REVIEW: Moonfleet at the Watermill theatre, Newbury

The Watermill continues to prove it is a very special venue , intimate and friendly but consistently producing very good quality productions and with a strong active Senior Youth Group of years 7 to 11 supported by The Sackler Trust, Principal Supporter of The Watermill's core Education and Outreach work. The latest show is a very fine adaption by Danielle Pearson of the J Meade Falkner novel Moonfleet which uses a cast of 28 to tell the story of smugglers on the Dorset coast. 

Written as a story telling by the Mohunes, the inhabitants of the village, who appear to draw lots from a bag to cast the main parts at the start of show. But it is an ensemble piece with lines spread throughout the large cast who are well drilled to sharply deliver them in a rhythmic poetic fashion that keeps the audience engaged and interested. 

REVIEW: Macbeth at the Watermill

Paul Hart, the artistic Director of the Watermill and Director of this production together with Movement Director Tom Jackson Greaves are establishing a very interesting style of Ensemble cast productions having previously collaborated on Twelfth Night, Teddy, Sweet Charity and The Borrowers for the company. They have now turned their attention to Macbeth and set it in modern army dress and a brick built hotel designed by Katie Lias which turns the intimate theatre into the castle settings for the play. It creates a fresh modern feel which with rock/pop music underscoring many scenes makes it easily accessible and I think very appealing to a younger audience.

They pack the production with lots of clever ideas with some very good use of projection on the rear wall, a bellboy at the centre of the action curiously offering polo mints, and a chorus of sexily dressed temptresses. When the talk is of "black and deep desires", the cast burst into song with the Rolling Stones Paint it Black. After Macbeth has had Banquo killed, they sing L-O-V-E by Gregory Porter while performing a bizarre dance. And when Macbeth is killed they sing Johnny Cash's Hurt. When Macbeth speaks the line "is that a dagger I see before me" the hallucination is two chorus with two knives. The directorial choices are interesting but ultimately distracting from Shakespeare's words and in some ways overwhelm the efforts of the cast. 

REVIEW: Sweet Charity at Watermill Theatre

Paul Hart, the artistic director of the Watermill has managed to follow up the wonderful Jerusalem with a brilliant fresh reworking of the sixties musical Sweet Charity with an extraordinarily talented cast of thirteen actor-musicians. It is sexy, energetic and great fun.

The set design by Diego Pitarch is very clever making the most of the tiny Watermill stage space to create the multiple locations of this fast paced show. The images on the screen at back of the stage are modern scene setters , a lake complete with splashes, a lift that rises six floors, tube stations and streetscapes. In front two L shaped mirrors are manipulated to act as a revolving door, the lift, a phone box, the wardrobe as well as Fandago club mirrors. Six cubes are used for furniture, walkways and the parachute ride. It is highly imaginative and works extremely well. My only reservation is that it should have been set on a raised stage as the sight lines from rows B to D are poor when the cast sit on the boxes or the floors.

REVIEW: Burke and Hare at the Watermill Theatre

The names of Burke and Hare have become closely associated with the grave robbers of Edinburgh in the early 1800's to supply the anatomists need for bodies to dissect in the city but in fact, their tale is even more macabre as they have lured victims to their lodgings and murdered them. This new version by Tom Wentworth turns the grisly tale into a black comedy, a sort of cross between Horrible Histories and Sweeney Todd. He cleverly build the play around just three actors and has great fun creating business around the lack of cast members including calling for one member of the audience to join them to play a cadaver. Much of the humour derives from the theatricality of the presentation although occasionally the comedy is stretched too thin as when one actor has to play the entire extended family of another. 

The success of the production derives from the high energy and talented cast and the simple but effective way they switch between characters. All three at various points play one of the victims, Ferguson with a wisp and a red coat. Katy Daghorn is excellent as a varied group of participants including Mrs Hare , Anatomist Dr Munro , Helen (Burkes fiancé ), Mary (another lodging guest) and the initial actor to play student Ferguson. She distinguishes each character with a simple costume change and varied accent, in a charming and engaging way. Her two colleagues are Alex Parry mainly as William Hare and the cripple Jim and Hayden Wood as William Burke and Dr Knox (who buys the bodies) with each also playing the various other victims. The height difference between Wood and Daghorn is also used to good effect.

Gemma Sutton to star in The Watermill Theatre SWEET CHARITY, New Season announced

The Watermill Theatre’s new season, announced today by Artistic Director, Paul Hart, includes the funny and poignant musical SWEET CHARITY, and the premieres of three new plays, including TRIAL BY LAUGHTER, by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman. Booking opens on Monday 23 April with Friends of The Watermill priority booking from Monday 16 April.

Hart says: ‘With new plays, three London transfers and three Watermill productions on tour nationally, and one touring to local schools, our programme is ambitious and varied. We continue our commitment to championing new artists and work, and to taking our productions beyond The Watermill to an ever-increasing audience.’

Directed by Paul Hart, SWEET CHARITY will be brought up-to-date in a bold reimagining with Gemma Sutton as Charity. Gemma’s credits include Strictly Ballroom(West Yorkshire Playhouse/ The Princess of Wales Theatre), The Go Between (Apollo Theatre), Gypsy (Savoy Theatre) and Carousel (Arcola Theatre). Sarah Travis, who has a long-standing association with The Watermill Theatre as orchestrator, musical supervisor and composer, returns to work alongside Charlie Ingles on the score by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields, adapting it for a company of actor-musicians. Choreography will be by Tom Jackson Greaves whose recent credits include: Teddy (Watermill/The Vaults), Paint Your Wagon (Liverpool Everyman), Spring Awakening (Manchester Hope Mill).

REVIEW: The Rivals at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury

I last saw Richard Sheridan's The Rivals in 1983 on the Olivier stage at the National Theatre with a sumptuous Bath Crescent set and a glorious cast which included Geraldine McEwan as Mrs Malaprop, Michael Horden as Sir Antony Absolute with Patrick Ryecart as his son Jack and Tim Curry as Bob Acres. It lIved long in the memory and therefore it was interesting to see what the intimate space of the Watermill theatre in Newbury could do with the classic restoration style comedy of love and deceit. The dated attitudes to the role and expected behaviour of women including the dangers to them of reading is both parodied and reinforced by the play. As a result Director Jonathan Humphreys and Designer James Cotterill make a determined attempt to present the play differently with a cast of just eight.

They set the play not in the houses and parks of Bath but on a Georgian stage with shell footlights and a mass of ornate drapes and a large thrust stage which means a fifth of the audience view the production from the side as very little of the action takes place behind the proscenium arch that the curtains frame. While the curtains do suggest different internal locations they make an odd backdrop to the crucial duelling scene where the truths get revealed. WIth the audience on three sides you might expect them to be regularly addressed with the comic asides of the play but this is restricted to them being asked to hold a book and duelling pistols and occasional glances. This fails to make the most of the setting or make the audience conspirators in the confusion on stage.

REVIEW: The Borrowers at the Watermill in Newbury

Mary Norton’s award winning Borrowers books written in the nineteen fifties present a staging problem for theatre which is easily solved in TV and Film adaptations because the essence of the stories is that the little five inch tall people (The Borrowers) live their lives trying to avoid being seen by the “Human Beans”. The interaction between the two is central to the first book. Toots Butcher’s set design firmly places us in the Borrowers world with a large Colman’s mustard box, abacus, crayons, matchsticks and ABC cubes setting out their home beneath the floors of an old country house in rural England.

It is here we meet Pod (energetically played by Matthew Romain), his worried wife Homily (Charlotte Workman) and their adventurous daughter fourteen year old Arrietty (Nenda Neurer) as Pod returns from another borrowing expedition in the house above. It is easy to accept them as small people in their natural habitat nervously responding to noises from above. The challenge is representing the Human Beans who catch sight of them and it is a weakness of the first half direction that this is inconsistent, sometimes The Boy (played with youthful charm by Frazer Hadfield) is on stage peering into the floor boards, sometimes he is high above look down from a platform and sometime we are asked to imagine he is above the auditorium. The other human beans Mrs Driver (Natasha Karp) and Crampfurl (Ed Macarthur) appear mainly on the stage amongst the Borrowers borrowings. It would have worked better if director Paul Hart had used the high levels of the lovely theatre consistently to represent the Human’s domain and the stage the Borrowers environment.

National Tour announced for the award winning musical TEDDY

Sarah Loader for Snapdragon Productions in association with The Watermill Theatre present the award-winning musical “TEDDY” at The Watermill Theatre from Thursday 11 January – Saturday 10 February 2018 (Press Night Monday 15 January at 7.30pm), ahead of a national tour and a London season at The Vaults, Waterloo from Thursday 29 March – Saturday 5 May 2018. Full tour schedule and on sale information below.

Following the recent success of their smash hit production “Boudica” at The Globe, Tristan Bernays reunites with director Eleanor Rhode and choreographer Tom Jackson Greaves for the 1950s Rock ‘n’ Roll musical TEDDY. First seen at the Southwark Playhouse in 2015 and winner of Best New Musical at the Off West End Awards, TEDDY has music by Dougal Irvine, Musical direction by Harrison White, Set design by Max Dorey, Lighting design by Christopher Nairne, Sound design by Max Pappenheim, Costume design by Holly Rose Henshaw and Casting by Natalie Gallacher for Pippa Ailion Casting.

REVIEW: Picture of Dorian Gray at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury

Oscar Wilde's only book , a Picture of Dorian Gray was first published in 1890 and was criticised for being indecent and subjected to censorship as it dealt with Dorian's pursuit of an immoral life having wished his portrait aged rather than himself . It is a book about a Victorian male aristocratic dominated society with only two female characters, Sybil Vane, an actress from a poor background who commits suicide when Dorian finishes with her and Mrs Vane , her mother. 

The book , a gothic horror , is now on the school's curriculum and therefore seems a natural follow on to last year's Watermill school tour production of Frankenstein . This production stages a version of the book with just three female actresses and is created within the constraints of a school tour budget by Phoebe Eclair - Powell , daughter of comedian Jenny Eclair. She and director Owen Horsley have done a brilliant job translating the tale to the stage and have great fun with the form of the play and turn the budget limitations to clever advantage . A simple illuminated frame is used to create the settings and present the picture itself .

Alistair McGowan to Play Lead Role in UNDER MILK WOOD at The Watermill Theatre

'It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobbled streets silent…'

The Watermill Theatre announces the cast for Dylan Thomas’ comic masterpiece, Under Milk Wood, A Play for Voices…, which runs from 25 October to 4 November. Alistair McGowan (West End, RSC, Lyric, TV, Radio 4) will lead the company in a production which forms part of the theatre’s 50th anniversary programme. Under Milk Woodwas The Watermill’s first professional production in 1967 with a cast that included David Jason.

Directed by Brendan O'Hea, McGowan will be the First Voice in a company playing multiple roles that includes Steffan Cennydd (Reverend Eli Jenkins), Ross Ford (Mr. Pugh), Lynn Hunter (Captain Cat), Charlotte O’Leary(Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard) and Caroline Sheen (Polly Garter), who appeared as Polly Baker in The Watermill’s 2016 production of Crazy For You.

Watermill Theatre announces Autumn/Winter 2014 season

The Watermill is delighted to announce its Autumn/Winter 2014 Season, with highlights including the World Premiere of But First This,  A Musical Homage to Radio 4 written by Radio 4 newsreader Kathy Clugston, a new 75-minute three-man adaptation of Hamlet, and a Christmas production of Peter Pan with original music by Simon Slater. Full season on sale now.

JOURNEY’S END

By R C Sherriff

Thursday 11 September - Saturday 11 October 2014

‘You don’t know him as I do; I love that fellow. I’d go to hell with him.’

Just before Germany’s spring offensive in 1918, British officers are in a dug-out on the front line. Keen young officer Raleigh joins the company and finds Stanhope, his old friend, much changed. Trying to create some sort of normality amidst the horror, are Trotter, who is furious about how the war has interfered with his meal times, Hibbert, who is trying to find a way to escape, and Osborne, who would rather be tending his garden.

Journey’s End is an unflinching portrayal of men facing the unbearable but finding the camaraderie to keep on fighting. R C Sherriff wrote this powerful, moving play based on his own experience in the trenches and The Watermill revives it in this First World War centenary year.