Road - November 2009 Bath Chronicle Review, November 26, 2009.
If ever there was a must-see performance to get you away from watching Spooks on the telly on a Wednesday night, then this was it.
Road is a revival of Jim Cartwright's play that was first produced in 1986, a gritty reaction to the quashing of the miners' strike, unemployment and poverty.
At the same time it is a celebration of life in the raw and the hope for something better – all delivered in a rich Anglo-Saxon vernacular enlivened by gutsy humour and flashes of pure poetry.
It ranges in turn from laugh-out-loud humour to pure pathos.
This was a stunning production on the part of an amateur company and a triumph for Alex Needham whose first outing as director this was.
The play takes place in one Lancashire street – here represented on a stark set by a bit of scaffolding and the occasional prop.
No more is necessary as the eclectic range of characters paraded before us, introduced by the narrator Scullery (well played by Steve Leanaghan), are quite colourful enough.
There are girls dolling up to go out on the pull, a former skinhead who has found salvation in the Dharma, and two lads, Eddie and Brink whose route to sanity lies in getting drunk and letting rip to the sounds of Otis Redding.
From partying to ranting against the lack of jobs, a drunken husband or the sheer grinding awfulness of poverty, it is all enacted with a richness of language and at an exhilarating pace that barely faltered on the opening night.
Many of the cast doubled – or even trebled – up on their roles, with Tim Thornton brilliant variously as the nutter Skin Lad, a mad DJ and a soldier who is sick in his chips.
Paul Dyson is moving as Jerry, an ex-RAF chap who can't get away from his past, and Gina Cottey (Carol), Amy Hughes (Lane and Louise) evidently have huge fun playing sassy girls looking for something a bit better in life.
Carolyn McCormac, who first appears as defeated, drunken mum Brenda, then transforms superbly and almost unrecognisably into the sassy, mouthy Marion shouting after her errant husband.
This production rocks – and that includes the interval when you get the chance to relive your 80s dancing days on the stage – go hide outside if of a nervous disposition.
It deserved a bigger audience than the half-full house it had on Wednesday.
Jackie Chappell
Tartuffe - May 2009 Bath Chronicle Review (18th May 2009)
The Rondo Theatre Company has put on a highly enjoyable adaptation of arguably Moliere's most renowned work. Under the sure hand of director Mike Taylor, the audience at the Rondo was treated to a gem of a production. It is 17th century France and a wealthy family watch in horror as the sycophantic conman Tartuffe, hoodwinks his way into the master's good favour. After the master's wife cons the conman into revealing his treacherous misdeeds, the family may be too late to save themselves as the devious Tartuffe attempts to usurp the master and take over the household. A huge amount of credit must go to Pulitzer Prize winning poet and translator, Richard Wilbur, who would have delighted Moliere himself with this quite brilliant translation; the entire play, true to the original version, is performed in rhyming couplets. Superb performances all around, but special mention to Chris Seton-Smith, whose portrayal of the smarmy and morally corrupt Tartuffe, is both hilarious and unctuous in equal measure. Regardless of whether they were Moliere fans, the audience thoroughly enjoyed this polished and often very funny production.
Jake Tupman
Black Comedy and Heavy, directed by Matt Nation (November 2008)
Bath Chronicle Review - 02 Dec 2008
Bath's own Jon Thrower takes centre stage at the Rondo as he writes one of two short plays and stars in the other. His play Heavy provides the perfect support for Peter Shaffer's farce; Black Comedy. A packed out Rondo, laughed until they cried, as first Thrower's hilariously flawed characters brought the 19th century Office of Weights and Measures to life, and then as then as the superbly crafted characters in Shaffer's play fumbled around in feigned darkness, trying to avoid both physical and metaphorical conflict. The two directors have experimented with unconventional techniques of theatre use, and although there are times where it hasn't quite worked, most of the scenes are choreographed with commendable precision. Without doubt though, the charm of these two plays lies firmly with the three dimensional characters and their inevitable disputes; and thanks to some capable acting from a strong cast, the audience was rarely more than a few seconds away from the next laugh. It is a testament to the strength of Thrower's writing that his play was not overshadowed by its more illustrious counterpart. Instead, the audience left the Rondo in discussion about which of the two plays they had liked more.
Jake Tupman