PHOENIX Dance Theatre are
exploring the long-lasting effects of British colonial forces in the world premiere
of Black Waters at Leeds Playhouse this week.
Drawing inspiration from history,
this emotionally evocative new production by the Leeds company combines two events.
Black Waters: Phoenix Dance Theatre’s exploration of place, worth and belonging
In the first, in the late-18th century,
130 slaves were thrown overboard from the Zong as the ship owners attempted to
profit from their life insurance.
More than 100 years later, Indian
freedom fighters were incarcerated in the Kala Pani prison for speaking out
against the regime.
Co-choreographer Sharon Watson during rehearsals for Phoenix Dance Theatre’s Black Waters
Black Waters reflects on these two colonial landmarks, showing
how people can find value, inspiration and hope even in the bleakest of times.
The co-choreographers, Phoenix
artistic director Sharon Watson and Shambik Ghose and Dr
Mitul Sengupta, artistic directors of Rhythmosaic, from Kolkata, combine
contemporary dance with Kathak dance: one of the eight major forms of Indian
classical dance, traditionally attributed to ancient travelling storytellers.
Black Waters co-choreographer Shambik Ghose
Sharon says: “Black Waters is not about recreating these two events through
contemporary dance, but is an exploration of place, worth and belonging, which
can often be conflicting for people of colour.”
Black Waters can be seen in the Quarry Theatre at 7.30pm tonight, tomorrow and Saturday. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at leedsplayhouse.org.uk.
Riotous: Ubu (Katy Owen) and Mrs Ubu (Mike Shepherd) in Ubu! The Sing Along Satire
REVIEW: Kneehigh’s Ubu! A Singalong Satire, Quarry Theatre, Leeds
Playhouse, tonight at 7.30pm. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at
leedsplayhouse.org.uk
ALEX, the woodsman-bearded
drama teacher from York, won’t forget his afternoon visit to Leeds Playhouse,
thrashed by a Leeds boy in a daft party game in Kneehigh’s promenade musical.
He loved it! We
loved it! You’ll love it! Yet again, Cornwall’s Kneehigh send you home dizzy and
delirious with the joys and jolts, the thrilling rock’n’rollercoaster ride, of
theatre that aptly comes with an exclamation mark in its show title.
Ubu! A Sing Along
Satire has politics, a big flushing loo, cheers and boos, inflatable animals, songs,
more politics, more songs, competitive audience participation and a giant bear
with poor vision in a chaotic, kinetic, karaoke cabaret circus of derailed life
under a deranged dictator.
First, house
lights up, Delycia Belgrave and the soul house band The Sweaty Bureaucrats set
the boisterous mood from up on high with party anthems.
Enter our
convivial, dry-witted host in vest, tie and striped trousers, Jeremy Wardle (Niall
Ashdown), commenting on the state of the British nation as he introduces the land
of Lovelyville and the campaign trail of sleek, sloganeering President Nick
Dallas (Dom Coyote), his woke daughter Bobbi (Kyla Goodey) and their Russian
security boss Captain Shittabrique (Adam Sopp). Shitt-a-brique. Geddit. There
are plenty more risqué gags like that to follow.
Where’s Ubu?
Here’s Ubu! Tiny yet hugely impactful Katy Owen’s unhinged, petulant, crude and
cruel soon-to-be-dictator Ubu. Potty mouthed, bespectacled, dreadlocked, Welsh
voiced, and in the words of Kneehigh: “impossibly greedy, unstoppably rude,
inexorably daft and hell-bent on making the country great again! Sound
familiar?”
Familiar, yes,
but told so gleefully afresh, as Alfred Jarry’s famously riot-inducing shot of anarchy
from 1896 Paris kicks up a song and dance in the manipulative era of Trump,
Johnson and Putin.
Conceived by writer Carl Grose, his co-director Mike Shepherd (the
show’s ribald, preening Mrs Ubu) and musical director Charles Hazlewood, Ubu! is
a punk-spirited, twisted vaudeville study of power, protest and populism that
could not be better timed.
Boos for Katie Hopkins, Boris and Trump; Britney’s Toxic, The Carpenters’ Close To You and Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk re-invented so joyfully; wonderful performances all round, audience included; crazily energetic choreography by Tom Jackson Greaves and a constantly busy, circular rostrum set by Michael Vale all make for another Kneehigh knees-up high.
Cause a riot, if needs must, to secure a ticket for this petty, power-mad protagonist’s panto of pandemonium.
Night Of The Living Dead – Remix: theatre and film in synchronicity
REVIEW: Night Of The Living Dead – Remix, Leeds Playhouse/Imitating The Dog, Courtyard Theatre, Leeds Playhouse, until February 15; Dr Korczak’s Example, Leeds Playhouse, Bramall Rock Void, Leeds Playhouse, until February 15. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at leedsplayhouse.org.uk
FIRSTLY, apologies for the tardy reviewing, but there is
still time aplenty to see these two contrasting yet equally impactful
productions at the restructured Leeds Playhouse.
The human condition, what we do to each other, lies at the heart of both pieces, and at a time when the divisive aspects and little island mentality of Brexit are coming home to roost after cutting the umbilical cord with Europe on January 31, they are even more resonant.
American film-maker George A Romero, from The Bronx, New York, would have turned 80 on Tuesday, making Leeds Playhouse and cutting-edge Leeds company Imitating The Dog’s co-production very timely.
Romero’s trademark was
gruesome horror movies, satirical in tone yet serious in their message, delivered
as it was through depicting variations on a zombie apocalypse. Night Of The
Living Dead, from 1968, set the template and here comes a Remix that is at once
theatrical and filmic.
In a city where football
coach Marcelo Bielsa preaches the value of repetition, yet still with unpredictable
results, the Playhouse/Imitating The Dog company sets itself the challenge of mirroring
Romero’s film, frame by frame. The two are shown side by side on screen, synchronised
in motion with actors saying the lines.
Your gaze goes from screen
to screen but also you watch the actors in the act of re-making the film,
switching between performing and working the cameras, and defying the odds in
pulling off the feat when seemingly always up against the clock with the need
for improvisation, confronted by limited
resources. Round of applause, please, to Laura Atherton, Morgan Bailey, Luke
Bigg, Will Holstead, Morven Macbeth, Matt Prendergast and Adela Rajnovic.
You find yourself appreciating
a “dance” show as much as a theatre and film one, because the movement across,
on, off, and around the stage has the ebb and flow of choreography. Another
round of applause, then, to co-directors Andrew Quick and Pete Brooks;
projection and video designer Simon Wainwright; lighting designer Andrew Crofts;
composer James Hamilton and on-stage model creator and operator Matthew Tully.
Laura Hopkins’s set and costume designs are a show in themselves too.
Night Of The Living Dead –
Remix is not a mere tribute act of breath-taking invention and bravura humour.
Instead, it seeks to give 1960s’ American social and political context to Romero’s
message by bleeding in film and sound of John F Kennedy, Senator brother Robert
and Dr Martin Luther King’s famous speeches and the cast’s re-enactment of
coverage of their assassinations. The words echo down the years, haunting and
disturbing, all the more so when matched with a zombie apocalypse.
Robert Pickavance as Dr Korczak and Gemma Barnett as Stepanie in Dr Korczak’s Example
The Playhouse’s new third
performance space, the Bramall Rock Void studio, made its autumn debut with Charley
Miles’s all-female Yorkshire Ripper drama There Are No Beginnings, giving voice
to a blossoming North Yorkshire writer.
Now it turns the spotlight
on the Holocaust in a Playhouse production timed to mark Holocaust Memorial Day(January
27) in a city with both Jewish and Polish communities. Playhouse artistic director
James Brining had commissioned David Greig to write Dr Korczak’s Example when working
in young people’s theatre in Scotland 20 years ago for performances in school
halls, and on moving to Leeds he read it with the Playhouse youth theatre “a
year or so ago”.
That prompted Brining to
direct this winter’s production, turning the spotlight anew on the Polish Jewish
doctor, children’s author, storyteller, broadcaster and educator Janusz
Korczak, who brought liberal and progressive ideals to running a ghetto
orphanage for 200 children in Warsaw.
His principles live on, becoming the basis for the United Nations Convention on the Rights Of Children that still prevails. That is the history and the present of a story that Greig turns into a play set in 1942 that is at once grim and yet hopeful because of the example of the title that Dr Korczak set.
Brining’s production is
supported by the Linbury Prize for Stage Design, a prize for emerging designers
that sees set and costume designer Rose Revitt turn the new studio back to
rubble, with piles of bricks, dusty furniture and desks.
Greig’s play is a three hander, wherein Playhouse regular Rob Pickavance brings gravitas, warmth and sensitivity to Dr Korczak, while Danny Sykes and Gemma Barnett announce talents to watch.
Sykes plays Adzio, brittle, brutalised
and psychologically damaged at the hands of adults, his 16 years of childhood stolen
from him, as he becomes the latest child to be taken in by Korczak. Barnett’s
Stepanie is a beacon, benefiting from Korczak’s care already and drawn to
trying to help the deeply bruised Adzio.
David Shrubsole’s sound
deigns and compositions complement the tone, Rachel Wise’s movement direction
is as important as Brining’s direction, and the actors’ use of models (the size
of Action Man, without being glib) to play out several scenes has a powerful
impact too.
Having a recording of Leeds children reading Dr Korczak’s principles for children’s rights to freedom, respect and love at the play’s close is a fitting finale, one that echoes into the Leeds night air.
Kneehigh’s Ubu!: party and protest rolled into one riotous show . Picture: Steve Tanner
ALFRED Jarry’s ground-breaking political
parable Ubu Roi caused riots when first staged in Paris in 1896. Now, Kneehigh’s
Ubu! A Singalong Satire promises an equally riotous night out at Leeds
Playhouse’s Quarry Theatre from Tuesday to Saturday.
Conceived by Carl Grose, Charles
Hazlewood and Mike Shepherd, it smashes together Jarry’s gleefully rude and
deliberately childish script with a crowd-pleasing singalong, party games, inflatable
animals and contemporary political satire.
Kneehigh’s Ubu! is a punk-spirited, comedic
study of power, protest and populism. “And what better form of popular culture
to demonstrate this than mass karaoke?”, ask the Cornish company.
The show is led by Katy Owen’s tiny,
tyrannical Pa Ubu and Mike Shepherd’s pouting, preening Ma Ubu, alongside the
ever-versatile Kneehigh ensemble: a six-strong cast and the band The Sweaty
Bureaucrats.
Arranged by Hazlewood, the selection of
songs is inventive and cannily chosen, ranging from Britney Spears’ Toxic and Edwin Starr’s War to Mark Ronson’s Uptown
Funk and The Carpenters’ Close To You, as a festival atmosphere builds.
Writer and co-director Carl Grose
explains how Ubu! came to fruition and why the petty protagonist still
resonates with modern audiences. “When
Alfred Jarry’s play received its premiere at the Théâtre de l’OEuvre in Paris
on December 10 1896, there was, so the story goes, a full-on riot,” he says.
Winging it: Kneehigh’s singalong Ubu!. Picture: Steve Tanner
“Audiences and critics alike were
confronted with sights and sounds of such outrageousness that pandemonium broke
out and the production was shut down after only two performances.”
Grose
continues: “Like all
great artists, Alfred Jarry was a disrupter, and Ubu was his weapon of mass
disruption. A personification of chaos, a lord of misrule, a howling,
hysterical metaphor for greed, lies and corruption.
“The main character was designed to be
both laughed at and despised, and that’s still the case. He is here to gather
us together as his prisoners, his acolytes, his victims – or his potential
usurpers.
“He is a reminder that those in power
will do their damnedest to make their reality our normality. It’s up to us to
collectively remember that there’s nothing normal about Ubu and his ilk.”
Ubu’s behaviour beggars belief, concludes
Grose. “He is cruel, nonsensical, cowardly, aggressive and beyond vile in his
actions,” he says. “Career mad, he looks totally ridiculous, puts money over
humanity in a heartbeat and has a vocabulary that leaves a lot to be desired.
What an absurd creation, eh?”
Prepare for a Kneehigh antidote to a
divided world that makes a stand against divisiveness and brings audiences
together through the joyful act of singing
Kneehigh’s Ubu! A Singalong Satire, Quarry Theatre, Leeds Playhouse, February 4 to 8. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at leedsplayhouse.org.uk.
Robert Pickavance as Dr Janusz Korcza in rehearsals for Dr Korczak’s Example. All pictures: Zoe Martin
LEEDS Playhouse regular Robert Pickavance, Gemma Barnett and newcomer Danny Sykes will star in Dr Korczak’s Example, the first 2020 production in the new Bramall Rock Void.
Artistic director James Brining directs David Greig’s powerful
and moving play in a Leeds premiere timed to coincide with Holocaust Memorial
Day on January 27.
Set in the shadows of the Warsaw Jewish ghetto in 1942, Dr Korczak’s Example
examines life in an orphanage where escapism is key to survival, and where the
children’s shared sense of community is the only barrier against the wave of
hatred approaching their haven of solidarity.
Director James Brining at work in the Leeds Playhouse rehearsal rooms
Greig’s play highlights the work of Polish educator and children’s
author Dr Janusz Korczak, who championed the voices of young people and
whose influence led to the creation of the United Nation’s Convention on the
Rights of the Child in 1989.
Director James Brining says: “Dr Janusz Korczak was an incredible
individual whose beliefs and teachings helped to redefine how we think about
the way we bring up our own children and the part we have to play within
society to achieve that.
“I commissioned the play and first directed it in 2001. It’s such a
powerful, moving and timely story and I’m so looking forward to returning to it
in the new Bramall Rock Void and particularly to working with Hebden Bridge
designer Rose Revitt, winner of the Linbury Prize for theatre design.”
Gemma Barnett rehearsing her role as Stephanie in Dr Korczak’s Example
The Bramall Rock Void forms part of the £15.8 million redevelopment of
Leeds Playhouse, completed last autumn. “What we have already discovered about
our new theatre is that its raw intimacy can create a powerful environment for
powerful stories and Rose’s vision for Dr Korczak’s Example does just that,”
says James. ”I’m honoured to be
directing this [play] again with such a brilliant company.”
Brining
commissioned Greig to write the play 20 years ago when he was running
TAG, a children’s theatre company in Glasgow, Scotland. Now looking forward to
introducing it to a new audience in his home city of Leeds, he says:“I’ve
done quite a few things more than once, but I never intended to go back to this
piece again.
“I was
really happy with the original production. Then, a year or so ago, I came
across a statistic that showed quite a high number of people – maybe 18 to 20
per cent – thought the Nazi holocaust was exaggerated, with a slightly smaller
number saying it was completely fabricated. I was really struck and shocked by
that because when I grew up it was a very present thing.”
Leeds actor Robert Pickavance during rehearsals for Dr Korczak’s Example
Brining
continues: “On a very personal level, revisiting the play has made me ask if
I’m the same person I was 20 years ago. Having children has changed the way I
see the play and, perhaps, explains why I was so moved when I read it again.
I’m not saying that having children gives you more of a profound understanding,
but it does give you a different perspective. And I’m just older, so I can now
align myself quite strongly with Korczak.
“I think
that’s the measure of a really great piece of theatre: it speaks to you
differently according to who you are and where you are. Having children, being
older, the world being a slightly different place, even having more distance
from 1942, all of these things affect the way you engage with it. But as I’ve watched
rehearsals, I’ve been really moved. The power of the play is still very
potent.”
The role of Dr Janusz Korczak will be played by Leeds
actor Robert Pickavance, who starred as Ebenezer Scrooge in A
Christmas Carol and Sava in David Greig’s Europe as part of
the Leeds Playhouse Ensemble during its Pop-Up Season.
Newcomer Danny Sykes rehearsing his role as Adzio
He will be joined by Gemma Barnett, fresh from starring as Hermia
in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Shakespeare In The Squares, as well as
Rory in A Hundred Words For Snow at Trafalgar Studios and Lola
in Lola at The Vaults, both in London.
Danny Sykes will make his first professional stage appearance after
graduating with a BA in Acting from Arts Ed in 2019.
This Playhouse production is supported by the Linbury Prize for Stage
Design, funded by the Linbury Trust. This biennial prize, the most important of
its kind in Britain, brings together the best early
career designers with professional theatre, dance and opera companies.
Joining Brining and Revitt in the creative team are lighting designer Jane Lalljee, sound designer and composer David Shrubsole, movement designerRachel Wise.
Dr Korczak’s Example runs at Bramall Rock Void, Leeds Playhouse, January 25 to February 15. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at leedsplayhouse.org.uk.
Night Of The Living Dead – Remix in rehearsal at Leeds Playhouse. All pictures: Ed Waring
INNOVATIVE Leeds company Imitating The Dog
are linking up with Leeds Playhouse for a unique shot-for-shot stage re-creation
of George A. Romero’s 1968 zombie movie Night Of The Living Dead™ “for
today’s theatre audiences”.
Directed by Imitating The Dog’s co-artistic directors Andrew Quick and Pete Brooks, Night Of The Living DeadTM – Remix will run in the Courtyard Theatre from January 24 to February 15 before a British tour.
In 1968, Night Of
The Living Dead started out as a low-budget, independent,
politically charged horror movie, telling the story of seven strangers taking
refuge from flesh-eating ghouls in an isolated farmhouse. As the night draws in, their
situation becomes desperate, hope turns to despair and the picket-fence
American dream is smashed apart.
Fifty years on, seven performers enter
the Courtyard stage armed with cameras, a box of props and a rail of costumes.
Can they recreate the ground-breaking film, shot-for-shot before our eyes,
using whatever they can lay their hands on?
Meeting the challenge of 1,076 edits
in 95 minutes will be a heroic struggle. “Success will require
wit, skill and ingenuity and is by no means guaranteed” for the cast of Laura Atherton; Morgan Bailey; Luke
Bigg; William James Holstead; Morven Macbeth; Matt Prendergast and Adela Rajnović.
“Success will require wit, skill and ingenuity and is by no means guaranteed” : the challenge facing Imitating The Dog and Leeds Playhouse
Playing a key role too will be Quick
and Brooks’s production team of Imitating The Dog’s projection
and video designer Simon Wainwright; designer Laura Hopkins; lighting designer
Andrew Crofts and composer James Hamilton.
George A. Romero’s 1968 film presented
an apocalyptic vision of paranoia, the breakdown of community and the end of
the American dream. In 2020’s stage production, digital theatre practitioners Imitating
The Dog compose a love-song to the cult movie in a re-make and remix that “attempts
to understand the past in order not to have to repeat it”.
The new Leeds-stamped version is in
turns humorous, terrifying, thrilling, thought-provoking and joyous. Above all,
in the retelling, it becomes a searing
parable for our own complex times.
Imitating The Dog’s
Andrew Quick says: “Looking at the state of the world today, it seems so
appropriate that we are going back to this seminal story, the original zombie
movie. Rehearsals have been great fun so far and it’s amazing how scary
and relevant Romero’s Sixties’ vision still seems.”
“A searing parable for our own complex times”: Imitating The Dog and Leeds Playhouse’s co-production of Night Of The Living Dead – Remix
Playhouse artistic director James Brining enthuses:“We’re thrilled to be working with Imitating The Dog for this momentous
project. They’re a fantastic local company who brilliantly fuse together
technology with live action. I can’t wait for us to work with them to be able
to breathe new life into this well-known classic that has been celebrated for
many years.”
Russ Streiner, who
produced and appeared as Johnny in Romero’s film, says: “Before Night Of
The Living Dead™ became the classic film it is, it started as a
collection of ideas and story points; story points that are timeless in their
reflection of the human condition.
“The common link
between [film production company] Image Ten long ago and Imitating The Dog and
Leeds Playhouse today is a genuine love of the productions we present to the
public, and we’re absolutely thrilled
that they have teamed up to present their own authorised fresh and exciting
retelling of the story that began over 50 years ago for us.
“This retelling goes back to the roots
of where ‘Night’ started with experimental ideas and a new imagining of the
story – this time coupled with the dynamic of live actors performing to a live
audience.”
Tickets are on sale on 0113 213 7700 or at leedsplayhouse.org.uk.
The horror, the horror: Imitating The Dog in Heart Of Darkness in 2019
Did you know?
LEEDS company Imitating The Dog have
been making ground-breaking work for theatres and other spaces for 20 years,
fusing live performance with digital technology. Among their past productions
are A Farewell To Arms, Hotel Methuselah and Heart Of Darkness, the latter two
playing York Theatre Royal in 2010 and 2019 respectively.
