A CHORUS OF DISAPPROVAL. To 4 April.
Ipswich/Colchester/Watford.
A CHORUS OF DISAPPROVAL
by Alan Ayckbourn.
New Wolsey Theatre Ipswich to 28 February.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat ed & Sat 2.30pm.
Audio-described 28 Feb 2.30pm
BSL Signed 27 Feb.
Captioned 25 Feb 7.45pm.
Post-show Talk 19 Feb.
TICKETS: 01473 295900.
www.wolseytheatre.co.uk
then Mercury Theatre Colchester 5-21 March.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 7, 14 March 2.30pm 19 March 2pm.
Audio-described 14 March 2.30pm.
BSL Signed 19 March 7.30pm.
Captioned 17 March.
TICKETS: 01206 573948.
www.mercurytheatre.co.uk
then Watford Palace Theatre 24 March-4 April 2009.
Tue-Sat 7.45pm Mat Wed 2.30pm Sat 3pm.
TICKETS: 01923 225671.
www.watfordtheatre.co.uk
Runs 2hr 45min One interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 February.
Scandalous doings, with tunes.
Only a year after this 1984 play, Alan Ayckbourn was exploring misery deep within the consciousness of his Woman in Mind. Here he examines tensions and miseries from the outside, through the social microcosm of an amateur operatic society.
Chorus opens on a high, with the finale of Pendon amateur operatic’s Beggar’s Opera. As the bright lights fade so do smiles, and star Guy Jones is clearly the man to avoid. For newcomer Guy, a star by necessity, is one of those Ayckbourn characters who disturb things. Not, in Guy’s case, deliberately but through accepting what’s offered, displaying the tensions and dissatisfactions lying concealed around.
Peter Rowe’s production leaves several of Ayckbourn’s large cast rather under-developed. Roger Delves-Broughton makes what he can of the hapless Ted through silent expression, while Miranda Bell hardly registers as his wife. And the intended star of Beggar’s Opera is so neutral in real-life that he’s mainly marked out by the way he’s looking for something completely different in the shape of a woman. Others make their mark through actors’ strengths, Paul Leonard’s bullish local bigwig, cut off by a threatening self-certainty and comically, in one scene, by headphones, or Christine Absalom, distinctive as his near-neurotic wife.
But it’s the group closest around Julian Harries’ deliberate blank of a Guy (aptly making comic points through expressive facial reactions) who figure most. The married Fay and Ian keeping distant from each other, despite their declared sexual frankness, or director Dafydd, all hearty cheer in Sion Tudor Owen’s energetic performance of a man whose bluff exterior and loud shirts barely cover his shallowness, and who fails to see his wife’s affair with Guy going on under his nose while he arranges to throw light on the stage.
As his sad wife Hannah, Katy Secombe gives a comic yet moving performance, her happy and artificial ‘onstage’ postures contrasting the unhappiness of her life. As Pendon’s sexual and financial shenanigans echo those satirised in the Opera, and personal miseries are offset by its bright popular tunes, Secombe marks Hannah out as a particularly moving life lived in quiet desperation.
Guy Jones: Julian Harries.
Dafydd ap Llewellyn: Sion Tudor Owen.
Hannah Llewellyn: Katy Secombe.
Bridget Baines: Katie Kerr.
Mr Ames: David Westbrook.
Enid Washbrook: Miranda Bell.
Ted Washbrook: Roger Delves-Broughton.
Linda Washbrook: Jill Cardo.
Rebecca Huntley-Pike: Christine Absalom.
Jarvis Huntley-Pike: Paul Leonard.
Fay Hubbard: Shona Lindsay.
Ian Hubbard: Charles Davies.
Crispin Usher: Adam Sopp.
Director: Peter Rowe.
Designer: Dawn Alsopp.
Lighting: Ben Payne.
Sound: Ash Pickard.
Musical Director: David Westbrook.
Choreographer: Francesca Jaynes.
Dialect coach: Jan Haydn-Rowles.
Fight director: Philip D’Orleans.
2009-02-18 14:45:53