RETURN TO THE FORBIDDEN PLANET. To 12 August.
Nottingham
RETURN TO THE FORBIDDEN PLANET: Bob Carlton
Theatre Royal: Tkts 0115 989 5555 www.royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk
Runs: 2h 40m: one interval: till 17th June, then tours till August
Performance times: 7.30pm Mon-Thurs, 5.30pm and 8.30pm Fri and Sat
Review: Alan Geary: 12 June 2006
Despite a multi-talented ensemble, this wicked take on sci-fi and Shakespeare just fails to blast off
Perhaps the near-tropical humidity had a lot to do with it; or it might have been that Cup. Whatever the reason, despite the best efforts of an attractive and multi-talented ensemble, the first night in Nottingham of this touring production never quite blasted off.
There was some stylish acting, musicianship and singing, but the lyrics were occasionally indistinct and the humour was sometimes allowed to fall flat so it took a little time for the show to achieve fully operational status - in this wicked send-up of the sci-fi genre when a thing’s working properly it has ‘fully operational status’; and nothing is ever simply switched on, it’s ‘activated’.
There’s a touch of the dreaded mingling with the audience before the action starts, but only Dr Brian May CBE, out of Queen, splendid as the black and white on-screen Narrator, and John Elkington, as a bearded Prospero, have authentic tongue-in-cheek pantomimic rapport with the audience.
Elkington, as well as others in the show - besides being a comic homage to the 1956 film Forbidden Planet it’s also a take on The Tempest - comes over as someone you’d like to see in regular Shakespeare. The whole cast get to handle some cracking one-liners from a whole clutch of his plays, sometimes to comic effect.
And many of them have impressively powerful singing voices, for instance Marianne Benedict, a lush and statuesque Gloria, and Dale Superville, camping it up in shorts and thigh-boots as Ariel, a robot. On a glittery and tacky, intentionally cardboard-looking futuristic space-ship, the USS Albatross, they get their teeth into a whole raft of classic fifties and sixties belters [plus some from the seventies and eighties]. These are often delivered as parodies - given a title like Teenager in Love it would be hard not to.
It’s striking how often ad hoc pop groups like this one are better than the real thing. It was impossible not to tap your feet at Good Vibrations, She’s Not There or Great Balls of Fire.
This production will get better and better as the tour proceeds, especially if the weather returns to normal.
Captain Tempest: William Wolfe Hogan
Cookie: Cymon Allen
Bosun: Robin Johnson
Navigation Officer: Wendy Paver
Damage Control Team: Katie Brayben and Christopher Redmond
Prospero: John Elkington
Gloria: Marianne Benedict
Miranda: Emily Grace
Ariel: Dale Superville
Narrator: Dr Brian May CBE
Director: Finetime Fontayne
Set Designer: Sara Perks
Lighting Designer: Simon Hutchings
Musical Director: Neil Gore
Choreographer: Beverley Norris-Edmunds
Sound Designer: Dan Steele
Visual Projection: Peter Hearn
2006-06-19 09:26:10