'Dead Dog in a Suitcase' at Bristol Old Vic

Photo credit - Steve Tanner

Guest review by Jacqui Furneaux 

It didn’t seem appropriate to applaud at the end of this Kneehigh Theatre production of Dead Dog In A Suitcase, at a time when the stage was full of the debris and destruction of a world we have created by accepting greed and corruption as the norm.

Like The Beggars’ Opera which inspired it, Dead Dog In A Suitcase is alerting us to our demise but the journey was light-hearted and very funny. Throughout, with the wonderful use of puppetry, brilliant songs and great lines, we hope the lovable villain Macheath (Dominic Marsh) will leave his bad-boy days behind and sail off into the sunset with good and wholesome Polly (Carly Bawden). But deprived of a happy ending, the audience has to accept that in this instance evil gets the better of good and even Polly succumbs to hatred and revenge. This flies in the face of tradition to give us a wake-up call.

Director Mike Shepherd uses Punch and Judy puppets as a continuous thread starting with Punch killing the Devil, which encourages the residents of a mythical but realistic coastal town to commit unspeakable acts without the fear of going to hell. After all, Punch has no scruples and neither do Macheath or the town’s greedy industrialists, the Peachums (Rina Fatania and Martin Hyder) who also crave political power.

Dead Dog In A Suitcase was a faultless theatrical delight with rich acting, script, props (including a progressively decomposing dead dog in a suitcase) and tremendous music. There were gender changes and role-swapping, with characters who had been playing respectable citizens suddenly appearing as the opposite sex in provocative clothing in a bawdy-house. The songs were amusing and poignant, varying greatly in style and during the interval several people were heard to ask if CDs were available. 

The set by Michael Vale was cleverly adaptable for each part of the play and was complete without much scene-changing. The clever lighting saw to that, highlighting various parts of the stage as required. 

At times the play was pure pantomime with the front rows being balloted with voting papers and the puppets encouraging occasional child-like delight mixed with unsettling sinister characters. At other times farce crept in with three identical suitcases being mixed up and picked up by the wrong owners. But unlike pantomime, Dead Dog In A Suitcase does not have the baddies punished and the goodies rewarded. It’s a grim reminder to mend our ways and it is to be hoped that Kneehigh’s declaration in the programme is correct: ”We believe that theatre has the power to transform...”.

Dead Dog In A Suitcase is performed at Bristol Old Vic until 25 October. Click here for more information and to buy tickets.

Dracula - Bristol Old Vic

Photo credit: Farrows Creative

Guest review by Bo Novak

Journey into the cold, black night with the Mark Bruce Company at Bristol Old Vic and share in a thrilling and romantic adventure to foreign lands full of mystery and danger.

The first half of Dracula is staggeringly creepy. The wolves circle and pounce. The vampire brides writhe and screech like inmates of Bedlam. Unspeakable brutality is vividly signposted, leaving our imaginations to fill in the blanks.

And what of the Count himself? Being more of the Interview With The Vampire generation rather than Twilight, I’m used to vampires being intellectual and conflicted. But Jonathan Goddard’s Dracula is not an urbane aristocrat bemoaning his cursed state but a hollow-cheeked, suede-headed, black-hearted thug with no compunction for his victims. His concubines are bawdy, ethereal and sensual. When they (literally) go for the jugular, it is frenzied and intense, not pretty.

The castle’s gothic splendour is conveyed by intricate ironwork and stone coffins, illuminated by a cold, white moon. The only warmth comes from the candles lit for visitors. Yet Christianity comes out as very flabby in the face of the animalistic and amoral Dracula.

This is dance drama of the highest order, with dancers who are all fine actors, and a dance style that is bold, physical and contemporary, wittily borrowing from other schools of dance to lighten the mood here and there, but always moving the story on.

Eleanor Duval is particularly expressive as Mina and her pas de deux before and after her encounter with Dracula - when she is changed forever - are both beautifully done. Kristin McGuire oozes raw physicality as she goes from cheeky ingénue to insatiable undead seductress.

There is plenty of humour to offset the pervading sense of threat. The ensemble pieces are fun, there is a light-hearted marriage proposal, and even a knowing wink to Rocky Horror’s Magenta the Maid. They also somehow pull off Dracula donning top hat and cane to do a Busby Berkeley number while he toys with his terrified prey.

The music, a patchwork of different styles and pieces lifted from classical and modern genres, slightly detracted from the cohesion of the piece, but credit to Guy Hoare for the immersive environment created by the lighting and Phil Eddolls for the beautiful and versatile set.

Like Matthew Bourne, Mark Bruce reinvigorates a classic story using accessible dance forms, and the Company richly deserved the raucous applause from the audience. A magnificent evening of light and dark.

Dracula is performed at Bristol Old Vic until 4 October. Formore information and to buy tickets, please click here. 

Juno And The Paycock - Bristol Old Vic

Photo: Stephen Vaughan

Set in a 1920s Dublin tenement flat, Juno And The Paycock makes no bones about the fact it is a seamlessly gritty production.

Sean O’Casey’s 1923 play is considered one of the finest ever by an Irish playwright, and in its nine decades it has been turned into a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, a stage musical, three TV adaptations and countless stage versions.

This production at Bristol Old Vic (a collaboration with the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse) is the latest such stage version. Directed by Gemma Bodinetz, and performed on a fabulously shambolic set designed by Conor Murphy, Juno And The Paycock takes audiences on a grimly absorbing journey back to one of the most turbulent times in Irish history.

The Boyle family is living on the breadline. Their home is a squalid tenement flat in an area of Dublin later condemned for slum clearance. Wife Juno (Niamh Cusack) is the only earner in the home, as workshy husband ‘Captain’ Jack (Des McAleer) prefers to drink the day away, daughter Mary (Maureen O'Connell) is on strike and son Johnny (Donal Gallery) endures post-traumatic stress disorder after losing his arm while fighting in the War of Independence.

When the family is thrown a bone in the shape of an unexpected windfall from a distant relative’s will, the Boyles go to town to revel in their new fortunes and finally enjoy the luxuries that life had previously denied them. For added good measure, the news is delivered by Mary’s impressive new beau – the well-to-do young teacher Mr Bentham. But while the family scrabbles to crawl up the class ladder… they quickly find that the snakes of bad fortune will send them back down again with more than their tails between their legs.

Juno And The Paycock encompasses class struggles, poverty, Irish history and the germ of what would later become The Troubles. With Cusack at the helm, director Bodinetz could hope for no finer actor to steer this production to a strong conclusion. While it would be grossly misleading to suggest that Juno And The Paycock will leave you with a warm glow, the touches of slapstick generated by Jack and his feckless sidekick Joxer provide enough hints of relief to soften some of the harder punches.

Juno And The Paycock is performed at Bristol Old Vic until September 27, 2014. Click here for more information and to book tickets. 

'Love, Nina' - by Nina Stibbe

It’s not often that you read a book which you desperately don’t want to end, but Love, Nina is one of them. 

Published a few months ago amid an enthusiastic flurry of glittering endorsements and rave reviews, the book failed to spark any interest in me until a friend sung the praises of Love, Nina on Facebook… and I gave in and ordered a copy.

Why was I reluctant? The book is a collection of letters that Nina Stibbe sent home to her sister Vic over several years during the early 1980s while Nina was nannying for a family in London. The book sounded so cutesy that it made me fear it would be a repeat of the horrible Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society episode from a few years back (a collection of - fictional? – letters that was so sickly sweet it made me want to pull all my teeth out in one go).

Anyway, I was wrong. Love, Nina is not twee, sickly or tooth-hurty. It is delightful, warm, funny and fascinating in equal measures. 

In 1982, Nina was the new, and ill-equipped, nanny for Mary-Kay Wilmers (founder and editor of the London Review of Books) and her two sons Sam and Will (whose father is film director Stephen Frears). You’ll need to get to grips with the Guardian-esque name-dropping fairly soon because frequent characters around the Wilmers’ kitchen table include Alan Bennett, Claire Tomalin and Michael Frayn.

But while the insights into the notoriously secretive Alan Bennett’s culinary skills are fascinating, it is the simple exchanges between the eccentric and kindly Mary-Kay, Nina and the boys which is at the root of this book. The snapshots of conversation that Nina records in her letters are seemingly irrelevant (about emptying the dishwasher, or how to swear in German) but happen every day all around the country, yet are lost forever as most people don’t stop to notice the funny things we say without trying.

And that is where Love, Nina succeeds so well – at making the everyday things we do seem so silly.

Postscript:

I can only think of one other book I’ve read in recent years that has made me feel as warm as this one did and that’s Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade by Patrick Dennis from 1955 (not read it? Oh, please do). Yet the book that kept popping into my head while reading Love, Nina was the 1931 novel The Brontes Went To Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson. Why? In Ferguson’s charming novel the three Carne sisters invent friendships with the Bronte siblings (as well as a very real local judge) to help them through their everyday problems… and then the real and imaginary worlds come to a head. It’s a truly wonderful book.