”
Dad’s eyes widen in horror, no doubt picturing his son becoming a victim of sick trouser-based rummaging. He hops in his van and burns rubber to the shed, threatening to beat the crap out of Santa if he ever so much as looks at another kid. It’s this skewed tone that fuels Get Santa, a film that can at least be given credit for taking Christmas cinema to bizarre new territory.
★★
Get Santa is released 5th December 2014
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