Brass

Union Theatre

Reviewed – 6th November 2018

★★★★

“this moving piece about love and solidarity, humanises history and brings the forgotten to the foreground”

As Remembrance Sunday is coming up this weekend, with particular poignancy, as it will mark a hundred years since the armistice, Brass seems the most appropriate piece of theatre to watch this week in the capital. Originally commissioned by National Youth Music Theatre in 2014, Benjamin Till’s World War One musical now makes its professional premiere at the Union Theatre. Dramatising real life stories and people from the time, this moving piece about love and solidarity, humanises history and brings the forgotten to the foreground.

The war has been raging on France’s frontlines for a year. Alf, conductor of one of Leeds amateur brass bands, has decided it’s time for him to enlist. With not much encouragement, the rest of the band also agree to sign up, no man wanting to be left behind. After some very basic training, they are packed off across the English Channel, with spirits high, ready to fight the Krauts and become heroes. It doesn’t take long before the true horrors of war reveal themselves. The cheery days in the band seeming like a distant memory.

Back on home soil, the wives, girlfriends, and sisters of the men are left in Leeds to pick up the pieces, everyday, fearful of receiving the dreaded telegram reporting their loved one’s death. But these women aren’t sitting in wait; they bravely do their bit for the war effort, working at the Barnbow munitions factory. Through the correspondence sent between the men and women, the audience are transported back and forth between home and the ravaged front, proving the power of words in sharing love, encouragement, and reassurance.

The most refreshing part of this production is having a story that evenly tells of both men and women’s trials and tribulations during The Great War. As incomprehensibly horrific as being in the trenches must have been, seeing your friends killed right before your eyes, it is just as hard-hitting hearing about those treacherous times through the female perspective. With sensitive sophistication, Brass is a multi-faceted exploration of the devastation war brings to every member of the family.

Benjamin Till’s music ranges from haunting lamentations to raucous morale-boosting ditties, which help to bring light and shade into the show. Most songs are rather unmemorable, yet still excel at moving the story onward, offering the emotional clout needed. The power of the cast’s voices is exemplary, creating gorgeous harmonies that can be spine tingling. With just the Musical Director, Henry Brennan, on the piano, this basic set up gives space for the singing to take centre stage.

Highly moving and heartfelt, Brass compels you to reflect, and make sure that the lives lost to the war are not forgotten.

Reviewed by Phoebe Cole

Photography by Mark Senior

Brass

Union Theatre until 24th November

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Heartbreak House | ★★★★ | January 2018

Carmen 1808 | ★★★★★ | February 2018

The Cherry Orchard | ★★★★ | March 2018

It’s Only Life | ★★★★ | June 2018

Around the World in Eighty Days | ★★★ | August 2018

Midnight | ★★★★★ | September 2018

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★★★

“Fenton’s expressive storytelling and comedic, quick-witted improvisation, will ensure that you have an enjoyable evening”

Phantasmagorical: a confused group of real or imagined images that change quickly, one following the other as in a dream.

As Halloween is looming ever closer, The Old Red Lion Theatre has been hosting the fright-filled London Horror Festival to celebrate this ghoulish time of year. Careena Fenton brings her spooky mind reading experience, Phantasmagorical, to be a part of the festival. It is an entertaining, good old-fashioned scare that mixes theatrics with seances and magic. As sceptical as you may be with the ‘powers’ of second sight, Fenton’s expressive storytelling and comedic, quick-witted improvisation, will ensure that you have an enjoyable evening.

Sylvia Sceptre, Fenton’s Victorian alter ego, is a woman who delights in all things macabre and metaphysical. At a young age she discovers that she has a gift, being able to bridge between Earth and the ‘other side’. She is able to express the inner souls and feelings of inanimate objects, as well as reading the minds of the living. Sylvia regales her story, of how she came to learn of her powers and what the rest of society thought about it. Was it a gift? Or was it just a case of female hysteria? Testing her skills on the audience, proving herself as a master of the mind, she departs from our world as quickly as she enters it.

With the likes of illusionist Derren Brown peddling mind reading for the 21st-century masses, Fenton’s Sylvia Sceptre takes us back to its origins, where it could be found as a speciality act, up and down the music halls of Britain. There’s a sense of innocent, harmless fun from a bygone era that proves it can be just as entertaining now, as it would have been all those years ago. Fenton has a whimsical and warm presence that is simply irresistible. A mix of naughtiness and nicety.

The stage is mostly bare, albeit the props that help to assist in Fenton’s tricks. With bells ringing and chimes chiming all by themselves, you can’t help but get lost in the magic with childish awe, even when the adult inside you tries to rationally work out how it was done. A charming little show, with an eccentric playfulness that you can’t help but enjoy.

Reviewed by Phoebe Cole

Union Theatre

Reviewed – 6th November 2018

★★★★

“this moving piece about love and solidarity, humanises history and brings the forgotten to the foreground”

Highly moving and heartfelt, Brass compels you to reflect, and make sure that the lives lost to the war are not forgotten.

Reviewed by Phoebe Cole

Photography by Mark Senior

Brass

Union Theatre until 24th November

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Phantasmagorical

Old Red Lion Theatre

Reviewed – 23rd October 2018

★★★

“Fenton’s expressive storytelling and comedic, quick-witted improvisation, will ensure that you have an enjoyable evening”

Phantasmagorical: a confused group of real or imagined images that change quickly, one following the other as in a dream.

Reviewed by Phoebe Cole

Phantasmagorical

Old Red Lion Theatre

Previously reviewed at this venue: