alinewaites

the battered husband

THE RED DEATH AND THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

Adapted from the stories of Edgar Allan Poe

At the Brockley Jack Theatre

The Red Death involves Prince Prospero who, like his Shakespearean namesake gathers a group of people and locks them away from plague ridden civilisation persuading them that he is saving them from dying in a horrible, messy way as victims of the Red Death.  They all think they are having a lovely time dancing and being entertained, not knowing what Prospero’s evil plan is going to be. There is some interesting choreography by the director Omar F Okai but this is not an easy play to stage. There is no real drama until the very end so Simon James Collier in his adaptation keeps us interested with stories of the scandals of his guests, some with titles some with money – all wanting what is best for themselves. We get a glimpse of his mind when young man – Lord Usher tells of his interest in Christianity.

The second play about the House of Usher has much more dramatic content. Winthrop (James McClelland) is a young man who arrives at the House of Usher and meets the master of the house Roderick Usher (Zachary Elliott-Hatton). Winthrop is looking for Madeline (Nell Hardy) the girl who left him at the altar.  He has been searching for her and has tracked her down to this house. Roderick has imprisoned her in an upstairs room and the young suiter is constantly goaded by ghosts of previous members of the family all of whom have died young due to a curse put on the house of Usher. Madeline is destined to be one of them but he tries to take her away and save her from the curse.  This story was adapted by Adam Bechamel and directed by Maud Madlyn.

There is a very young cast who double up in both plays and they all work effectively, having absorbed well the atmosphere of melodrama, especially as the guests of Prospero and the lovely wafting ghosts who accompany Winthrop wherever he goes. Prince Prospero is played by the very elegant Cristinel Hogas who also plays one of the Usher ghosts.

This double bill is great fun and the lighting and sound effects are wonderfully creepy.

VIXEN

By Silent Opera supported by the ENO

At the Vaults  Waterloo Station

Daisy Evans, Stephen Higgins and Max Pappenheim have constructed a reimagining of Janacek’s classic opera ‘The Cunning Little Vixen’ creating a metaphor of life in the current day Streets of London.

Forester is a man who loves his beer – he is out on the town when he sees a teenage red- haired beggar and is fascinated by her. This is Vixen, a homeless girl with a Vixen tattoo on her chest who survives by the generosity of people on the streets of London.  Forester takes her home and feeds her, but his family is consumed with jealousy and she is assaulted sexually by members of his family. Vixen runs away, taking Forester’s wallet.

She uses the money to build herself a shanty. She meets Fox who manages to overcome her fear of love and they marry.

Forester who is obsessed by the memory of her tries to seek her out and hires a detective to find her and bring her home. He finds her and all ends in tragedy.

Is it possible to have immersive opera? And yes o course it is. It has been provided in the Vaults underneath Waterloo Station. The action takes place with two principal singers Ivan Lyudlow as Forester and Rosie Lomas as Vixen plus five singer/musicians  and all are scattered among the audience.  The audience is moved several times – from the bar, through the auditorium into the Forester’s kitchen and the final part is in the theatre.

But the real adventure of this production is the production of earphones which are handed out to each member of the audience so that they get an exact representation of the words and music as the whole congregation including the actors are moving around the building. The earphones are comfortable and one forgets about them as soon as the production begins – they also help to drown out the sound of the trains rumbling above.

The singing is of course wonderful and the cast give it their all, bringing out the drama of the situation. I did feel however that the singers were all perfect in their rendition of both the words and the notes and were powerful enough to fill the building with sound, without the need of earphones.  A bit of a gimmick in fact. But it did all add to the fun.  A great adventure that should not be missed.

FOUL PAGES *** By Robin Hooper
At the Hope Theatre
Plays involving William Shakespeare are always fascinating. However his heart and his brain have been investigated by so many different writers with so many differing results that it is a joy to see him as a simple working writer collaborating with his friend The Countess of Pembroke (The impressive Clare Bloomer)who is playing host to the players escaping from plague ridden London.
Another advantage here is that the actors are all living in close contact so, like an old fashioned play there is just the one set.
However he has written it in short scenes, and it takes a while to get ones brain into the correct gear, especially as between each little scene there is a whole lot of excruciatingly loud music which I found not only annoying, but in my case actually painful.
The main occupation of Mr Shakespeare (played with dignity by Ian Hallard)is to finish his play in order to win the favour of the new Scottish King James the first. A familiar problem arises when one is writing under orders, the patron insists on undesirable alterations in the casting. The leading role is Rosalind and the leading juvenile of the company is being pushed aside to give room to the Innamorato of the King .
Of course much is made of the casting of plays most especially the use of young men to play the leading ladies and there are many slightly bawdy and very gay jokes during the whole of the performance.
The play begins as a crazy comedy, the main character being a talking dog who is the unnamed and unrecognised narrator of the action. It is a great and unusual part for an actor and it is played with lots of fun and dedication by James King. A terrific role where he doesn’t have to communicate with the actors except to get a lot of cuddles.
Clare Bloomer is an imperious countess and a lot is made of the fact that Will collaborates and takes advice from a woman, so that women had their place even though they were not allowed to perform. Peg, her maid is played by Olivia Onyehara and these are the only two women in the cast but they are strongly registered..
All the young men are absolutely gorgeous and play with great honesty, truth and wit. Lewis Chandler is the blonde beauty originally engaged to play Rosalind and Thomas Bird is his usurper. Greg Baxter plays Ed, the sweet young man who is playing Orlando and is distressed to lose his lovely Rosalind.
Probably the most comical character is that of Tom Vanson who is the highly vain and over-dressed, over-made up and over- jewelled Scottish King – and his over-butch Protector is played by Jack Harding.
All good, crazy – if sometimes confusing – fun. The edge taken off from me – and probably only me – by the horrendous noise, like being at the heart of a thunderstorm. Longed for my earplugs.

THANK YOU CARL DJERASSI  a personal memoir by aline waites

‘This is my son, Jacob’ said the Jewish lady.          He was visiting from Israel and she had brought him into the office to introduce us.

‘Hello Jacob’ I smiled and held out my hand.

The young man gave a start and took a step backwards, putting both hands behind him. On his face was a look of disgust.

I stood for a moment with my rejected hand still held out and felt waves of anger and embarrassment permeate my being. I sat down and continued with my work.

When I asked the Jewish lady why her son had behaved in this impolite manner, she laughed as if it had been merely a charming eccentricity on his part.

‘He is thrum’ she said

‘What does that mean?’

‘I t is against his religion to touch women in case they are unclean’

‘Unclean?’

‘He doesn’t know you. You could be menstruating’

She dismissed the event in such a frivolous manner that I could feel the killer instinct, usually dormant in me, rise to the surface. However, I restrained myself from physical violence and instead called another Jewish friend and told him the story.

‘She spoke of it as a perfectly normal thing to do.’

He took the incident seriously and was indignant not only on my behalf, but on behalf of his race.

‘It was not normal at all’ he said. ‘He could have been part of some fundamentalist sect, but this is the kind of rudeness that promotes racism.’

This incident lingered in my mind and triggered off a long forgotten memory – a traumatic happening of my childhood.

Until I was about four years old I accepted my mother as she appeared to all who surrounded her – beautiful – like a Goddess. Thick waves of hair the colour of burnished chestnuts fell to her shoulders. Her highly mobile face, with its retroussee nose and perfect teeth, was always lit up with smiles and her laughing hazel eyes were framed with the kind of eyelashes that they said, ‘could sweep the gravel path’. People argued about whether she was most like Greer Garson or Hedy Lamarr.

Although it was rarely put to her mouth, a cigarette appeared to grow between the fingers of her left hand. Its function was as a convenient prop to emphasise the gestures that punctuated her conversation.  A cloud of L’Aimant – her favourite fragrance, surrounded here wherever she walked. L’aimant – The magnet – it could have been named after her. I always think of her in the centre of a crowd of happy people. She was amusing with a sense of humour that was sometimes cruel but always funny, and often aimed at herself.  For instance, she bitterly regretted not being able to sing. As she reached for the high notes, her eyebrows would rise up into her forehead and she would stand on tiptoe as if to capture the sound above her head, but the voice inevitably came out in a kind of breathy wheeze. The effect was very funny and she used it to great effect at parties. It was admirable that she managed to turn her one failing into an advantage.

My father was tall and blond with a roman nose and forget me not blue eyes like Steve McQueen, he could sing and play the piano and spoke several languages, but he was shy, wrapped up in his books – neither so available nor so popular with their many friends. I got used to hearing people say as they looked at me               ‘What a pity she takes after her father. She’ll never be like her mother.’

Why is it people talk about children in front of their faces as if they were deaf? Anyway, how could I possibly aspire to be like my mother? She was a princess in my eyes.                Until I discovered there was something vile inside her.

My father had driven us to Leeds to do some shopping. He set us down in the middle of the vast shopping area and went off to look at masculine things like golf clubs.

My mother and I had tea in Fenwick’s – our favourite place. The café was not yet full but there was a muted buzz of conversation from the other tables which all added to the cosy atmosphere. For little people the management supplied special high chairs carved and painted like Disney characters. I always chose Snow White. I had decided to be Snow White when I grew up. Hair black as ebony, skin white as snow. I was blonde and freckled, but a girl can dream.

I took sips of my milk shake – a delicious malted concoction that frothed up in a special kind of long straight glass encased in a silver holder, with a handle that could be held like a cup. Toasted teacakes arrived on a silver platter with a domed covering to keep them warm. My mother laid one on a plate for me and the delicious smell of toast rose up – toast and butter and sultanas all mingled together and, hovering around my mother, the constant smell of L’aimant.

I liked to watch her as she poured her tea from a little silver teapot into the thin china cups – smaller than the ones we had at home. The sugar was in dice shaped lumps in a silver bowl and there were tongs with birdlike claws to pick up the lumps and drop them into the tea with a satisfying plop. My mother used the tongs neatly – although she would never have bothered to do that in the kitchen at home. Grown ups always did things differently when they were ‘out.’ The plop of the sugar into the tea made us giggle. We were good friends having a happy time together.

But as I gazed at her, my mother’s face changed. Her usually rosy glow disappeared and she turned a kind of plastic almost transparent yellow – the colour of Vaseline. She gave a cry and clutched her stomach.

She rose to her feet and snatched my hand, pulling me out of the high chair. Her usual springy step had turned into a curious staggering gait as she dragged me into the Ladies room. Ignoring the woman who sat there at a table with a bowl of money beside her, she opened the cubicle door and pulled me inside with her. She bolted the door, but before she had time to lift the seat, it happened.

I stood beside her and watched in fascinated horror as it seemed my mother’s whole insides were emptied out in front of me. The blood was dark red with bits floating in it and it had a curious dank smell which mingled strangely with the sweet powdery smell of L’Aimant.

I watched the disgusting mess pour out of her as she gasped and wept with pain.

There was a knocking on the door as the attendant called out ‘Are you all right?’  With a great effort of will, my mother pulled herself together enough to call out in her normal voice.

‘Yes, thank you. My little girl has an upset tummy. She’ll be all right in a minute’

I never quite understood why the blame had to rest with me. Many years later I realised that she could not allow her narcissistic image to be defiled even in the eyes of a lavatory attendant.

After a while the flooding stopped and she seemed to notice my stricken face for the first time. She smiled at me through her tears.

‘It’s all part of being a woman’ she said ‘you’ll find out one day’

She tried to put her arms around me but I flinched from her touch. She shrugged and pulling almost the entire contents from the toilet paper dispenser she, with unusual efficiency, managed to clean up the mess on the cubicle floor.

For months afterwards the smell of her blood assailed me whenever she came near me. It lingered in my nostrils. I drew back from her, was not even able to look at her without remembering the awfulness that had poured from her. Now I was glad not to be like my mother – or Snow White.

Shortly after the birth of my son, I was introduced to the birth control pill. To my joy, my periods almost completely disappeared.  Now I was in control of my own body. My mother was angry with me, she considered the pill was immoral and unnatural. So she continued with her heavy periods until they culminated in an appalling menopause and a hysterectomy. She was never my fairy princess again and I have never been able to smell L’aimant without the accompanying odour of menstrual blood. Incidentally, the perfume I use is called ‘Escape’

This story remained a secret until now. But the memory somehow reconciled me to Jacob’s hurtful and insulting behaviour.   The hostility received from a complete stranger was certainly no worse than my rejection of my own mother and for precisely the same reason.

Thank you Car Djerassi for inventing the birth control bill while other scientists were concentrating on the Atom Bomb.

Linda Anderson prompted me to write this.

The prompt helped of course – and the idea of linking sketches together with a single theme.  The first sketch is the encounter with the Jewish man, followed by the extraordinary reaction of his mother. To explain this away I needed another Jewish character to restore the balance.  I have many Jewish friends of both sexes and I discussed it with them. They all responded with the same shock horror so I condensed them into one. It was originally female, but I thought all the “shes” might be confusing, and besides, making it a man highlighted the difference in masculine attitudes.

The incident with the orthodox Jewish person was amazingly traumatic. I was deeply humiliated when he refused to shake hands with me and even more distressed when I heard the reason. It brought back to me the feeling that merely being a woman was something disgusting.

The second sketch begins with a description of my mother. Had I been writing fiction I would have inserted it drop by drop into the Fenwick’s scene, but as it is a non fiction piece and autobiographical, I felt a factual and fairly detailed description was required. I was trying to get over the glamour of the woman and I didn’t want anything to interrupt the feeling of extreme happiness in Fenwick’s which leads to the terrible climax of the story.

Originally, I had thought to carry the story on into adolescence, how my friends dealt with the onset of the curse, and my own reaction to it and to them. However, it turned out to be irrelevant and too long so I cut straight to part three. This was my refusal to follow my mother into the inevitable suffering of womankind by going on the pill.

It is no wonder madness and menstruation used to go hand in hand. Even the condition known as hysteria is named after the womb. I recently saw the film “Tom and Viv” again. The hormonal imbalance of T.S Eliot’s wife, Vivienne which caused her violent mood swings also caused her to have frequent periods. He was not able to conceal his repugnance and this drove her completely crazy. His guilt made him treat her so badly – he had her sectioned and incarcerated for the rest of her life. I believe Marilyn Monroe had a similar problem, causing her various absences and her often reluctance to go on set. However, this was hardly a suitable subject for Photoplay Magazine and her reputation suffered in consequence. So many women have suffered in silence because menstruation was for years a taboo subject.

Thank God for Carl Djerassi, the scientist who invented the pill while his contemporaries were probably intent on creating weapons of mass destruction..

LIZZIE at Greenwich Theatre

Concept and Lyrics by Steven Cheslik-Demeyer and Tim Maner

Book by Tim Maner

Music by Steven Cheslik-Demeyer and Alan Stevens Hewit

There was a song back in the day that went ‘Oh you can’t chop your poppa up in Massachusetts’ A song that was of course a reference to Lizzie Borden the life of whom also prompted the nursery rhyme and this rock opera.

This is a tremendous production with just four powerful female singers and a six-piece rock band. The story sheds another light on the old melodrama. Giving a feminist slant on the true-life story of an evil man slaughtered by Lizzie the daughter he bullied and used as a sex slave.

Everything in this production is big. Big sets, dramatically lit with varying colours often illustrating the bloody nature of the story,

Andrew Borden was a billionaire – the richest man in town, but the family was kept in penury. After the death of his wife he married again, a woman loathed by her two stepdaughters who believed that she was marrying Andrew for the money she would inherit after his death. The elder sister Emma is the first one to say ‘She must die before Father’ so the daughters would not be left penniless.

Emma is played by Eden Espinosa, Lizzie by Danish actress/singer, Bjorg Gamst. The cast is made up of the maid Bridget (who they call Maggie) and Alice Russell, the neighbour who loves Lizzie and these were both witnesses at the trial.

These are four passionate and powerful young women who have been kept down by the patriarchal laws of the land. It seems as if the final straw for Lizzie was when Andrew, in a fit of jealous rage disposed of  her pet pigeons, after she sings of her love for them, ‘The soul of the white bird,’ by chopping off their heads and sending them to his daughter in a blanket

In Act one set in a steamy heat of august 1892 they wear Victorian Dress, The conservative clothing a symbol of their imprisonment in the rage, fear and frustration caused by their female station in life. But in Act two after the murder, they celebrate their freedom dressed like Burlesque queens in suspenders and corsets. .

There is tenderness and true love between the women as well as their collaboration in hate for the father. Alice loves Lizzie and sings the love song ‘I dream of you’. Unlike the song Lizzie sings about her relationship with Andrew ‘This isn’t love’ which is very moving and is followed up with another area ‘I gotta get out of here’

Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks.When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty one.

Directed by Victoria Bussert, Choreography by Greg Daniela and Martin Bergmann Konge is musical director.

A brilliant work set in United States but performed with true Scandinavian sensibilities. A great combination.

ROUNDELAY

Schnitzler’s La Ronde a sexually explicit play in seven scenes has been adapted many times and in many ways but never before has it concentrated on passion in the 3^rd age – illustrating the mature kind of love which can be even more powerful than that of younger people.

Clare Perkins, dressed as a circus ringmaster in fishnet tights is the puppet master of this circus of life and love. Her voice has the smooth sweetness of an angel but it can turn harsh and aggressive when she cracks her whip and very funny when she lets fall an exclamation in broad cockney.

She gives a Stunning performance that dominates the proceedings. She announces the scenes, bringing on the whole company dressed in fanciful circus gear who dance in a circle like children playing ring a ring a roses and then break off to dance with each other, changing partners regularly. These scenes happen throughout the performance between the short plays with some of them performing acrobatic stunts on two long white cloths hanging from the ceiling.

There are seven short plays each with two characters showing an aspect of their love life – and one protagonist from each play goes on to appear in another episode of their amorous life. The stories come in different forms from a Private Lives type scenario to an event in a gay club.

For me, there are two outstanding scenes. One is heart breaking –  about a caring and patient man looking after a wife with Alzheimer’s, sensitively played by Holly de Jong and Roger Alborough. The other one is of a bedridden widow who still yearns for a lover’s touch. ‘I love fucking’ cries Ann Firbank to her youthful friend Elan James. This is sensationally done and is probably the sexiest scene I have ever witnessed on stage.

We end up with one of the partners from the first play. We have come full circle and the company do their final dance. The circus theme brought alive by their colourful eccentric costumes designed by Moi Trans.

The clever, witty and moving script is by Sonja Linden and it is vivaciously brought to life by director Anna Lewich and choreographer Diane Alison-Mitchell.

Aline

CAUTIONARY TALES for daughters

Songs your mother never taught you.

BY Tanya Holt – Writer and performer

With Jenny Gould at the piano.

This solo performer is mostly talking about herself in a supposedly self-critical way.  Tanya sets off with a disadvantage from the beginning, giving herself the persona of a pushy mother – a bit off putting for someone who has met a lot of these in her lifetime. In this monologue, she is presumably giving advice to her daughter Dotty to make sure the child doesn’t make the same mistakes.

When she was a child she wanted to be a cowgirl but felt under constraint to be a fluffy little princess. A Daddy’s girl! She then imagines herself into the persona of a Daddy seeing his teenager daughter out with a boy for the first time. He is anxious, knowing the kind of mind of a young boy has and what they are thinking.  After all he was one himself (MY feeling is that he still is).

The first act finale is a graphic description of her birthing experience. I found myself longing for the interval and my chocolate ice-cream.

However, there are some jolly things. The set is without a set – just odd bits and pieces dotted about, a piano and a screen. The visuals are amusing, most especially the ones with medieval characters that keep us entertains while she sings a song accompanying herself on the zither. The song is similar to Hardy’s story of the Ruined Maid, without the happy ending. Tanya has a powerful voice which she often uses at full volume. Later she also plays the musical saw.

After the interval she carries on with some more little lessons about the mistakes she has made, presumably to teach Dollie not to repeat them.

There is a girl on a yo yo diet, the girl who submits to her boyfriend taking pornographic pictures of her which he then puts on facebook. The dangers of overspending of designer handbags. The boss who molests his female staff and they are not able to complain. She talks about a man who will hit you. Be careful not to accept his love and apology afterwards – or he’ll do it again. Just walk out straight away.

There are some very lovely bits. ‘A little Grey’ is about finding the first sign of ageing. She sings this a capella, very sweetly.

She is at her best when she is chatting to the audience and getting them to sing or hold her fans to cause a breeze during one of her numbers in which she resembles Kate Bush.

She praises alcohol and how lucky she is to always knows when she’s had enough always blaming her regular bouts of vomiting on the potato chips or peanuts.

I think she is at her best when she is communicating with the audience, getting them to sing, or to hold her fans to cause a breeze when she does a Kate Bush kind of number.

Jenny Gould is a huge asset, she changes costume for each number, plays up a storm on the piano and harmonises with Tanya in her high soprano.

The show is very womanish – not quite my cup of tea. I could imagine her being a blast at hen nights.

PROMISES PROMISES

AT SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE

Promises promises takes us back to the pre Beatles fifties.

It is a musical version of The Apartment – a film which is embedded in one’s very soul if you are old enough to remember those bad old days.  Neil Simon wrote the original script along with Billy Wilder and the frightening thing about it is that it was based on real life Hollywood events.. It is a nasty story and it was a cause celebre at the time.

It is strange to see Daisy Maynard as the victimised waitress Fran as an almost carbon copy of Shirley MacLaine. – I found this sort of worrying. I would rather she had been a bit different.  Gabriel Vick is I think is too attractive in the Jack Lemon Role. But it is an impossible task to follow that great actor. Nevertheless, Vick has a great talent especially in his soliloquies to the audience.

It is basically a story of two victims. Chuck is in the corporate section of an insurance company and is longing to become an executive. He is willing to let out his apartment to his senior colleagues in exchange for their promises to get him a seat in the Directors’ Dining Room .

Fran is the little waitress he fancies but who is in love with Mr Sheldrake the big boss who has promised to divorce his wife for her. A promise he has made to practically every other girl in the company.  He is a born philanderer, high up in the corporate ladder and he is played by Paul Robinson who is stunningly good looking and with a great singing voice.

I think one of the most impressive things about this production is the set by director Bronagh Lagan. who has done wonders with the small space at the Playhouse. The scene changes are good but sadly there is just too much moving about of furniture – a new set for each scene all done to music and by the dancers who play the stereotypical stenographers who self-consciously wiggle their behinds and behave like idiots in order to share Chuck’s apartment with the somewhat unattractive middle aged directors of the company.

These guys are played , sung and danced with enormous ebullience and a great deal of leering at the sexy girls. Question – Would they have had beards in the fifties/sixties?

Luckily Act two begins with a starring performance from Alex Young as Marge. She is a wonderfully inventive comic turn and her two short scenes with Chuck are the highlight of the show. Another highlight is the performance by John Guerrasio who plays a comical doctor – an actor who makes the most of Neil Simon’s Jewish wit.

I was not particularly au fait with the music (I’d only heard one of them) ‘I’ll never fall in love again’ which the two main protagonists perform sweetly with Vick on acoustic guitar.

This musical will be successful – yet another notch on the Southwark Playhouse musical belt.

This book by Aline Waites is going into print tomorrow and should soon be available on Amazon to order. Aline Waites is an English actress, director, producer, reviewer and writer. She is widely kn…

Source: She That Plays the Queen