'Red Peppers' and 'Still Life' by Noel Coward, The Old Red Lion Theatre

In 1935, Noel Coward’s ambition was simple: to resuscitate the dying tradition of the one-act play. As part of this mission, Coward wrote ‘Tonight at 8.30’ ten one-act plays aimed to, in Coward’s own words, ‘provide a full and varied evenings entertainment for theatregoers’.

Folie à Deux’s production at the Old Red Lion presents two plays from this collection which, aside from the subject matter of love and relationships, share very little continuity. 

‘Still Life’ - the play that laid the foundations for one of British Cinema’s most romantic films, ‘Brief Encounter’- forms the first part of this Noel Coward double act. As in the film, Alec Harvey (Freddie Capper) comes to Laura Jesson’s (Georgina Strawson) aid when she gets something in her eye waiting for a train. In a reserved and polite manner, or shall we say typically English, the (already married) pair fall in love.


Unfortunately, eighty years from its first performance, the romantic world of Alec and Laura is recognisable: the love story has lost its bite. Although Folie à Deux’s productions  is mindfully orchestrated, (I speak in particular reference to the intricate and astute 1930s station bar setting), the passion and desire between the adulterous pair is lost in formalities and politeness. This creates a detachment onstage that is overlooked in the cinematic debut which gave the play its residence.


The play is Joycean in its ability to capture the every day, and there is an conversational fluidity in the panoramic café scenes which master the Coward one-act briefness. With all the actors on stage, the audience's attention dives to and forth from brawls between waitresses and soldiers to  the embarrassed lovers, frustratingly powerless to articulate their desires. It is these moments when their emotion carries the most credibility: the shy blushes and brushes of intimacy are most poignant when the audience’s attentions are purposely focused towards other parts of the scene. Sparse in their occurrence, these moments fail to detract from what is an overall bland and unprovocative start to the evening. 

In comparison, ‘Red Peppers’ is full of energy, diversity and comedy. Celebrating the old English music hall, married couple double act George and Lilly Pepper are an upbeat and engaging change from what they have followed. Like many middle-aged couples, the premise to George and Lilly's  relationship relies heavily on the fact that their hate of one another is outweighed by a hatred of the rest of the world, and in a comically stoic reunion, the pair team up in a plight to save their act.

Short and sweet, the second half of Folie à Deux’s production has an energy that is lacking from the former, and forgives the slow pace of what it has followed. The two musical numbers performed by Goerge Pepper (Simon Manyonda) and Lily Pepper (Laura Hanna) are frustratingly brief but fantastically entertaining.

Whilst ‘Still Life’ - widely recognised as the most mature play of this collection - is fittingly aged and ruined perhaps by the success of its cinematic counterpart, ‘Red Peppers’ remains fresh and dynamic. The implicit intimacy of society in ‘Still Life’ set alongside the feisty husband and wife act of ‘Red Peppers’ thankfully enforces that there is a lot to be admired in this production.

'Address Unkown, by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Soho Theatre

‘Adressant Unbekannt. What a darkness those words carry! How can she be unknown? She has gone into some sort of void…’

Kathrine Kressmann Taylor’s 1938 novel ‘Address Unknown’ has long been one of the most uncelebrated pieces of World War Two Literature. Written on the eve of Nazi total rule, the novel follows a series of written exchanges between close friends Martin Schulse and Max Eisenstein: the latter a German Jew living in California, and Martin, his German business partner, residing in Berlin.

On stage, the distance between these two settings is achieved through the duplicated settings of two studies. The first, slightly more colourful and modern representing the evolving world of America, and the other darker, archaic and symptomatic of a panic-stricken struggling Germany in the early 1930s. Within the few meters of stage at the Soho Theatre, the plays set designer, Katie Lias, successfully represents the polar worlds straddling the Atlantic Ocean.

Ten minutes into the Steve Marmoin’s adaptation of the novel, the audience twitches; after the third verbal exchange of correspondence between Martin (Jonathan Cullen) and Max (Simon Kunz), there is a united doubt over what can be achieved with a script that shyly diverges very little from the original novel. This twitch, however, is swiftly replaced by a collective wince and stiffening after the mention of one odious name: Hitler. The play transforms…

What begun as letters of love, friendship and solidarity rapidly become those of disbelief, pride and hatred. After the revelation of Max’s missing relation in Berlin; the moment that gives the novel its title; the audience enters a moral abyss. As the they turns their heads from one side of the stage to another, the worlds of California and Nazi Germany become further and further apart. Transported to a world where moral righteousness is evaporated within one simple arm salute, Marmoin’s play is vibrant in its representation of betrayal.

Far from shocking in its conclusions, the play illuminates the power of Hitler’s ideology even before its most potent period. Cullen and Kunz present with full force the conflicts of Nazi Germany, and how the poisoning of friendships can take place through the simple acknowledgement of two sinister words: Adressant Unbekannt...

'Our Town', By Thornton Wilder at The Kings Head Theatre

‘Wherever you come near the human race, there’s layers and layers of nonsense…’

In a plight to challenge what he saw as the ‘soothing’ content of theatre in the late twenties, Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town’ attempts to strip away the ‘layers of nonsense’ surrounding humanity. 

True to this vision, Tim Sullivan’s adaptation successfully captures the trivial and mundane acts of the villagers of fictional New Hampshire village, Grover’s Corner, and encourages the modern audience to celebrate and affirm the everyday. 

Relayed in three acts, the play progressively transports its audience twelve years through village life, from teenage tantrums to the after life, and didactically emphasizes the importance of appreciating what usually goes unnoticed in our day to day existence.

The stage manager (Simon Dobson), acts as the plays narrator, at times interrupting the play with ‘that’s enough of that’ and fast forwarding the action by a year.  Most significantly, the stage manager’s role is to make the audience aware of their own relevance to the plays content; Dobson urges his audeince to ‘try and remember what is was like to be very young’.

Sullivan’s (lack of) setting creates a panoramic view of Grover’s Corner, encouraging a focus on humanity, relationship and routine and stripping theatre to its bare essentials, as Wilder himself claimed, the play ‘needs only five square feet of boarding and the passion to know what life means to us’. In Savio(u)r’s production, this comprises of a few tables and chairs, the inventive use of ladders to create a Shakespearian balcony scene between the plays’ young lovers, Emily Webb (Zoë Swenson-Graham) and George Gibbs (Stewart Clegg) and the consistent and convincing use of mime.

Admittedly, the ‘five square feet of boarding’ is achieved at the Kings Head, making the need for fourteen actors seem at times cramped and unnecessary, however in the second act’s wedding scene, the theatre’s floor-level stage makes the audience not a observer of a play, but a guest at the character’s wedding. In the King’s Head you feel that you are not part of an audience, but a fly on the wall to the emotional moments of reality, and the stage manager, your tour guide.

This intimacy makes the final act of the play the most moving. Zoë Swenson-Graham brilliantly acts the return to earth after her death to painfully watch her twelfth birthday, powerless to interrupt her life and uncomfortably deciding to return to the grave in favour of a world where everyone fails to recognize they are living.

The play is tragic, painful and moving, but beneath its initial bite, it is hopeful and above all, life-affirming. It is these ingredients that Wilder felt were becoming abandoned by 1920s theatre, and precisely these qualities that are respectfully kept alive by Tim Sullivan.

‘Withering Looks’ By LipService, performed at the City Varieties Music Hall, Leeds

Written and performed by LipService (Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding), ‘Withering Looks’ is a satirical insight into two of the most prominent novelists of the 19^th Century, Emily and Charlotte Brontë.

On stage, LipService comprises of Audrey (Fox) and Olivia (Ryding) who introduce themselves as two contemporary historians who are ‘just potty’ about the Brontë sisters, and have decided to bring their history to life. Anne Brontë has just popped out for a cup of sugar, and does not feature heavily in the play due, as it is explained, to reduced government funding of the Arts after the credit crunch, meaning that Audrey and Olivia cannot afford a third actress.

The play is essentially a spoof biography set within the framework of a GCSE revision class, whereby previous exam questions, such as ‘How did the Brontë sisters write their novels?’, are explained with helpful assistance of physical demonstrations, reducing the GCSE English curriculum to its most obvious and hilarious form.

These classroom scenes are set against a creative portrayal of the Brontë imagination, satirised but never undermined. Despite financial restrictions, the duo successfully answer the age long questions which lurk behind the Brontës’ literature, such as, are there really spirits who wonder the moors? Who is the Brontës’ mysterious neighbour and what secrets is he hiding in the attic? And, perhaps of less interest to the GCSE student, really what is with Olivier’s accent in the 1939 MGM Wuthering Heights?

Fox and Ryding successfully transport their audience from the 19^th Century Yorkshire moors, with its dress ‘swooshing’ winds and relentless risk of tuberculosis, to the painful memories of the GCSE class, and finally the refuge of MGM’s Hollywood classic.

Indeed, the polarity of these settings may seem a lot for two recession stricken Brontë fanatics to take on, however, Ryding and Fox approach these dynamic settings with subtle yet effective set designs. Whether it is agile cottage walls which reveal the bleak moors, or breakfasts tables which double up as school tables, the duo recognize their restrictions and invite the assistance of audience’s imagination.

Withering Looks creates an atmosphere comparable to a pantomime, encouraging the audience to clap along with songs and to poke fun at the actresses. Alongside these child-like antics, Ryding and Fox maintain a solid admiration for the sisters. They approach their biography by celebrating how the Brontës imaginatively created a world beyond the secluded walls of their Haworth cottage. Well, the two of them that is, Anne never does return from buying the sugar…