Theatre Review

There’s nowt like community

It’s the summer of 1962, bang in the middle of a period of huge change in Britain. The mining communities are working hard, and when they have the energy, playing hard too. Who can blame them after spending days underground working in merciless conditions. South Yorkshire was a bastion of the industry and in Richard Cameron’s The Glee Club (Yvonne Arnaud) we are introduced to five pitmen and a church organist as they prepare for a local gala. The camaraderie and loyalty to each other is strong but just beneath the surface each one is desperately trying to get their life in order.
They – being Walt (Dan Bottomley), Jack (Matt Concannon), Scobie (Robert Jackson), Colin (Linford Johnson), Bantam (Jack Lord) and Phil (Eamon Riley) – perform as ‘The Glee Club’, and in those days the venues would have been the working men’s clubs, the very places they did most of their socialising. The vernacular is authentic and spoken at pace requiring careful attention, lest you get lost as they josh with banter that is smutty and of its time. Men chatting about serious things in humorous ways, something that has changed little over time. Instead singing rehearsals and showering after work are punctuated with life’s difficulties mainly about their womenfolk. We don’t see any of those women but they are ever present in the repartee.
Young Colin, a man torn between his sweetheart and a possible career as a pop singer, also acts as our narrator navigating us through the travails of his mates and how they impacted his life. The storyline which hits home hardest both for the individual and the whole group is when Phil, a beautifully understated performance by Eamonn Riley, is wrongly accused of child abuse but leads to him defiantly admitting “Yes I am a homosexual.” The men rally round, if somewhat uneasily, but when the proverbial hits the fan is when people show their true colours and this community of menfolk stand united.
Skilfully directed by Kate Wasserberg, this is a cracking ensemble piece in which the whole cast deserve plaudits for giving us a genuine and heartfelt production with pukka harmonies and sharp character portrayals. This will charm you and warm the cockles of your heart.
And Athasha Lyonnais delights in restoration…

Scandaltown (Lyric, Hammersmith) is funny, engaging, and enjoyable, and also thoroughly interesting in its faithful modernisation of the Restoration Comedy. To celebrate the triumphant post-lockdown return of theatre writer Mike Bartlett looked back at the
oft-ignored Restoration era, where following the end of Cromwell’s reign and the restoration of the British Monarchy, Charles 2nd brought back all the fun pastimes that were banned under Cromwell’s puritanical republic – music, literature, and theatre.
Phoebe and Jack Virtue have been raised morally in the remote North, but when Jack goes to London to seek his fortune working for an NGO (non-governmental organisation), Phoebe worries that he will be tempted off the path of enlightenment by sex, drugs, rock n roll and right wing tabloid newspapers; she decides to disguise herself as a man and make her way to London to check he isn’t getting up to anything salacious.
Meanwhile, cancelled micro celebrity Lady Susan Climber decides to begin an affair with the blustering Matt Eton MP in order to boost her profile, at the behest of her cynical Millennial publicist Hannah Tweetwell, who may be advancing a secret, bitter vendetta. Scandal is the currency of London, and the residents of Scandaltown are both drawn to it, and deathly frightened of it, as it has the potential to make or destroy a reputation in the time it takes to send a tweet.
Overall this is an extremely enjoyable evening, the script is sharp and topical, the characters broad and arch, and the costume design impeccably lavish.
All in all, what struck me most was just how faithful all of it, the spectacle, the gossip, the bawdiness, even the morality of the play itself, is to the original spirit of Restoration Comedies.

The Glee Club – on tour – www.stockroom.co.uk
Scandaltown – www.lyric.co.uk

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