Tag: Richard Bean

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REVIEW: Richard Bean’s To Have And To Hold, Hull Truck Theatre, until Saturday ****

Nothing forced about Adrian Hood’s “Rhubarb” Eddie in Richard Bean’s To Have And To Hold at Hull Truck Theatre

TO Have And To Hold began life at the Hampstead Theatre in London in November 2023 with a cast led by Alun Armstrong and Maria Bailey as an aged East Riding couple bickering more than ever after 60 years.

It is only right , however, that Hull playwright Richard Bean’s tragic-comedy should find its way back to his home city, with director Terry Johnson still at its helm. For like a gardener knows his scallions from his shallots, Bean knows his Wetwang (“wet land”) from his Driffield (“dry land”).

The theme of ageing, of passing on, and passing on the family baton, is universal, but planting To Have And To Hold on home soil makes it more fertile. Likewise, the sight of Hull Truck stalwart Adrian Hood filling a doorway reprising his Hampstead role back on familiar terra firma feels even more right.

Hoody is playing “Rhubarb” Eddie, and on his first entry we recognise him as much from the oversized sticks of  Yorkshire’s champion vegetable, clasped to his midriff, as from Hood’s formidable frame, head still out of view.

Bean is as much a master of physical comedy as verbal wit, the two combining delightfully in the opening scene as Florence (Paula Wilcox, yes, Paula Wilcox, from Man About The House, Emmerdale and Driving Miss Daisy at York Theatre Royal) chugs up and down on a Stannah stairlift, torn between answering the voice at the door and the voice from the bedroom. The snail-slow build-up to the punchline makes it all the better.

Florence and former copper Jack (Ian Bartholomew) are as well worn as their Wetwang house in Dawn Allsopp’s design, with its faded wallpaper, black-and-white photographs and service hatch, through which Florence will pop her head like a cuckoo clock, forever offering to make cups of tea.

Into their nineties, forgetful Florence and the ailing yet mentally sharp Jack are at that Vladimir and Estragon stage in their relationship, finding each other endlessly irritating, yet inseparable, but not so much waiting for Godot as the creeping shadow of death. Such is the witty observation of Bean’s writing that they are very good company for the audience, their grouchy point scoring mirroring the spats of a double act.

Bean ekes comedy out of the stasis and foibles of an acrimonious relationship in a geriatric groove rather than a rut, and the erosion of memory that has Florence confusing names, whether calling Rob “Tina” or reaching for the elusive name of a movie director. You find yourself joining in the hunt under your breath.

Bean is far harsher on their offspring, just as middle-aged son and daughter are harsher too in their judgements, albeit with a residue of fondness and amused bemusement, even cringing, at the behaviour of their parents, who nevertheless continue to show unconditional love in absentia, albeit with head scratching aplenty at what has become a north-south divide.

Rob (Stephen Tompkinson) and Tina (Rebecca Johnson) visit only rarely – almost to the point of neglect – having long migrated from the family nest to pursue ambitions fuelled by education beyond their parents. Malcontent Rob is a TV and book writer of detective dramas, his time divided between London and Los Angeles;  career-driven Tina is a private health care entrepreneur,  living the Somerset lifestyle.

Whereas Florence and Jack trade harmless barbs,  Rob and Tina drop bombs with damaging results for the parents’ regular visitors, odd-job man “Rhubarb” Eddie, and chippy cousin Pamela (Sara Beharrell), who both come under scrutiny over missing money as Bean weaves a mystery thread into his blistered domestic drama.

Bean worked as a psychologist and stand-up comedian before play writing took over, and comedy is always his first instinct, be it in one-liners or putdowns, or Florence referring to Jack’s “enlarged prostrate”. Yet amid the quips with everything, the psychologist is at work, exploring the impact of strained relationships and wounding words, accusations and recriminations.

The sudden insurgence of Covid has a transformative impact too. Bean’s plays often have pulled the rug from under the comedy with shards of darkness that echo the works of John Godber and Alan Ayckbourn. Here, instead, a redemptive rainbow follows that hail storm, involving the stories of his days on the beat that Jack has been recording secretly through the play. Bean now adds a gift for storytelling to his repertoire of combative comedy and cultural commentary.

Under Johnson’s finely tuned direction, Tompkinson’s irascible Rob, Wilcox’s frustrated yet perky Florence and Bartholomew’s physically frail but still assertive Jack excel, with impactful support from Johnson and Beharrell. Hood, the perennial scene stealer, once again is the comic apotheosis of less is more, dipping into pathos too. He puts you in mind of a northern Tommy Cooper, physically funny but with instinctive timing too.

Just as he did for Martin Barrass,when writing the elderly waiter Alfie in One Man, Two Guvnors expressly for his fellow son of Hull, so Bean has given Hood the ideal role for his deadpan delivery and comedic candour.

To Have And To Hold, Hull Truck Theatre, Hull, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm Wednesday, Friday and Saturday matinees. Box office: 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk.

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‘A theatre critic knows the way but not how to drive’. Ouch! Here comes the podcast verdict on Richard Bean’s riotous new play

Joanna Holden’s caustic landlady, Mrs Snowball, and Adrian Hood as her franker than frank son, Our Seth, in Hull Truck Theatre’s premiere of Richard Bean’s 71 Coltman Street

TWO Big Egos In A Small Car podcasters Graham Chalmers & Charles Hutchinson discuss Richard Bean’s Hull of a good new play, 71 Coltman Street.

Under debate too are Russia sanctions, Tchaikovsky and the arts; Barenaked Ladies’ non-PC moniker and Benny Hill; Harry Sword’s drone music book, Monolithic Undertow, plus Harrogate’s strangely Hollywood street names.

Episode 82 awaits you at: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187561/10259934

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Review: Hull Truck Theatre in Richard Bean’s 71 Coltman Street ****

Joanna Holden’s Mrs Snowball and Adrian Hood’s Our Seth

71 Coltman Street, Hull Truck Theatre, 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm and 7.30pm tomorrow. Box office: 01482 323638 or at hulltruck.co.uk.

HULL Truck was not formed in a van – that came a little later – but a squat in Coltman Street in 1971, founded by actor-musician Mike Bradwell when unable to find work.

“I wanted to be nuisance,” said Bradwell, a firebrand iconoclast who sought to make theatre about, by and for real people. Even the left-leaning, arts-championing Guardian met his scorn.

To kick start Hull Truck’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 2022, artistic director Mark Babych asked Hull playwright and film writer Richard Bean to tell the story of those Coltman Street revolutionary beginnings.

The result is a “riotous new comedy” from the ever-irreverent Bean, a former stand-up and psychologist with a love of people showing two fingers to – or at least challenging – authority and the status quo, be it Francis Henshall in One Man, Two Guvnors or Kempton Bunton in the newly released film The Duke.

Bean did extensive research for 71 Coltman Street, interviewing Bradwell and fellow hippy-haired revolutionaries, and what appears on stage is a fusion of the truth and the not-so-true but you wish it were, matched by the songs of Richard Thomas (of Jerry Springer: The Opera notoriety).

Sara Perks’s set design is an open-plan lay-out of the freezing-cold 71 Coltman Street, where Bradwell (Kieran Knowles) and his fellow unemployed actors burn furniture to keep warm. Guitars, drums and a piano, sofas, cushions and theatre posters fill the room, where they improvise a play with no name, no plot, no budget and no bookings. Their phone is the nearest Hull white phone box.  

There are two forms of funding theatre, says Bradwell: Arts Council support or, in their case, social security, and Hull is the perfect place to be “looking for work” and setting up a theatre company because there are no jobs. Whereas, don’t sign on in Stratford-upon-Avon, he advises.

Played by Babych’s actor-musicians, in the pioneering company are Linda (Lauryn Redding), Bradwell’s girlfriend; up-for-anything Manchester lad Stew (Laurie Jamieson) and knows-everything-but-rather-charming, public school-educated Julian (Jordan Metcalfe). Enter Bea (Hanna Khogali), newly up from Oxford.

Bradwell encourages, nay, demands, that they take on the guise of potential characters for plays, when on the streets, for research purposes, be it Stew’s comedic Italian Dave, Julian’s vicar, Bea’s thief with a troubled past or Linda’s former hippie.

As if 71 Coltman Street were not already ripe with characters, Bean serves up two caricatures of chaotic comic delight: no-nonsense, leather-tongued landlady Mrs Snowball (Joanne Holden), who holds no truck with theatre luvvieness, and her equally blunt, not-all-there son, Our Seth (Adrian Hood), first encountered bringing a huge dead dog into the flat. Can two people scene-steal the same scenes? Oh, yes they can.

Another Hull Truck favourite, Matthew Booth, is more low key in his cameos, but you will particularly enjoy his Hell’s Angel, Daz, delivering frozen fish and a nonsensical story.

Bean’s celebrates the character of Hull itself, just as it drew Philip Larkin and John Godber to the coastal city, and he captures the world of making performances brilliantly too, not least in a scene that draws on Lee Strasberg’s workshop techniques.

71 Coltman Street is long and yet it flies by, constantly on the move, adding more characters, building momentum, passing social comment and showing all sides of Bradwell.

Bean spears all things 1971, from flares to a raucous, coarse Hull Truck cabaret night at the Hull & East Riding Institute for the Blind, audience bingo et al, before a climactic performance of debut play Naked turns into a sideshow for Mrs Snowball and Our Seth.

Thomas’s rough and ready songs add to the comic mayhem, and whatever is thrown at them by Bean, from agit-prop drama to cabaret, satirical comedy to Ortonesque farce, Babych’s cast are terrific, especially Knowles’s grouchy but resolute Bradwell and Metcalfe’s Julian, winding him up so unintentionally.

The Covid curse put paid to last week’s performances, but undaunted, in an echo of Bradwell’s pioneers, the bloody-minded Hull Truck spirit has prevailed.

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Richard Bean’s irreverent comedy 71 Coltman Street is back up and running for Hull Truck Theatre’s 50th anniversary

Playwright Richard Bean

AT last, tonight IS the press night for Hull Truck Theatre’s 50th anniversary “headline production”, Richard Bean’s 71 Coltman Street.

First, a Covid outbreak among the company in rehearsals delayed the opening from February 17 to February 22, when “the complexity and ensemble nature of the show meant it could not be ready any earlier”.

Press night was duly moved from February 23 to March 1, only for a second, wider-spread Covid outbreak in the company to enforce the cancellation of more performances from March 1 to 5.

Third time lucky for the fourth estate, artistic director Mark Babych’s production of Hull playwright Bean’s riotous comedy reopens tonight for its final week.

Commissioned to mark Hull Truck’s 50th birthday, with songs by musician, writer and comedy actor Richard Thomas, of Jerry Springer The Opera notoriety, 71 Coltman Street begins a suite of work in 2022 to mark the pioneering Hull theatre’s past, present and future.

It takes the form of an origin story that embraces the spirit of Hull Truck’s founders and the ideals and ideas that drove them, told with Bean’s trademark humour, grit and passion, familiar from One Man, Two Guvnors and his 2017 Hull City of Culture premiere, The Hypocrite.

In a combination of irreverent comedy, cabaret, farce, and drama, Bean heads back to the 1970s to recount Mike Bradwell’s mission to revolutionise British theatre. Sick of fancy plays by dead blokes, he wants to tell stories about real people, living real lives, and it doesn’t get more real than Hull.

In a freezing cold house on Coltman Street, a motley crew of unemployed actors gather to improvise a play with no name, no plot, no budget, and no bookings. So begins Hull Truck Theatre under Bradwell’s artistic directorship.

Thrilled to open the 50th anniversary season with 71 Coltman Street, director Babych says: “From our radical roots to who we are now, Hull Truck Theatre remains a company inspired by the people and place of Hull and East Yorkshire, working with a diverse range of artists and communities to create work with a unique northern voice that celebrates the stories of our city-centre stage.

“We’re incredibly excited to be working with Richard again after the amazing success of The Hypocrite [co-produced with the Royal Shakespeare Company] in 2017. After such a long association with the company, with an incredible track record of work, including Toast, Under The Whaleback and Up On The Roof,Richard’s commitment to the company and the city is something of which we are very proud.”

In preparation for writing the play, Bean conducted extensive research with original company members and founding artistic director Bradwell. 71 Coltman Street is his creative response to the early days of the company, some parts true, others not, but to appropriate the late great Eric Morecambe’s quote, his play is “playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”!”

“The house at 71 Coltman Street is still rather grand,” says Richard. “It’s a big house, like an old merchant’s house, that was turned into bedsits in the 1960s and became a house for passers-through.

“Basically, the family who owned it in back then still own it, but we’ve changed their names in the play to protect their identity!”

Bean drove down the street but could not access 71 Coltman Street itself. “Mike Bradwell and Alan Williams told me all about it instead. It was where they lived and worked on shows, with a really massive three-panelled window at the front,” he says.

“Running between Anlaby Road and Hessle Road, in west Hull, Coltman Street has a reputation as a bit of a rough street, a transitory place to live. My dad was a policeman in Hull, and if you said, ‘there’s a new theatre company setting up in Coltman Street’, he’d say, ‘oh, Coltman Street’!”

Hull Truck Theatre in 71 Coltman Street, Hull Truck Theatre, Hull, until March 12. Box office: 01482 323638 or at hulltruck.co.uk.

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REVIEW: Made In Dagenham, re-made in York, Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company

Jennie Wogan as Rita O’Grady in Made In Dagenham

REVIEW: Made In Dagenham, The Musical, Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm, 7.30pm tomorrow. Box office:  01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk

MADE In Dagenham, re-made in York, is the third production by the Jospeh Rowntree Theatre Company, formed to raise funds for the Haxby Road community theatre.

A good cause, in other words, and the more companies that use this ever-welcoming theatre, the better. The more companies that rise up to tread its boards, the better, too, because York is suffused with musical theatre talent and also with audiences always keen to support such productions.

This week represents the chance to see the York premiere of Made In Dagenham, transferred from screen to stage by composer David Arnold, lyricist Richard Thomas and Richard Bean, the Hull playwright whose comedy dramas revel in confrontations, spats and politics on stage (witness One Man, Two Guvnors and Toast, for example).

Bean re-tells the true 1968 story of the women in the stitching room of Ford’s Dagenham car plant being stitched up by both management and corrupt union, bluntly told their pay is to be dropped to an “unskilled” grade. What follows is a fight for equal pay, standing up against an American corporation, and if the battle is less well known than the Suffragette movement of the 1900s, it is a women’s rights landmark nonetheless.

From the off, once an ensemble number loosens limb and voice alike for Kayleigh Oliver’s cast, the banter amid the graft of the sewing machinists is boisterously established, the humour full of double entendres and sexual bravado, as characters are drawn pleasingly quickly. So too are their interactions with the men at the car plant, and in the case of Rita O’Grady (Jennie Wogan), working wife and mother of two, her home life with husband Eddie (Nick Sephton).

Rita, together with Rosy Rowley’s Connie Riley, become the protagonists of the struggle, but at a cost: for one, her relationship, for the other, her health. Wogan and Rowley are both tremendous in the drama’s grittier scenes and knock the hell out of their big numbers.

Bean writes with more sentimentality than usual, charting the fracturing of Rita and Eddie’s relationship, but it suits the heightened tone of a musical. Sephton handles his ballad lament particularly well.

Jennifer Jones’s Sandra, Izzy Betts’ Clare and, in particular, Helen Singhateh’s lewd Beryl add to the car plant fun and games, as does Chris Gibson’s ghastly American management guy, Tooley. All your worst Stetson-hatted American nightmares in one, and post-Brexit, there’ll soon be more where he came from!

You will enjoy Martyn Hunter’s pipe-smoking caricature of Prime Minister Harold Wilson and director Kayleigh Oliver’s no-nonsense Barbara Castle too. Richard Goodall is good all round as the machinists’ hard-pressed union rep.

Supporting roles and ensemble serve the show well too, and if sometimes the sound balance means lines are hard to hear when the Timothy Selman’s orchestra is playing beneath them, it is a minor problem. Selman’s players, Jessica Douglas and Sam Johnson among them, are on good form throughout.

Lorna Newby’s choreography could be given a little more oomph but with so many on stage at times, space is tight. One routine, where the women move in circles one way, and the men do likewise the other way, outside them, works wonderfully, however.

Made In Dagenham may be a car plant story, but its factory politics resonate loudly nanew in York, the industrial city of chocolate and trains.

Please note, Made In Dagenham features some very strong language and may be unsuitable for children.