THE BAT. To 13 August.
Newcastle-under-Lyme
THE BAT
music by Johann Strauss II new libretto by Chris Monks
New Vic Theatre To 13 August 2005
Mon- Sat 7.30pm Mat 13 August 2.30pm No performance 27 July, 3,8 August
BSL Signed 2 August
Captioned 9 August
Talkback 2 August
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
TICKETS: 01782 717962
www.newvictheatre.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 July
Fine company show, witty and well-sung, if less revelatory than previous Monks adaptations.Chris Monks has become a one-man music-theatre genre. His new libretti for well-known operas and operettas update and relocate the action to reveal modern resonances. Here, 19th century Vienna's Waltz King has Die Fledermaus, his best stage work, yanked from that lost society of supposed sophistication into a modern world of celebrity' and paparazzi.
A foreign manager of the England football team has been demoted to run the team in Crewe (a major insult at a theatre whose town once boasted Stanley Matthews as regular player) after being set up in a photo-sting by a supposed friend.
Aided by Ceri James' bravura lighting, this back-story's played-out during the Overture, as climax to a night of drink and pole-dancers, and background to the main action's revenge scheme. If it makes all that whipped-cream sophistication seem tacky and meretricious, the story can take it: this is an operetta that has its last act in the local nick.
But whereas previous adaptations the shopping-mall Carmen or the brilliantly worked-out cricket-pitch Mikado for example - opened-up their metaphors as they proceeded, here the equation seem to trap Monks. Once he's made the point there's little to do but go on making it - often funnily enough. Perhaps, for all the lofty denunciation of tabloids, we're all a little too much in love with celebrity.
And, even deprived of their lush string-lines, Strauss's melodies curl endearingly round their singers, a Hungarian Czardas losing its point sung by a Swede (even Monks has to desert Strauss to provide music for his new-style Prince, gangsta-rapper BadAss, with a soft secret in her street-cred past).
It's wittily staged and performed, uncovering strong voices in unexpected places, like the light and deep baritones of Andy Hockley and Claude Close, while Mark McGee's Spanish Fraydo is a fine tenor (his dislike of Yale' denoting aversion to prison rather than Ivy League universities).
Natasha Seale has Shiraz's brash glamour dead right while Kirsty Malpass, as a bored beautician and aspirant actor, sings attractively (though needing more power in the lower range), moves well and establishes her character's feelings with sympathetic clarity.
Don Key: Paul Barnhill
Lou Pohl: Claude Close
Stig Olof Pettersson: Andy Hockley
BadAss: Gbemisola Ikumelo
Mel Fish: Catherine Le Brun
Shell Fish: Kirsty Malpass
Fraydo: Mark McGee
Ron Bolt: Alan McMahon
Garry Milington: Craig Purnell
Shiraz Millington: Natasha Seale
Director: Chris Monks
Designer: Patrick Connellan
Lighting: Ceri James
Sound: James Earls-Davis
Musical Director: Richard Atkinson
Musical Supervisor/Arranger: Jonathan Gill
Choreographer: Beverly Edmunds
2005-07-25 08:29:02