Spamalot is fantastic. Really, really, fantastic. In my opinion, that’s all that needs to be said, but I don’t think that would go down too well with the editors. This Tony Award-winning musical is feisty, riotous, and completely flipping mental. If you’ve got an unsated desire to see a catapulted cow, rude Frenchmen, and dancing, fish-toting Fins, then this is the musical for you. If you’re a boring, lifeless misery with no zeal for the wondrously eclectic pleasures of life, give it a miss. And get some help.

The scheduling of the show feels particularly appropriate. Just as the last remnants of the pantomime season can be seen gentle fluttering away in the post-epiphany wind, Spamalot lands with a satisfying ‘thunk’ in its place. It really does have an awful lot in common with its festive counterpart. The set is a brightly coloured affair, resembling a cardboard cut-out that has been slotted together in a child’s playroom. The horses of Arthur and his retinue are enacted by men with coconut shells. There’s even a little audience interaction. Yet Spamalot is oh so much more than pantomime. The humour, as any Python connoisseur will tell you, is at once delightfully silly and juvenile, yet at the same time masterfully clever and surreal. The attention to detail is remarkably deft; milk bottles, for example, have been surreptitiously placed outside the door to Camelot Castle, playing no ostensible part in the play. They’re just there for fun.

Fans of Monty Python will have already noticed from just the few things I have mentioned how much this production lifts from the original films and television series. Spamalot is billed as ‘A new musical lovingly ripped off from Monty Python and the Holy Grail’. They’re not lying. Huge chunks of the script and plot of the 1974 film have been written straight into the play. This is fine by me. It’s a pleasure to see live on stage some of the most memorable routines in film history: Dennis the Constitutional Peasant; the relentlessly committed Black Knight; the killer rabbit that guards the Holy Grail. But, on stage, there is freedom for experiment. Python’s favourite musical number, ‘Always look on the bright side of life’ appears, but with the added delight of background dancing from one of the giant Knights Who Say “Ni”. The excitement from the audience as Eric Idle’s projected face delivers God’s message is testament to the respect that the Pythons still inspire.

For all its channelling of the pre-established grail canon, Terry Jones, co-director of the original film and initial sceptic of the enterprise said, ‘I think the best parts of the musical are the new things.’ One of Spamalot’s strengths is its superb ability to make fun of the conventions of musical theatre. The production grasps the tail of the fish of parody firmly in both hands, and proceeds to repeatedly beat you around the face with it. ‘The Song That Goes Like This’ and ‘Diva’s Lament’ both give a hearty ribbing to the maudlin overblown ballads of Lloyd Webber and Co. The initial Broadway run’s ‘You Won’t Succeed on Broadway if You Don’t Have Any Jews’ has been replaced with ‘You Won’t Succeed in Oxford if You Don’t Have Any Stars’. This gives a delightful nod to the shameless audience-grabbing casting of Marcus Brigstocke as King Arthur. Spamalot is a show that knows exactly what it’s doing, and doesn’t take itself too seriously.

For that reason, it’s not getting five stars. It wouldn’t want five stars. But please, please, go along to the New Theatre this week. It’ll make you happy to be alive.

4 stars

Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet came immediately to mind with the guitar-strummed opening. Feste (Orowa Sikder), the clown, and Radiohead, share roles as purveyor of unrequited love. Duke Orsino (Matt Ball) is the victim of one-sided desire in Shakespeare’s comedy, and in this O’Reilly production is played rather effeminately nicely reinforcing the ambiguity of gender and identity central to the plot.

Music is certainly the food of love and audience members will be forgiven for shouting “play on” for the Johnny Flynn style interludes which are integral to the triumph of the play. Nevertheless reducing the experience to a great gig would be unrepresentative of Declan Clowry’s creation in which physicality and movement is delighted in.  A dramatic lunge at Olivia in Malvolio’s passion is synchronised with the well known “thrust” of the climax to “some are born great, some achieve greatness….” while the Renaissance concept of the characters as Victims of Fortune is brought across in the whirling and turning of the choreography. (Even Orsino has recourse to the terrestrial domain with a steadying of his unstable situation by leaning on the bar.)

With the staging the directors have kept the influence of medieval culture on Shakespeare’s work; a split stage of two mansions representing the different realms of Orsino and Olivia while the platea is a shared space. The two worlds are most noticeably bridged by the Clown whose blues-emitting guitar penetrates both ruling spheres. The sartorial choices reflect the prohibition era Illyria with a sensational trench coat catching my eye.

Maria’s (Alice Fraser) Little Black Dress makes this “good wench” a very sexy waiting-woman to counterpart the equally sultry Olivia (Imogen O’Sullivan). In a play where gender is obfuscated and disguise is adopted, these two women stand out as clear bastions of femininity and Renaissance girl power.  Viola (Kate O’Connor) is brilliant at fixing the irony of her situation and dons her mask convincingly to entrench Cesario in the camp of “we men.”

The duality of the play is built into the set and played out in the myriad combinations of character pairs. The element of twice was even extended to the number of improvisations appearing in the preview, with musician acting messenger; “err, there’s a man at the gate” and Sir Toby Belch (David Cochrane) attempting to commence a quite different scene to the rest of the cast.

This chaos only added to the jocular nature of the play in keeping with the Christmas festival of Twelth Night –a characteristically riotous season. The two drunkards enforced this joviality with some side-splitting dancing and stumbling. Whether chaos comes from order of order from chaos the ordered chaos or chaotic order of the production makes the play a success.

4 stars

The Hothouse, a portrayal of an unspecified asylum-esque institution, is one of Pinter’s most harrowing works; the depiction is restricted to the small group of staff, raped and murdered patients referred to only by number.  Such a play demands a set of nuanced and complex performances; it requires something ambitious and original to make a worthwhile production.  Fortunately, this version by Illyria Productions claims to do just that: the programme makes the sweeping statement that for every part they have obtained “the most talented individual for that role within the university.”

As soon as I entered the college squash court where the rehearsal was being held, to be greeted by the sight of the cast of The Hothouse standing in a circle, intently focused on throwing several tennis balls between them (apparently to heighten appreciation of Pinter’s infamous pauses), I knew this was no run-of-the-mill theatre preview.  The twenty-strong technical team is also present; this production has one of largest budgets of any student production at the playhouse, and they seem intent to use it.  I was afforded only a brief glimpse of the first act, devoid of set or lighting, but those few scenes promised that every expectation would be fulfilled.

Those few scenes easily showcased the obvious talent of the cast, but it was the methods of director Jamie MacDonagh that truly shone.  Each of the scenes was performed two or three times: for each iteration, the director instructed the actors to change their objectives and persona for the scene.  These alternate between the bizarre and the brilliant; watching the inept Roote (Matt Gavan) desperately trying to prevent his subordinate Gibbs (Ziad Samaha) from leaving halfway through a conversation, however ludicrous, suddenly exposed the true nature of their relationship more brazenly than the dialogue cared to do.  In every performance, each character became a caricature of a single aspect of their personality or desire; it was fascinating to watch these slowly be constructed into the combination that both director and cast feels best  captures the essence of Pinter’s work.

It is a testimony as much to the skill of the cast as to the brilliance of the play that every scene that they played out, no matter how it is done, remained fresh.  MacDonagh promises his method will produce a subtly different performance each night, adapted as the accomplished actors fine tune their characters responses to reveal a marginal variation in the rich subtext every time the curtain opens.  The question even crossed my mind, watching the process played out multiple times in the space of an hour, whether the rehearsal could be more enlightening and entertaining than the performance.  Nevertheless, the finished product, in whatever form it appears, will be something truly spectacular, cerebral and haunting to behold.

5 STARS

For anyone who’s ever read some of Stephen Fry’s later works, you’ll know what to expect of Latin! or Tobacco and Boys. I can remember reading The Liar and Fry’s autobiography at the tender age of fourteen and being appropriately scandalised, perhaps even a little turned on. Indeed, if rent-boys, horse-shagging and the ill-conceived ‘limp biscuit’ game are the staples of Fry’s later literary diet, you can only imagine what his 22 year-old self will have concocted, and it’s our great pleasure to bring you Latin! at the BT in 2^nd week.

Latin! has been challenging, no doubt about it – a script relying on two sole characters and a number of tricky monologues always will be. Fry presents us with Dominic Clarke, the disillusioned Latin teacher at Chartham Park Prep, plagued by memories of a miserable Cambridge career and ready to explore, shall we say, pastures new. Clarke is a ‘sensitive in a world of literary rugby players’, seeking release through Cartwright, the blonde, the beautiful, the apple of his eye. Yet there’s one problem with Clarke’s muse: Cartwright is thirteen. Thrown into this tempestuous mix we encounter Brookshaw, a jaded bachelor with an almost fanatical devotion to the school and an uncanny hatred for Dominic.

 Auditions for the roles of the elder men were long and exhaustive: it was essential for so small a cast to ensure we Got It Right. Once we had, initial rehearsals inevitably focussed on building a rapport between the actors and helping each to understand the other’s character. What will strike anyone watching the play is the intensity of the script: fast-paced dialogues replete with puns-galore are set alongside more reflective, calmer scenes. Particularly for the younger Dominic, much of our rehearsal focussed on maintaining that slightly hysterical energy which abounds in so much of Fry’s work. Ultimately, the play questions the nature of love, and the nature of a true ‘education’, as well as humorously poking fun at the politics behind any staffroom door. Come to the BT in 2^nd week for Chelsea-buns, peanut-butter smearings and, er, bicycle pumps for a lesson you won’t forget.