This was another excellent little production by my favourite am dram group ACT (Arts Centre Theatre) directed by Jason Kenyon. Titled Homeless I had no preconceptions about it. Indeed on wandering into the lobby area beforehand there was a tramp asleep on the stairs – strange, where was security? Two more ragged characters were skulking in the bar area. I copped on eventually.

In the auditorium a couple with tickets for the front row found a couple of vagrants in their seats – who reluctantly shifted along. At various points in the evening many of the cast slipped into the auditorium and became part of the audience.

No lead roles in this one, the stronger characters in the group were rendered equal simply by their homeless state. The street people formed a loose collective, each grimly aware of their status in the world, each wary and even contemptuous of any form of authority.

The performance is underpinned by the narrator, the excellent Fi Marchant, who considers the story behind by the prominent chalked outline of a recently-deceased body. We hear about that person’s downfall. We hear the back stories of three more of the homeless group; a bloke kicked out of his parents’ home for being gay; a husband and father turned alcoholic after his family are killed with him at the wheel; a Russian girl trafficked into the sex trade. It could be you…or me.

Sian Jones, playing a fresh-faced and idealistic social worker, is crushed by the truths, the realities that are thrown back at her by her street-wise ‘clients’. She is not of them and therefore is against them despite her best intentions. No wonder even the best of professional social workers are gradually reduced to damage limitation and box ticking.

Early in the piece there is a scene where two blokes, out on the town, gaily piss on a sleeping tramp, cheered on by one of their women. (The other woman is at least seen to have a conscience). To these ‘normal’ people the homeless ones are worthless.

This performance tries to demonstrate that ‘homeless’ is not a single state to be attacked, tolerated or dealt with. It is made up of individuals, and behind each ragged individual is a back story which has led them to this place. Happy, stable and contented folk who have had a bit of bad luck or who have inadvertently taken a wrong turn in life.

And, crucially, the significance of an insignificant life is that, but for the grace of God, the life could be yours…or mine.

It’s early days in rehearsals for the Arts Centre Theatre group as they prepare for the Eisteddfod at the end of November. I gather it’s the first time that the group have decided to enter the various drama classes mob handed. Monologues and duologues seem to be the order of the day, allowing each actor to show off their individual skills which might not come to the fore in the context of a larger-scale production.

I sat in on rehearsals on Monday and Tuesday. Happily one of my little efforts has been deemed good enough to use and I was eager to see what Barbara and Yvonne made of it. I was a bit disappointed by the first read-through, thinking that it wasn’t,  after all, that good. But it was intriguing how the Director started to build the words into a performance, layer upon layer. The speech, movement, rapport between the pair, everything improved rapidly. Though still at the script-holding stage the piece is already at a stage where I’m confident it will be very, very good on the night.

The group number maybe a couple of dozen. It’s run pretty much as a cooperative with the Director keeping a controlling hand on it all. You want to act, you’ve got to do other jobs as well. No prima donnas here, though clearly some are more accomplished than others and have starred in recent productions (search on the Theatre category). There were several comparative newcomers and they were encouraged by the more experienced. Some of the group were doing deputy stage managers, or deputy director, jobs for some performances before then acting a piece of their own.

In the last hour everybody gets together in the ‘Show and Tell’ which is where some of the pieces are acted out in front of everyone else and feedback is given. There were two highlights last night, both monologues. The first was from a guy who nearly has his piece word perfect already. He put all his heart into a moving piece about the old days whence he has fallen into poverty, taking refuge in the bottle. Acted out with real emotion which transferred itself to the watchers.

The other was a loud, brassy and comically foul-mouthed diatribe from a lass in a not-bad Scouse accent. It drew laughter and applause but I hope there is a warning to the Eisteddfod audience.

Looking forward to seeing how it all comes together over the next couple of months.

Wandering casually up to the box office last night I was lucky to snag a seat for the opening night of the ACT’s production of Pseudolus. Full houses are rare enough in Jersey and it must give everyone concerned a boost. And, if there’s any justice, the remaining performances will play to equally packed houses.

This comedy is a cross between Frankie Howerd’s Up Pompeii and a Brian Rix farce. The cast must have had a great time in rehearsal . The Greek playwright Plautus – should he be ghostily observing – would immediately approve of this adaptation. The main characters would be familiar to him though the wordplay and schoolboy humour has been changed for the modern audience.

The three bickering women of The Prologue immediately set the evening’s high standard, got the audience chuckling, and left to warm applause. The action is supposedly in Athens, entirely outside house no. LXIX (a bordello) and LXX, that of the nobleman Simo (Mike Monticelli). The straightforward plot is to save the courtesan Phoenicium (Fiona Marchant) from being sold so that Simo’s lovelorn son Calidorus (Isidro Da Mata) could have her.

The playwright Plautus

Undoubted star of the show is Stefan Gough playing the clever slave Pseudolus. He is born to act and this was a Brian Blessed-like performance. He has A Plan and blusters powerfully through the piece, making it up as he goes along. His co-star is his snaggle-toothed slave girlfriend Staphyla (Sian Jones) who we last saw in a much different role as a nun in Bonaventure. Staphyla actually binds the show together whether engaging in repartee centre stage or in the background commentating on or giggling at the action taking place.

The other show-stealer is Kaye Nicholson-Horn as Ballia, the bordello’s madam. She is another consummate actor though probably more suited to straight theatre.

The action swings along with its double entendres predictable but no less enjoyable for that. The only time the play loses pace is in an effort to introduce fringe characters who add little. 

All ends well as Phoenicium is freed to marry Calidorus – though by now Calidorus has mysteriously disappeared; was that fall down the well early on actually unplanned? And the slaves are free to marry.

Go, go – you must see this play. And hopefully someone is recording it for posterity.

It’s difficult to know where to start reviewing Chris Larner and his one-man show. Even if it was crap (it wasn’t) how on earth can you type bad stuff about a bloke who has assisted his missus, Alison, to die? And in addition, puts it out there on stage, laid bare, for the public to see? So at least my honesty isn’t being tested.

Another sparse Arts Centre Friday evening audience. A chair the one and only prop. And you could hear a pin drop for 90 minutes as Larner told – no, acted – his story. And a gulp-inducing, tear-wrenching story it is. But, and astonishingly, it is mostly an easy watch as Larner finds, and mixes in, the comical and the absurd within the tragic storyline.

Larner’s wife contracts MS which eventually leaves her in constant pain and distress. All treatments and drugs, conventional and otherwise, have no lasting effect. She feels that she no longer wishes to continue and the couple contact the Swiss organisation Dignitas. For a price (and the price is within the reach of most) they will legally assist you to die.

Perhaps. It’s like snakes and ladders. If you’re just a bit fed up and depressed you don’t get to square one. Only if you’re really really sick do you get to advance a few squares to the first ladder. (Interestingly we hear that, in the UK anyway, suicide has been decriminalised but aiding and abetting suicide is still an offence. So try getting a notary public to give you an affidavit of domicile!) Only if you’re kosher and have exhausted all other avenues might you get to take that final journey to Zurich. Once there you undergo further assessments before you can proceed. The process itself is by lethal dose. Even as you approach this stage there are snakes to slide down, often through choice.

It is all handled with remarkable frankness by Larner. And he is not only a narrator but he acts out the part of his suffering wife with the conviction of having lived with her as she suffered. He also gives us a sense of the other characters involved. Of particular poignancy is the scene in which he comes across, near Dignitas HQ, a shed full of walking sticks, Zimmer frames etc. But on the other hand the humour continues to the end. As she awaits the final act Alison requests that Larner read her the end of a book she has been reading. He inadvertently reads the preview from the author’s next book to Alison’s bemusement who recognises none of the characters.

A straightforward portrayal of a difficult subject, born of experience. The pro-lifers and others will hate it but this play doesn’t preach, it just tells it as it was.

An emotional but excellent performance. Larner’s tour of the show continues and the website can be found at http://www.aifk.co.uk/

My occasional theatre critiques are either hampered or helped by the fact that I know nothing of acting and the ways of the theatre. On the one hand therefore I am blissfully ignorant of what might be considered good or bad by the seasoned theatre goer. I am however able to watch the show free from any prior expectations and to comment on it with baby-like innocence.

I’ve rarely been disappointed by a show – possibly once by a mediocre affair at the Gate Theatre in Dublin which I’d have abandoned at the interval only for the fact that I was in company.

I certainly wasn’t disappointed tonight (possibly by the £17 ticket price). The offbeat Curious Directive company brought a compelling show to a sparse Arts Centre audience. The central theme is of extreme Norwegian cold and the cast of five play out four simultaneous playlets, interwoven into one dramatic piece.

We have a 19c cartographer who battles the elements to complete a mapping assignment but whose journal records his succumbing to the sub-zero temperatures and he freezes to death in front of the audience. The true story of Anna Bagenholm is also told; she was a skier who became trapped beneath ice in 1999 but who almost miraculously was revived after several hours of extreme hypothermia. A young businesswoman travels to Norway to scatter her father’s ashes only to fall in love with both the country and her guide. Finally a look into the future where cryonics is becoming accepted but where human emotions are as strong as ever.

With imaginative use of minimal props the cast act and interact to the overloud backdrop of a piano score. Clever use is made of a cats cradle grid symbolising the mapmaker’s art. Anna returns again and again to her position under the ice and her revival begins anew. Finally the cast blend together in a powerful piece of choreography that pulls all the threads together.

Remarkable and moving, the show plays again tomorrow (Thurs) before moving on to Chipping Norton. And as always I was glad I make the occasional effort to patronise the theatre.

For a smallish place Jersey is spoilt for choice when it comes to the arts. Guessing at the reasons I imagine that relative prosperity and more spare time to devote to creativity are two of them. The big guns of the theatre are the JADC and the Green Room Club, but this week I was tempted along to see the Arts Centre Theatre group. No idle luvvies these but a proper cross section of the Island’s community. Their productions are all the more interesting for it though naturally lacking in the overall quality and polish that you’d expect from a larger or more professional outfit.

And I went not once but twice, to see the same production! The director’s cunning ploy to use two different casts on alternate nights left me and a few others curious to see what ‘the second lot’ made of the play we’d just enjoyed. The play is set in 1947 Norfolk in a nursing convent wherein are trapped the cast by a flash flood. It’s a good, old-fashioned but solid piece of theatre that sees a young nun determined to spring a woman heading for the gallows so convinced is she of her innocence. The plot is straightforward and even my brain can follow it. I’m more interested in how the various cast members deal with the characterisation.

But is it a sin to fancy a young nun? Both Sister Mary Bonaventures, Sian Jones and Fiona Marchant, are far too attractive. This was presumable director Jason Kenyon’s casting with the main character having an inner battle knowing her sworn spiritual vows do not allow for thoughts and actions that she knows are right and for the best. In the final reckoning she breaks away from convention proving Sarat Carn’s innocence and the wicked doctor, the real murderer, throws himself from the tower to avoid the noose.

Both Sarat Carns, Sarah Tomkins and Kaye Nicholson-Horn gave powerful performances as the woman heading for the gallows and determined to hold her head high to the end. The latter actress let it all out on Saturday night nearly knocking feisty Nurse Phillips into the front row of the audience! The other stand-out performances were from Rob Hill and Isidro Da Mata, both playing the dim-witted and borderline dangerous Willy excellently.

I loved the occasional stumbling over words, props dropped on the floor, matches that wouldn’t light. That’s what happens in real life isn’t it? One criticism – one strained to hear some of the words. Mr Director – sit in the auditorium and get the more softly spoken to project up to you. Thoroughly enjoyable, great value and a pity the audience wasn’t somewhat bigger.