Review of The Rise and Fall of Little Voice by Jim Cartwright

Directed by Mark Da Vanzo
Stagecraft at the Gryphon Theatre, 6-16 July
Reviewed by Tanya Piejus

The story of Little Voice became world famous in 1998 when it was made into a film starring Jane Horrocks. However, Horrocks was reprising her original role in Sam Mendes’ 1992 production of Jim Cartwright’s less well-known “Northern Fairytale” of a play on which the film was based.

The play tells the story of a shy, reclusive girl named Little Voice and her loud and out-of-control mother, Mari. Desperately missing her dead father, LV as she is known, spends her time locked in her bedroom listening to his old record collection and perfecting astonishing impersonations of famous divas, including Shirley Bassey, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland and Dusty Springfield.

When Mari starts dating small time club agent, Ray Say, she thinks he's her chance for a better life. When Ray hears Little Voice sing, he thinks she's his ticket to the big time. But all Little Voice wants is a normal life.

Little Voice is a plum role for any actress and singer, and no more so than for Amanda Fearnehough who brings her strong presence and extraordinary vocal talents to Mark Da Vanzo’s ebullient production. It’s a difficult role in the sense that LV is so dominated by her mother that the actress who plays her has to bring LV’s painfully shy and delicate character to life with very little dialogue. This Fearnehough does with wide-eyed skill, then dramatically transforms LV into a confident performer at the first chords of her favourite records.

Julie O’Brien, who plays the overbearing Mari, has also played LV in the past. Her performance in the very different role of LV’s mother is a stellar one. Her high energy and Lancashire drawl make Mari every inch the crass, illiterate, obnoxious bint who would sell her daughter out for her own glory. Most of the play’s many laughs are at her expense and O’Brien laps up the audience feedback with relish. The wardrobe coordinators had their work cut providing her increasingly trashy and inappropriate outfits, which raise even more laughs every time she comes on set.

The rest of the cast provide excellent support. Alan Carabott deftly carries off two roles as the strangely bespectacled Phone Man and the glitzy night club MC Mr Boo, confidently engaging the theatre audience as his club crowd. LV’s love interest Billy, who finally helps her find her voice, is endearingly played by Dale Johnson-Green. His gentle entreaties to LV from the alley outside her window are some of the play’s loveliest moments.

Nick Boxall makes Ray Say a self-interested wide boy rather than the sleaze-bag impresario that would have been the more clichéd playing of the role. All credit to him and the director for avoiding the easy option. Finally, Christine Hunt inhabits weird neighbour Sadie with gusto, her post-night out drooling providing one of the biggest laughs of the night.

Mark Da Vanzo’s direction is assured and creative, just avoiding turning the larger-than-life characters into caricatures. The production has many great moments from LV’s awesome opening impersonation, to Mari and Sadie shaking their ample tail-feathers in the living room. The only criticism of Da Vanzo’s approach is that some of the kitchen-sink northern grittiness of the script is lost for the sake of the comedy.

That said, Tabitha Arthur’s set concept more than adequately captures the dank, grey grottiness of the Hoffs’ hovel with its rotting cornflakes, dilapidated whiteware and dodgy electrics. By contrast, LV’s small upstairs room is a warm, colourful physical and mental sanctuary. Sam Perry and his construction team have done yet another startling job of turning the Gryphon Theatre’s black box into a convincing and imaginative setting for the play’s action.

Lighting is used to good effect and no more so than in the second half where handheld torches and a spinning red construction worker’s light provide the only illumination in the fire-ravaged house.

Billy’s mechanical lift on which he rescues LV from the fire is a master stroke of the beg, borrow and steal culture of community theatre and exemplifies the care and effort that has gone into this lively, moving, beautifully performed and highly entertaining production.

Review of Oleanna by David Mamet

Given the hoo-ha raised this week over Alasdair Thompson’s inappropriate comments about ‘women’s sick problems’ once a month, it’s apposite that Butterfly Creek Theatre Troupe is performing David Mamet’s controversial treatise on old-school male power versus radical feminism.

Mamet’s controversial script is based on the real-life case in the US of Anita Hill who alleged her supervisor Clarence Thomas had made provocative and harassing sexual statements while she was a student.

It can be read in two ways: as a teacher who misuses his power and seriously damages a vulnerable student, or as extreme political correctness that ruins the life of someone who only had good intentions. By the end of this production, audience opinion was divided between the two with one commenting that it was a parallel statement of both.

This is testament to director John Marwick’s skill in delivering a startling two-hander to a modern audience. Mamet wrote the play in the early 1990s and Marwick has avoided the easy option of making it a period piece, instead blurring the lines even more between who is right and who is wrong.

Two-handers are a challenge for any actor and this one is particularly so with its staccato, cut-off dialogue and unrelenting theme. Both Damian Reid as university professor John and Sarah-Rose Burke as his deceptively naïve student Carol  carry their roles with assurance and skill, steadily weaving two solidly opposed characters who draw the audience’s sympathies back and forth between them.

Reid imbues John with an insufferable academic pomposity that is nevertheless well-meaning. His systematic ruin at the hands of Carol is painful to watch, but you can’t help feeling by the end of the piece that he should have known better.

Burke’s Carol is on the one hand vulnerable and helpless, and on the other sly and domineering. Her deft portrayal raises as many questions as it answers, as she twists and manipulates John’s intentions to her own agenda and that of the sinister ‘group’ she claims to represent.

The actors work on an intimate 60-seat traverse stage tucked away behind the blacks at Butterfly Creek’s usual performance venue, Muritai School Hall. It’s a brave and wise choice of staging, bringing the audience uncomfortably close to the one-room setting where all the action takes place. In fact, the final violent act of the play was so close to the front row that it freaked out the audience member closest to it.

This simple setting could be too limiting, but Marwick’s expert direction makes good use of the small space and the blocking never feels too static. However, the same can’t be said of the lighting design which doesn’t vary between scenes and wastes an opportunity to emphasise the shifting timeframe and tone of each.

The other niggle is with the scene changes which are unnecessarily laboured. Presumably, this is to give the two cast members time to change their costumes, but this could have been handled better with simpler variations in wardrobe that wouldn’t have the audience resorting to chit chat to fill the gaps. The original music by Ray Dickinson was, however, an appropriate and atmospheric filler with its piano and ticking clock.

But these technical quibbles are very minor in what is otherwise an excellently performed and rendered production of a challenging script which will leave the audience arguing over long after they’ve left the auditorium.