“Strong performances by Nicholle Cherrie as Fanny and Anni Domingo as Mary Prince are the heart of this impassioned and enjoyable show.”
‘The stately homes of England / How beautiful they stand / To prove the upper classes / Have still the upper hand’. So sang Noël Coward in a famously ironic lyric about the decline that led to many of these grand houses being left to the National Trust. Jane Austen’s ‘Mansfield Park’ is named after one such house, and was her third novel, published in 1814. As the National Trust has only recently acknowledged, many of these properties are intimately linked with the long and shameful history of British colonialism and enslavement.
Austen wrote her novel at a critical time in the struggle against slavery and it contains many hidden references to it. Austen herself was arguably an abolitionist and one of her favourite poems proclaimed ‘We have no slaves at home – then why abroad?’. The trade in slaves was abolished seven years before she wrote Mansfield Park, but slavery itself was not abolished by Britain until 19 years later.
Austen’s plot concerns a newly wealthy family who own a plantation in Antigua. Young Fanny Price is sent to live with her aunt and uncle at Mansfield Park where she falls in love with a cousin and is the subject of unwelcome attentions from the scheming Henry Crawford. Eventually she marries her cousin Edmund.
Two Gents Company has its roots in Zimbabwe, and in this highly original and provocative adaptation, co-writers and directors Tonderai Munyevu and Arne Pohlmeier place the stain of slavery in the spotlight. Fanny Price’s story is interweaved with that of Mary Prince, the first black woman to publish an autobiography describing her experience as a slave.
The style of the piece is inspired by apartheid era South African workshop theatre. It is being performed outdoors in the Watermill garden and the current run was preceded by a short tour to venues which included Jane Austen’s own house. Props and staging are kept simple and the always-present cast talk directly to the audience. Periodically they drop out of the play to provide commentary on it.
Strong performances by Nicholle Cherrie as Fanny and Anni Domingo as Mary Prince are the heart of this impassioned and enjoyable show. Cherrie’s work as Voice Captain shows in the vivid clarity of her engagement with the audience. In her performance, Fanny is a feisty and assertive woman typified by her exclamation at ‘the pain of falling in love with this wet man!’ Anni Domingo brings great soul and much pathos to her part as the enslaved Mary Prince.
Olivier award-winning Wela Mbusi is a commanding presence and the best cast of three who play the slave-owner Sir Thomas Bertram. In other scenes Mbusi swaps with great agility from male to female character, even playing both sides of a conversation between a man and a woman in one nicely comic scene. The remainder of the cast is made up by the accomplished Velile Tshabalala, who takes on five roles, and by Duramaney Kamara, six.
In Louise Worrall’s conceptually inspired set, on-stage action is literally framed by a great gilt picture frame beneath which a set of glistening white cube shaped furniture evokes the sugar trade.
In the first half I wasn’t at all sure why the play didn’t simply bring to life the important story of Mary Prince instead of mixing it in with this less impressive example of Jane Austen’s ‘sweet tooth for love and marriage’. But in the second half the tension within and between the two parallel stories comes to the fore with some winningly powerful writing and performance.
This interesting and polemical play ends with a passionate defence of the ‘woke’ in a scene in which Mary Prince and Jane Austen meet. ‘Beneath it all there’s blood, real blood. That blood is in our memory.’
“Using multi-talented actor musicians, it is in reality a delight to watch throughout”
The premise of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Whistle Down the Wind” is interesting, and quite fun; if not a little implausible. A group of children stumble upon an escaped killer in a barn and through their unwavering belief that he is the Second Coming, they decide to keep his whereabouts a secret from the authorities. Despite being inescapably aware of the townsfolk’s collective hysteria about a murderer being on the loose.
The musical’s book (by Lloyd Webber himself, with Patricia Knop and Gale Edwards) has taken the action Stateside from its humble, English birthplace. The original novel, by Mary Hayley Bell, was set in Sussex while the 1961 film had moved up to Lancashire. We now find ourselves in the heart of the Louisiana Bible Belt. It is the 1950s and religious zeal is as high as the crop in the cornfields. Spearheaded by the adolescent Swallow (Lydia White), the young ones seem to question their elders’ unflinching faith yet refuse to bend from their own fledgling faith. Contradiction seems to be an underlying motif to this story.
The central theme pits the childhood innocence against adult cynicism; young, wide-eyed faith in ‘good’ against the older, blind faith in ‘evil’. Swallow symbolises the former, yet in Tom Jackson Greave’s staging she is too mature to give real credibility to her naive and innocent belief in ‘The Man’ who has unwittingly become Jesus Christ incarnate. White sweeps this worry aside, though, with an energetic and enthralling performance that sees her in customary fine voice.
Musically the show is disjointed, which isn’t necessarily a problem in itself, but in this case it’s hard to understand the shifts in styles. However, there is no denying the quality of music. Each number would pass the Old Grey Whistle test. Lloyd Webber’s theatricality is in full view, framed with influences of gospel, nineties pop, sixties rock, and with reprises and leitmotifs aplenty. And, of course, the mark of the late, great Jim Steinman is stamped indelibly across much of the libretto. “Tire Tracks and Broken Hearts” and “Nature of the Beast” have hot-footed over straight from a Meatloaf gig.
Incongruous to the infectious score is Jackson Greaves’ choreography, much of which feels out of place with the lyrical narrative. The ghost of Swallow’s mother, dancing like a spectral Kate Bush at every conceivable moment is eventually jarring. The intent is clear but unnecessarily overplayed. Similarly overstated is the bible bashing nature of the community. Conversely, the inherent Southern racism of the era is not fully given voice; its mouthpiece confined predominantly to the red neck sheriff – albeit convincingly and masterfully portrayed by the charismatic Toby Webster.
I must confess at this point that I do feel churlish picking at the faults, which are mainly down to the book. For this production is really quite brilliant. Using multi-talented actor musicians, it is in reality a delight to watch throughout. So, hats off to a wonderful cast. ‘The Man’ mistaken for the second coming is indeed a shining star guiding us through the show. Robert Tripolino’s presence and soaring voice fills the auditorium, while his performance remains alluringly intimate. With a twitchy sensitivity that offsets his opportunistic and manipulative pragmatism Tripolino embodies the unpredictability of a man with nothing left to lose. Complemented (rather than supported – this is very much an ensemble piece) by such a strong cast we are steered away from the fault-lines. Lewis Cornay and Chrissie Bhima as the doomed, ‘born-to-run’ teens, Amos and Candy, are an electric duo, while Lloyd Gorman’s fierce yet foibled father figure is a masterful presence.
The musicianship is astounding, led by onstage musical director, Elliot Mackenzie (the manic snake preacher and minister) the ensemble is a dynamic band, shifting from whispering intimacy to orchestral storms while seamlessly swapping instruments with extraordinary sleight of hand. Andrew Exeter’s rich and evocative lighting add to the magic. “Whistle Down the Wind” may have had its fair share of detractors in the past, and it does have its weaknesses, but this revival on the whole highlights its strengths.
