The Times - UK (2022-05-27)

12 Friday May 27 2022 | the times

first night

pop

B

each House have a way of

building intensity without

resorting to speed or power.

This Barrowland show was

a masterclass in the slow burn.

Silhouettes on stage, featureless against

a screen aglow with washes of colour,

the Baltimore band gave the impression

that they were conduits for the music,

rather than active in its creation.

Those waves of strings, that Floyd-ish

climactic solo on Pink Funeral, surely

they were just rolling out from the

stage without human hand?

They are touring in support of

Once Twice Melody. The album has

18 tracks, runs to almost an hour and a

half and was released in four chapters,

so-called, over the course of several

months. It is a major work and it is

perhaps a little disappointing that they

did not take the risk of devoting their

set to playing it in full.

That, though, would have been

a recital, not a gig, and would have

denied us older delights — not least

2015’s Space Song, which has found a

new audience on TikTok and received

the biggest crowd reaction of the

night. Silver Soul showcased Alex

Scally’s beautiful slide guitar; a key

element in the band’s sonic world.

Beach House’s music has a

comfortable numbness, yet always

seems on the cusp of euphoria or

despair. That the euphoric side felt to

the fore in Glasgow was in part thanks

to Victoria Legrand’s singing. Mostly

she maintained an android blankness

behind her keyboard, but now and

then her voice lifted and soared, all the

more thrilling for her usual reserve.

James Barone, on drums, gave

the material a weight it sometimes

lacks on record. Superstar began with

a simple doleful beat before growing

into something symphonic and

majestic. It was typical of Beach

House’s gift for songs that start twilit

and end with the hopeful feeling of

bright new dawns.

Peter Ross

Beach House play the Green Man

festival in August

Beach House

Barrowland, Glasgow

{{{{(

drama enthusiasts enacting a year

in the life of Whitewall School, a

thinly veiled version of their own

beleaguered place of learning,

populated by memorable characters.

As in the original, three versatile

actors — Levi Payne, Purvi Parmar

and Martha Godber — take on all the

roles. The principal thread follows

Siân Nixon (Godber), the energetic

novice drama teacher, and the ways

she finds to get her students fired up

about Shakespeare, Beckett and Peter

Weiss. There are diversions into other

aspects of secondary school life, too,

from the strict hierarchies of the staff

room to the wilds of the playground,

not to mention the long shadow cast

over the impoverished Whitewall by

St George’s, the nearby private school.

Into this template John Godber

introduces contemporary references to

everything from Netflix to Sue Gray’s

inquiry into Downing Street parties.

In bringing this story up to date, he

shows how the Covid-19 pandemic has

further compounded a lack of hope,

interest or opportunity for those at the

bottom of the social heap. While the

protagonists, Salty, Gail and Hobby,

find a diversion from lockdown and

online learning in drama lessons,

many of their classmates simply

vanish without trace.

Godber’s script was informed by in-

depth discussions with local teachers,

but, while the play is fiercely political,

it doesn’t feel didactic. The emphasis

in Mark Babych’s spare, invigorating

production is on capturing the

thrumming energy of a school beset

by challenges, while celebrating the

thrill and possibilities of drama. In this

regard the show is a triumph; there

may only be three actors on stage, but

by the end of the two-hour running

time it feels as though we’ve seen

a cast of thousands.

To June 11, hulltruck.co.uk

Many of their

classmates

simply vanish

without trace

IAN HODGSON AND ANTHONY ROBLING

Martha Godber, Levi Payne and Purvi Parmar take on all the roles in John Godber’s play

The sink school pupils

who refuse to go under

A trio of young actors bring thrumming energy

to this triumphant revival, says Allan Radcliffe

H

ull Truck’s 50th anniversary

programme would not

be complete without a

contribution from John

Godber. The playwright

and screenwriter, who served as

the artistic director for many years,

created much of his best-known work

for the theatre. In recent days the

company announced its studio space

will be renamed the Godber Studio in

celebration of his legacy.

Much of this new production,

created in collaboration with the John

Godber Company, will be familiar to

anyone who caught the original run of

Teechers at Hull Truck in 1987, or one

of its many revivals. Godber’s update

once again takes the form of a play-

within-a-play, with a trio of young

theatre

Teechers

Leavers ’22

Hull Truck Theatre

{{{{(

— named after the swooning Fifties

pop song that forms one of the

evening’s leitmotifs — whose sense

of frustration pushes her close to the

edge of a breakdown.

It didn’t take long to appreciate

how intelligently Moss

contrasts Corrina’s

experience as an

embattled

outsider with

the quiet

grievances of

the Filipino

crew who

do all the

heavy lifting,

overseen

by British

officers. For

the overworked,

underpaid drones, a

karaoke machine is one

of the few ways of killing

time off-duty.

Mike Noble brings dour credibility

to the role of Corrina’s admirer, Will,

who evolves from Scouse rogue to

something altogether more sinister.

Banter on the bridge morphs into

sexual harassment and worse. True,

Corrina’s transformation into avenging

angel hardly seems plausible — a play

that advertises itself as a thriller ought

to take more care with the plotting

and pacing — but there’s much to

admire in the way that Moss sketches

the Filipino sailors, Angelo, Rizal and

Rafael (sensitively played by James

Bradwell, Angelo Paragoso and Martin

Sarreal respectively). They have their

own way of looking down on the

female interloper; at the same time,

they know that she always remains

a notch above them in the global

pecking order.

Transitional scenes in which officers

and crew silently go about their daily

routines have a balletic intensity.

David Crellin makes the most of the

well-meaning but sanctimonious

captain, a poor chess player who

invariably has a copy of Moby-Dick

at hand. If he’s not entirely believable

either, the moments when the crew

lose themselves in songs playful and

poignant would have seemed utterly

familiar to Herman Melville.

Clive Davis

To June 4, everymanplayhouse.com

A

word of warning, first of

all. Chloë Moss’s thought-

provoking maritime drama

about a young female

officer on a cargo ship

bound for Singapore drifts close to

melodramatic waters towards the end.

And it’s fair to say that, amid the

compelling everyday detail about life

on one of the many nondescript

behemoths shuttling back and forth

across the sea lanes, there are self-

consciously poetic interludes into

which the Liverpool-born playwright

shoehorns mythological references to

Scylla, the female sea monster.

Still, if the writing overreaches

at times, Holly Race Roughan’s

production, inaugurating the

Headlong theatre company’s new

season, delivers a glimpse of a

working world that usually stays out

of sight and out of mind. Moi Tran’s

atmospheric split-level set, with its

array of bulkheads and hawsers,

conveys a sense of a ship’s

overwhelming dimensions and its air

of claustrophobia. Meanwhile, Laura

Elsworthy, gaunt and intense, gets

under the skin of a central character

Laura Elsworthy

and James Bradwell

Corrina,

Corrina

Liverpool Everyman

{{{{(

theatre

Comedy

Lou Sanders: One Word: Wow

The stand-up comedian, podcaster

and former Taskmaster champion

riffs on taking up rollerskating and

spiritualism. Colchester (today),

Salisbury (tomorrow), Bexhill-on-Sea

(Sunday), and touring to Jun 30

(lousanders.com)

Theatre

Wars of the Roses

Heads on pikes, deceit, betrayal

and murder... the RSC’s

reworked Henry VI trilogy is full

of blood, sweat and thunder.

Royal Shakespeare Theatre,

Stratford-Upon-Avon (rsc.org.uk) to

Jun 4

Visual art

Gold

Manuscript treasures from the

British Library’s collection. British

Library, London NW1, (bl.uk) to Oct 2

Three to see

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