A Long Spoon and Bigger Pants

The Master and the Margarita

Amateur Drama Club

ADC Theatre

February 4th 2005

Normally when I sit through an ADC show I marvel at the maturity of the performances. This show flailed and struggled in a way that very much belied the players' youth. The cast gave the impression that whatever truths there were in the script were stammering out of the mouths of babes. For kids of this age, there's no difference in the treatment of Jack the Ripper and Peter Sutcliffe as guests to the devil's party. Both are moustache-twirling pantomime baddies. Communism is something you did for GCSE History, not a genuine blight on the lives of half the world's population or a force that would have murdered the author of this play had its existence ever been known. Censorship is something that happened abroad in the bad old days, not something that evangelical Christians and fundamentalist Muslims are campaigning for, something that home secretaries are signing into law.

There's a long literary history to prove that old Nick is a tricky customer to write and perform about. You start out writing a poem about how great god is and before you know it Mr Sulphur Breath is upstaging the goody-goodies, getting all the memorable lines and becoming the archetypal modern hero. It's just as hard if you try to make it blatantly obvious that your devil really is a nasty piece of work. Dennis Potter tried this, having his satanic character rape a profoundly-handicapped girl. His play was banned from television. It's tough, but with Milton, Potter and others like James Hogg and Jim Thompson (never read Pop. 1280 in an election year), it's worth looking on at the struggle.

Perhaps that's what was so disappointing here. There was no evidence that the cast wanted to take up the fight. They seemed happy for the devil to ponce about and do card tricks. Simon Evans' portrayal of the devil was the stand-out performance of the play. Still he never seemed to try to ground the prince of darkness's devilry in any kind of reality. Playing the devil as if he were Frazer Crane was funny but it dislocates us from the real evils of communist Russia or for that matter Roman Judea. Only Dan Mansell managed to lower the temperature in the vertebrae department.

Everybody was acting like fury but nobody seemed to connect. The Master and the Margarita never got their relationship going. It was like watching Ray Mears try to start a fire by rubbing two damp twigs together. The levels were all wrong.

Perhaps in an attempt to stand out from the cacophony, Nadia Kamil took her clothes off. She is amazing (the program notes were right). In black lacy pants she's actually jaw-dropping. One of the jobs though, surely of a director is to stop this kind of grandstanding. Once Nadia had (so to speak) let the cat out of the bag, the only real chance the play had to regain the attention of the male audience was that she follow her ambition (program notes again) and run away to join a circus. Even worse, or better depending on what you thought you’d paid for, it kicked off a "strip to your knickers" competition among the female members of the cast. This raged all the way through the second act and pretty much obliterated the last traces of any drama.

Something for Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

The European Theatre Group

ADC Theatre

January 14th 2004

It always feels like a privilege to see a European Theatre Group production. It's a pretty good recipe - a cast of Cambridge University's brightest young things; a play by old beardy; and a good long run in Europe to knock all the corners off, smooth out all the wrinkles and make the cast feel like conquering heroes.

Even so, this production showed itself to be better than the sum of all those parts. It wasn't simply the smooth patina of a long run that made this a joy to watch. Almost all the playing showed signs of thoughtful casting and even more thoughtful rehearsal. Ben Kerridge as Leonato is a born character actor. How could someone do so much with so little beard? Alex Lamont also powered through the play as Margaret making something interesting out of almost nothing (is she really captain of the Newnham belly dancing team?). Max Bennett gave a Billy Idol-ish performance as Don Jon. Then after a quick change he managed to point up the comedy of the tricky "clown" scenes, playing Dogberry in a way that allowed you to laugh, even if you hadn't read the footnotes in the Arden edition. If you think this isn't hard you should see Michael Keaton try to do it in the film.

This isn't one of those fancy deluxe Shakespeare plays where all the lovers have to do is a bit of sighing and snogging. There aren't going to be some faeries and rude mechanicals along in a minute to relieve the tedium. This is just your basic romantic comedy and the principals have to provide all the frills themselves. Most of the responsibility for making the play worth watching falls on the shoulders of the young lovers, Benedick (Adam Shindler) and Beatrice (Susanna Hislop). Shindler was more than up to the task, delivering a laddish performance somewhere equidistant between Martin Clunes, Hugh Grant and Darren Gough. Some of best moments of the evening were when he was alone on stage, tirelessly helping his lines off the page (at one stage literally flirting with audience participation) and always making the maximum sense of Benedick as a full-rounded character who spells Benedick with a capital BLOKE.

It was only when Beatrice and Benedick were on stage together that some of the expected fireworks failed to occur. The spine of the play is this spiky relationship. Sadly this was the one thing that was slightly limp. Maybe this was a directorial problem of not getting the volume levels right. Benedick needed to be turned down a couple of notches from "eleven" to give Beatrice a chance to shine. Or maybe it was that Susanna Hislop wasn't really comfortable in a role that needs something more than the straightforward romantic lead.

And then there's the broken rail in the path of true love's smooth running. Claudio's denunciation of Hero (the girl he is suppose to be marrying, but who he thinks he saw snogging a ginger-haired bloke the night before) was played too straight to allow it to fit with the rest of the play. If Claudio does hate Hero at this point, and her father really does want her dead, the play teeters over into melodrama and the plot jack-knifes. This is after all a comedy. There's going to be a wedding scene along any minute and we're going to have to like these people again and feel happy that they're getting married. Surely the only way to play this scene is as one of terrific uncertainty and tension. Claudio and Leonato are denouncing Hero against their better judgement, they are saying things that they can still hardly believe. If we believe that they believe what they're saying, there's no clear way back to the happy ending.

Ah well everything turned out all right in the end. The baddy ran away (probably to sit on a motorbike and snarl) and all the expected marriages occurred in the right places. I left the theatre knowing that I'll be back next year expecting yet another glorious European Theatre Group production.

16th January 2004

Happy Salad - The Footlights Spring Review

ADC Theatre, Cambridge, 10th March 2001

Gush, gush, gush. This is the first time I've seen the footlights in action, so maybe after a while I'll get used them. It's just so ballsy to decide you're going to put on a whole evening's worth of entertainment which consists entirely of sketches. Not a comic song, not a tired, catch-phrase-laden stocking filler (so beloved of the big TV sketch shows) in sight. Nothing but nearly two hours of sketches. And how cock-sure do you have to be to be certain that a good percentage of them are funny? Without even trying them out on an audience?Very cock-sure indeed.

Then again, when you're faced with the task of living up to the footlights terrible, indelible reputation for not being as good as it used to be, you probably have the choices of coming out all guns blazing or simply running away. Even if there was such a point in the dim and distant past where Emma Thompson shared the ADC stage with John Cleese, Peter Cook and Groucho Marx or whoever, (and, erm, there wasn't) the current wearers of this comic albatross have far from disgraced themselves. My only complaint is that, even after forking out an extra quid for the programme I have no way of matching the names to the faces that I want to praise. So I'll just have to talk about the sketches. The supermarket assassination sketch and the James Bond Feng Shui sketch were simply fantastic - I wanted to have written them. The sketches parodying American psychobabble, although perhaps more obvious were very well done (the idea of the word "cohesh" as a verb had me still cackling when everybody else was on to the next-but-one gag). And the slow-burn "Attack of the 200 ft Princess Margaret" was a simple idea beautifully executed. Finally - the only name in the programme which I could tie to a face, Tim Key, gave the most assured and staggeringly funny performance of all with his series of "Mike Blow" sketches. "Here is my comic universe" he seemed to be saying, "and I can unfold it at my own pace, without any worry about not going for the laughs straight away, 'cos when I want you to laugh, you'll wet yourselves. "

These two hours turned me from a sceptic of the "They can't be as funny as they used to be" school into a dedicated follower - I'll be seeing everything they do from now on.

Cambridge Cafés

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" – T.S. Eliot.
I’m about to move out of Cambridge. The thing I’m going to miss the most is the cafés. I’ve looked around Brighton a bit, and I’m still hopeful but I haven’t yet found anything quite like the best cafés in Cambridge. So here I bid a fond farewell.

Le Gros Frank
Just on the end of Station road and still the best place anywhere near the station. Used to be my favourite, without doubt it had the best croissant. About a year, maybe 18 months ago they installed a new counter which drastically shrunk the number of tables upstairs. I think this might be more convenient for the lunch trade, but it kind of killed the atmosphere in there for me and I haven’t been back much since.

Coeur de France
Seems to have been taken over by a Chinese Restaurant, but curiously still sort of remains a French café during the day. Good straight French coffee, not so hot on the espresso. Decent croissant. An interesting crowd of lecturers from the nearby APU first thing in a morning (when I was normally there) and other assorted Cambridge professionals.

Clowns
Grungy. Whacky pictures of clowns on the walls (surprise, surprise). Quite often filled with teenagers. The grunginess seems to attract the nutters. Powerful coffee. All of the food seems a bit unappetising. I’ve only ever had the courage to order a toastie.

Starbucks/Borders
I know you’re not supposed to, but I quite like this. At the times when I’m likely to be there (Saturday, Sunday afternoons) it’s packed, but it tends to be a good mix of couples with babies, students and a smattering of Cambridge eccentrics. The sandwiches are inedible. The muffins are OK. I don’t like their espresso but their tall coffee of the day – which is the best coffee I can find on the menu - is strong enough to stop you blinking for a week. All the other Starbucks in Cambridge feel like the anteroom to a public toilet.

Café Nero
Moderately horrid, it tends to be staffed by idiots who don’t clean up properly and can’t make a hot espresso. Food is furiously expensive and crap. Clientele is over-made up forty-something ladies who lunch.

CB1
It must be a short walk of a few hundred yards from CB1 to the reality checkpoint on Parker’s Piece, still most of the people slumped on its armchairs and sofas, or hunched over a game of chess or playing go never seem to have made it anywhere near reality. CB1 is probably the reason I came to Cambridge in the first place. How were you going to keep me down on the farm (actually, down in Farnborough) once I realised there were such things as combined second-hand bookshops and cafés? When I first frequented it, it didn't even have an espresso machine.

Second hand books, decent espresso and the weirdest, whacked-out, laid-back ambience in the whole of Cambridge. Especially on a Sunday afternoon. Sometimes the “character” to human ratio gets a bit high but, most of the time there are some other normal types dotted amongst the go players and the myopic bag ladies.

CB2
Great for surreptitious afternoon meetings. Waiter/waitress service, which is as it always should be. Stonking espresso and it goes on all night – even past when the pubs close.

Savino’s
Saving the best for last. This is the Platonic form of a café: just the business. In the mornings when I habitually went there, there was always a constant flow of Cambridge types, sultry sexy female undergraduates, tweed jacketed lecturers with their coterie of PhD students, shop girls from Robert Sale, unfeasibly fashionably dressed Italians who run the shops on King Street. The best espresso in town without a doubt. Served in proper thick, Illy espresso cups. Awesome. The food's good as well. Many a time I've burnt myself on the chocolate croissant, despite stern warnings that they'd just come out of the oven.

I love it most when it's really busy and you can perch on the barstools down the side wall and watch the rest of the café in the mirror.f

And it's open late. Alert, alert, Costa, Nero, Starbucks! This is what a café should be like! You dummies! Gaw! I wish I was there now. The short walk across Christ's pieces to Savino's on a spring morning is just heaven.

Friendly service from people who didn’t need to watch Raging Bull, they were just born like that (apparently the people from Savino’s and the Sopranos are from the same town back in the “old country”).