Upstairs at The Western

 This week I met up with Sally Jack of Upstairs at The Western and asked her about the news that she, Gary and Verity are handing over the reins of the pub theatre to new blood.

What were your aims in the beginning when you started the theatre? We wanted to create a professional performance space that was accessible to a diverse community, and with shows that followed our mission of programming brave, inspiring and engaging performances.  We also wanted it create a space where the local community could feel it was their theatre, and an extension of the wonderful atmosphere created downstairs in The Western.

Have you achieved all you wanted with Upstairs at The Western? Yes and no; we never thought we'd be where we are now when we first programmed the pilot season back in March 2013, with a makeshift stage built on empty beer barrels. It has taken many, many hours of many people's time - freely given - to get the venue to where it is now, along with invaluable support from Steamin' Billy Brewery Company Ltd, Leicester City Council and Westcotes Community First. We've built up a loyal and knowledgeable audience through a team of dedicated volunteers. There is still a lot that can be done though, and a new team can bring fresh eyes and ideas to the space.

What are you most proud of? Which productions? Difficult question as there have been so many wonderful shows! In terms of really satisfying moments,  seeing the comedy workshoppers overcome their fears and create and perform stand up routines to a paying audience has been great. Welcoming performers like Dave Bartram, Geoffrey Holland and Cathy Tyson to the venue has been thrilling and brilliant fun. Overall though, my own satisfaction comes from sitting up at the back of the theatre, watching a show, the lights coming up once the performance has ended and hearing the audience talk about what they've just experienced. A shared experience. 

What do you hope for the future of the theatre? We hope that people will continue to come and be entertained, whatever direction that takes, that it will continue to grow and firmly embed itself into the fabric of Leicester's West End.

Is Steaming Billy committed to supporting the theatre in the future? They have been a great support so far and are keen for the venue to continue; it is such a unique and valuable asset to the pub and the area.

Why have you decided to move on? We, that is Gary, Verity and myself, feel we have gone as far as we can with the venue. Lives change and it is such a big commitment to maintain the standards we have set ourselves. Much as it feels like a big wrench at the moment, we hope to see the venue thrive and flourish with a new team, whoever they may be. This is a great opportunity to develop the space - whether that is continuing to programme theatre, comedy, spoken word and music which all work so well, or to focus on a new direction - but this will be something for the new team to embrace and develop. 

What sort of people are you looking to take over the reins?  Of course, we hope someone with a love of performance and the arts will come forward, but if anyone is interested in finding out more about the theatre and what's involved, come along to the public meeting at the venue on Tuesday 11 October at 7.30pm.

First published in Western Gazette

and Pub Theatre Blog

Pajama Men

Review by: Paul Towers, 22 September 2016

2 Man 3 Muskateers by Pajama Men

Soho Theatre production

Curve 22 & 23 Sptember

“2 men, 1 musician and a whole load of mayhem.”

A bare stage with a pianist tinkling on his ivories as we walk in is no indication of the bizarre world we are about to stumble into. What we get is 2 men, 1 musician and a whole load of mayhem. This is the result of Shenoah Allen and Mark Chavez’s weird and wonderful imaginations being let loose (and I mean loose) on Alexandra Dumas’ iconic story of The Three Muskateers.

As these two American legends of improv have proved in countless comedy festivals around the world, there is no limit to what they think (and do) get away with when it comes to bending traditional narrative round corners, curve balls and any kind of logic.

As a result we spend an hilarious hour trying to unscramble the tale of three French renegades while mixed up with centaurs, cardinals and who knows what other characters they have made up purely to add a laugh to the script.

Add into this is their razor sharp ad libs and asides, both to the audience and themselves. Several times we could see as they tried to corpse each other and failing miserably, so professional are this pair of  veteran performers.

While the actors are acting away at the front of Curve’s Studio space their musician is having his own fun with all sorts of weird and wonderful instruments.

Altogether this is a fun evening of surreal silliness that leaves you with a very nice smile on your face.

Pajama Men is on at Curve again on Friday 23^rd September and then on tour. Details on www.pajama-men.com

First published on Western Gazette

Undermined

Review by: Paul Towers, 16 September 2016

Undermined by  Danny Mellor

A Danny Mellor Presents production

Upstairs @ The Western, 16^th September

“Mellor balances the narrative deftly.”

On 18 June 1984 the notorious miners strike came to a heady climax in a bloody confrontation between flying pickets and the police at Orgreave, South Yorkshire.

Undermined is the story of 4 friends from an unspecified South Yorkshire village caught up in the ongoing conflict that saw communities, neighbours and families fractured and ostracised for supporting the ‘wrong side’.

Danny Mellor is an actor, writer and director who has compiled this fictional account from the testimonies of those who took part in the conflict. Against a soundtrack of curiously appropriate music from the 80’s Mellor peoples the stage with the miners of the doomed pits with prose that is both structured and emotive. While much of the sorry tale is full of anger and bile there are welcome splashes of humour to lighten the story.

Our journey starts with the news that some pits have become uneconomical and will have to close. The natural anger at the potential decimation of old established communities and industries is directed singularly at the Government of the day. Flying pickets, riled to boiling point by the Unions, are shipped to various sites around the country to prevent the pits being worked in defiance of  Union orders. The ultimate result of this action is the awful casualty strewn mess that was ‘The Battle of Orgreave’.

Danny Mellor proves himself to be an accomplished actor both emotionally and physically as he switches from well defined character to well defined character as well as throwing himself around the stage as battles with police and other miners occur.

This could so easily have been a very left wing, Thatcher-bashing diatribe in blind support of the unions but Mellor balances the narrative deftly with intimations that the cause was highjacked by the Government in an effort to smash the absolute power of the Unions in much the same way that some elements in the Unions were hoping to bring down Mrs Thatcher

Undermined is on tour until at least October

Upstairs at The Western http://upstairsatthewestern.com/

First published on Pub Theatre Blog 
and Western Gazette

And then there were none

Review by: Paul Towers, 12 September 2016

And  Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Leicester Drama Society production

Little Theatre 12 – 17 September

“Agatha Christie thriller”

And Then There Were None is a pretty standard Agatha Christie thriller; a select number of people (in this case 10) stranded in an isolated locations (here an hotel on an island) all with secrets. One by one they are discounted (this time by their untimely deaths) until there is only one. But is the one the one?

Leicester Drama Society (LDS) has a fine record for putting on thrillers and light fluffy romantic pieces. This Christie, a very popular play on the amateur circuit due to its single set, has a nice mix of characters, some more fully drawn than others.

The title comes from a children’s nursery rhyme hanging in a frame above a set of decorative soldiers. The figurines disappear one by one as the various victims are despatched. Starting with ten little soldiers the final two are all that is left as the murderer is revealed. My only grouse is that, having been engrossed in the recent BBC adaptation, I did remember who dunnit. However  that didn’t spoil my enjoyment unduly.

When the original book was published in 1939 it was called Ten Little N******s in the UK but And Then There Were None in the US where, even then, the ‘N’ word was considered unsavoury. Even when it was changed to Ten Little Indians it was soon decided this was still not inoffensive enough and so the current title was adopted from the US publication.

As is usual with LDS productions the standard of acting is very high from a cast that, year after year, we see in a wide variety of roles. A great single set depicting the hotel’s sea view lounge is all that is needed as the claustrophobia of the situation ramps up. It would be unfair to single out any of the actors as this is very much an ensemble piece ably directed by resident bossy boots, John Bale.

And Then There Were None is on until 17 September

Details on Little Theatre website

First published on Western Gazette

Garden

Review by: Paul Towers, 9/9/16

Garden by Lucy Grace

A How Small How Far Production

Upstairs @ The Western, 9^th & 10^th September 2016

“ Acutely observed and beautifully acted.”

For so many of us the grinding monotony of a mindless office job is just one of those things we have to grin and bear to put food on the table and a roof over our head.

Lucy is stuck in that unfulfilling cycle of mind numbing drudgery at Insignia Asset Management where the only assets she manages are the photocopier, printer, scanner, shredder and binder. Day in day out she catches the 8am train London Bridge, is squashed between the same 80 odd sweating, swaying bodies as the packed train rattles over the unending points of South East London. Then it is back home on the 7pm from London bridge to her 24^th floor tower block flat and an empty life. That is until one day when she decides to liberate the office pot plant and suddenly a vibrant, fulfilling life emerges as she creates a garden paradise to return her rescued herbage to the wild. Along the way she befriends a pigeon called Colin and goes upcycling with an abandoned supermarket trolley to populate her high rise shelter.

Written and performed by How Small How Far founding member Lucy Grace, this is a sweet tale of a neurotic office worker stuck in a boring job. Acutely observed and beautifully acted this is a paean to those millions of bored wage slaves stuck in the rut of a boring office.

Full details available at http://www.howsmallhowfar.co.uk

Firts published on Western Gazette and Pub Theatre Guide

Footloose The Musical

Review by: Paul Towers, 30 August 2016

Footloose The Musical by Dean Pitchford and Walter Bobbie

Produced by Sell A Door Theatre Company & Runaway Entertainment

Curve 29 Aug to 3 September

“Holding out for …?.”

In recent years there has been a trend for adapting popular films into stage musicals. Often it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Footloose, the 1984 film, is the archetypal date movie; a romantic, good out of towner versus bigoted small towner, with a soundtrack of poppy 1980’s hits. The stage version should be an ideal girls-night-out fun show that you come away from humming the tunes and feeling all warm inside.

The story is fairly slight, a boy and his mother move from Chicago to Bomont, a fly spot on the map of America’s mid west. There they are stunned to find that dancing is forbidden and the boy sets about overturning this archaic law. On the way he discovers love.

So where does it all go so horribly wrong?

This mish mash of a catastrophe takes all the good bits from the film and dilutes them with down beat, dirges of ballads and a storyline of domestic violence and good ole southern bible bashing. The whole thing lurches from high to low like a pedestrian roller coaster. It was a good 20 minutes into the production that it livened up even a little.

As is so often the case with modern musicals the cast are expected to sing, dance and play instruments. In Footloose The Musical the talented cast do all three to the best of their ability with the material they are given but most of the songs only elicited a barely polite round of applause. The exceptions were the known numbers from the film, Footloose, Holding Out For a Hero and Let’s Hear it For The Boy.

As the plot stumbles from one dirge to another there are thankfully small comedic moments from a surprising source. Gareth Gates, he of Pop Idol fame, lurches on, zombie-like and overacting like mad, as the local dumb yokel who befriends newcomer Ren McCormack, ably played by Luke Baker, shows a nicely developing sense of comedy with some amusing self deprecating lines about speech impediments.  However these occasional bright spots, like glimpses of blue sky amongst the storm clouds of an autumn day, were never enough to lift the tone.

As the second half wended its weary way towards the end there was one final obstacle for us, the patient audience, to overcome. Just as the finale built to its limp crescendo a technical fault prevented the front cloth from rising on cue. I felt it may very well have been divine intervention and someone somewhere was trying to tell us to go home before depression set in or maybe the mechanics had just died of embarrassment. But then, after a 5 minute break, the lights went back down, the music started again, the curtain behaved itself and we were finally into the home stretch. At last there was life in the audience as the medley of the memorable hits signalled the final bows and we could at last escape, never to recapture those lost hours.

First published in Western Gazette

Bugsy Malone

Review by: Paul Towers, 24 August 2016

Bugsy Malone by Alan Parker and Paul Williams

A Curve Community Production

Curve 19 – 28 August

“wondrously fun night out”

Where to begin? This has to be one of the funniest, energetic, feel good shows on any stage any time.

With a cast that is only aged 12 to 17, with the exception of  9yr old Amica Kuroda, the talent is unbelievable. Every single one of them sings, dances and acts their socks off.

Bugsy Malone is inspired by the antics of one Al Capone and Bugs Moran, notorious gangsters of 1920’s New York. Written in 1976 by Alan Parker, who went on to carve out a very successful career as a director of such seminal films as Midnight Cowboy, Fame and The Commitments, this proves that early on in his career that he could do musicals as well as heavy dramatic stories. His collaboration with renowned songwriter Paul Williams produced a hugely enjoyable show which still fills theatres after 40 years.

As he wanted specifically to cast teenagers for all the roles, thus adding a surreal element to the ‘blood and gore’, he had to find a way to sanitise the violence. This was achieved by the invention of ‘splurge guns’ which fired lethal doses of custard alongside the obligatory standard custard pies in lieu of bullets.

Under the direction of Curve’s Nick Winston we have a large cast of hugely talented local young performers filling a cleverly designed set by David Woodhead with the two gangs of old school villains vying for power in the city.

A slight storyline never gets in the way of great dance routines, hilarious one liners and an ultimately beautiful  love story between Bugsy and dancer Blousey.

If you manage to get a ticket before Sunday be warned that copious amounts of ‘custard’ end up on audience members throughout the stalls and you may even end up as part of the finale on stage in Fat Sam’s Grand Slam club

14 year old Joel Fossard-Jones is superb as Bugsy, while 15 year old Maeve Wood as Blousey  torch sings her way through the story.

The set is a series of gantries and stairs which, thanks to lighting designer Ben Cracknell, provides every backdrop the story needs. A huge  Japanese style framework provides a proscenium arch and front cloth upon which is projected all sorts of locations and animations. The onstage band, ranged round the back of the set, gives a depth to the sound which would be hard to replicate if it were in a pit.

All in all this is a wondrously fun night out that will leave you humming the songs as you walk home.

First published in Western Gazette