The Merry Wives of Windsor by The Castle Players @ Bowes Museum

Bowes Museum, the magnificent French styled palace just outside Barnard Castle, plays host this year to the UK’s first exhibition of fashion designer and pioneer Yves St Laurent.  Guaranteed to draw crowds from all over the UK and beyond, the YSL show – Style is Eternal -  has already piqued the interest of  VIPs and fashionistas alike but this isn’t the only production at Bowes with such a far reaching appeal destined to play out to capacity crowds.  The Castle Players, the premier al-fresco production company bring their summer show to the museum grounds and guarantee to give as unique and ground-breaking an experience as the Algerian/French fashion designer himself.

The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare’s bawdy comedy written in the early 16 hundreds and set in & around the castle of the same name (rather than pertaining to the family name) is this year’s offering by the much awarded and truly dedicated cast and crew. Bringing back to centre stage, Shakespeare resurrects Falstaff, the larger than life, womanising philanderer with a waistline only shadowed by his ego, to play linchpin to this typical comedy tale of cross and double cross.  In his oft deluded state, the portly knight believes that his appeal to the fairer sex is impossible to deny and he merely needs to cast an eye their way to have them swooning and fawning.  In need of money to maintain his extravagant lifestyle, Falstaff hatches a plan to woo and seduce the wives of 2 wealthy men, blackmail them for their silence and steal all their wealth.  Of course, the audience know all too well that Falstaff is regularly played at his own game with his ego being laid out before him, destined to trip and tumble back to his rightful place at the foot of the inn keeper.

This new approach, directed by Mary Stastny, sets the tale in the Edwardian era, with the introduction of streetwalkers, inn girls, suffragettes and even a motorised tram car.  It is testament to the writing of The Bard that his style, prose and in particular storylines are so readily transported to a more modern setting with little lost in terms of both character or plot.  The introduction of some ‘traditional’ bar songs bring the tale into the musical hall and helps serve to engage the audience further.

What is always a favourite aspect of watching the Castle Players is the ease at which the cast deliver their parts; not only are they consummate professionals in their approach to learning and understanding the script, but they are so relaxed with each other that should there be a slight slip or deviation from the plan then they embrace it (and each other) – there are no airs and graces here, the 4^th wall is more a loosely constructed picket fence through which the audience is encouraged to peek.

Stand out performances must start with the Portly Knight himself – Falstaff, played with total abandon by Gordon Duffy-McGhie.  Gordon was brilliant; lecherous, conniving, self-centred and totally deluded in his own self importance.  The two ‘wives’ – Mistress Ford (Marzia Aloisio) and Mistress Page (Jill Cole) were equally beautiful and alluring and yet held the newly found strength and confidence befitting the ‘modern’ woman of the early 20^th Century.   Sean Mitchell, as Abraham Slender, showed again his fabulous character acting – he seems able to immerse himself in any role and I’m sure there were many in the audience who, like me, would expect to see a lot more of Sean in the coming years.  Special mention to Steven Bainbridge – not only has Steven arranged and directed all the music, but had to sit at the Garter Inn piano throughout the whole performance – not easy to stay there in the rain and cold and still get his fingers to keep moving.

This is the first summer production to be directed by Mary Stastny  As many of her predecessors have learned through experience, sitting in March & April planning an outdoor summer production is oft done with the rose tinted expectations of long balmy evenings, temperatures still holding in the low 20’s and the ground giving back its stored heat of the day. The ambition to create the best possible production, to include a few more scenes, an extra song or two or to be less critical in the abridging of a few monologues (and let’s face it, Shakespeare loved his pages and pages of monologues) can take over from the reality that many of the audience will have been sat from before 7 and won’t get to leave until gone 11pm.  The British summer can never be relied upon as seen by last night’s performance which was played out in rain, a cool breeze and, by the time of the 45 minute interval, temperatures in single figures. Sadly this is not unique for our summers so maybe there needed to be a more pragmatic understanding that whilst the intent to showcase all the director’s skills was admirable, less is more – cold and tired hands don’t tend to applaud for too long.

The Castle Players production of The Merry Wives of Windsor is on at Bowes Museum until Saturday – parking for the next few nights is not available at the museum itself but will be open at the adjacent school.  Bring a picnic for the interval, a cushion for your bum and a blanket for your knees and settle down to watch another wonderful performance by one of the UKs best Shakespeare companies.

Sherlock Holmes' Hound of the Baskervilles by Castle Players @ Scarth Hall, Staindrop

A good old fashioned thriller for a cold winter’s night.

Way back before the advent of TV, wannabee celeb shows and million channel digital networks, local amateur theatre was the mainstay of Saturday evening entertainment for the majority of people. Performers, cast and crew were members of ‘Am Dram’ who, for weeks before, had practised and rehearsed their lines whilst running the local post office, teaching at the village school or delivering milk & bread. Performances were usually given in the village hall, with its own soundtrack of creaking beams and whistling windows added to heavy tobacco smoke to give an extra frisson to the atmosphere (especially when the show was a good old fashioned ghost story or thriller).  Whilst audiences didn’t expect RSC or Doyle Carte standard, they felt a ‘oneship’ with those on stage and as such forgave the wobbly scenes and oft fluffed lines.  I thought that such shows were now consigned to the social history books but on Saturday I took a step back in time and watched a retelling of the famous Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Barnard Castle’s renowned The Castle Players.

This production, which is currently touring around Teesdale during January, was delivered on the very small stage at Scarth Hall, Staindrop, yet, with minimal use of props, sound and lighting, was a captivating example of good story telling.  Directed by Sarah Fells and Chris Best, and with a surprisingly large cast of over 14 Players (quite how they all managed to get on stage at the same time is still a bit of a mystery), the story opened with a riveting monologue by Andy Moorhouse who, in recounting the initial Baskerville legend, set the tone for the night before bringing the audience into Baker Street and of course Sherlock Holmes (played with a mix of excitable genius and dismissive disdain by Steven Bainbridge).  Interestingly, for a Holmes story, it is Dr Watson who takes the majority of the lead in this production and Andrew Stainthorpe was cool, calm and very accomplished in the role – with more than a passing resemblance to Higgins from TV’s Magnum, he excellently maintains the detective element in the story in the absence of the Deerstalkered one.

There were a few occasions where the directors seemed to play to the lowest possible audience intelligence – literally signposting the scenes (including ‘FOG’) was more off putting than helpful and appeared a easy out instead of devoting a little more effort into
the set dressing, after all, there are only so many places one can put their only hatstand.  

Likewise, the use of newly bought bright blue clip boards (not the norm for 19^th century London) left a few puzzled faces in the audience. The script, edited and abridged by Jill Cole was on the whole, very good, though some of the carefully built intensity and atmosphere was lost when the cast were allowed to drop into almost pantomime comedy.  That said, as entertainment goes, the whole evening was most certainly a great night out and far better than anything being offered on the hundreds of TV channels.

Sherlock Holmes is undergoing a bit of a renaissance, especially with the excellent BBC series making a return this month complete with clever graphics and elaborate plots, but this version was very much more in tune with the original tales and delivered with an honesty and genuine enjoyment – a great step back in time both on & off the stage.

Midsummer Night's Dream by the Castle Players @ Bowes Museum

Surely just as Shakespeare intended !

There's little that can compare to a British summers' eve; the smell of cut grass, the smack of leather on willow, the distant drone of a tractor bailing hay.  Well, that's the idealistic view, the one we all hold dear as a lifelong memory, but all too often the reality is made up of dodging the rain &  shivering in the cold breeze.  Now after last nights show I have a new benchmark for an ideal summer night - sitting in the open air watching the Castle Players perform yet another masterpiece of Shakespearean majesty.

I don't think there could be anywhere in the world that would have provided a better venue for this show; the magnificent Bowes museum behind us, the dappled sunlight over the open

air 'stage' in front and the sense, even before the show started, that we were in for something quite magical.  The Castle Players, quite rightly, have built a reputation for being one of the very best companies when it comes to producing open air theatre; their use of the natural surroundings is quite brilliant and their ability to draw in the audience into an intimate space and yet to preserve the grandeur not limited by curtains, wings and stage screens is unique in the modern day of technical gadgetry. Add to this the complete joy and enthusiasm with which each and every cast member performs and it leaves you feeling quite humbled in the fact that they are, after all, an amateur production company (although purely only in name).

I learned from watching last years show that it's very difficult to single any of the cast out for individual praise; this is not me being conditionally sycophantic, they all DO play their roles to the highest level and ensure that the show overall is much much more than the sum of it's parts.  Having said that, the Director, Simon Pell deserves credit for his vision, creativity and willingness to allow a more organic flow to the show than previous versions I have seen - it was this which added to the magic of the evening and drew out the essence of Shakespeare's most fantastical of plays.

The soundscape produced for this latest offering was simply stunning - I had doubted that it would be possible to produce a soundtrack in the open air which would be wide and deep enough to truly envelope the audience but I was very wrong indeed.  Composed and recorded by Andy Yeadon, we were held in awe from the very first note, not once did the sound distort or feel strained and the acoustics, for all that we were sat outside, were as crystal clear as from any high fidelity multi speaker surround sound system.

As they proved last year by being invited to perform for the RSC Cultural Olympiad Open Stages Festival in Stratford, The Castle Players are recognised across the country as one of the very best; on the strength of this years production that reputation can only be further enhanced - a true credit to the North East and one which we can be very proud of.

Shows sell out almost as soon as tickets go on sale (and rightly so) so I'm afraid that if you haven't got tickets for this summer's production then you may be out of luck - check out their website at www.castleplayers.co.uk for details.  

What I can say is that there are two more productions confirmed - The Hound of The Baskervilles for their Winter production and Romeo & Juliet for next Summer's outdoor show (which is already writ large in my diary).  Till then, I can but dream of a midsummers eve, not too distant but one which will live long in the memory.

Castle Players' As You Like It @ Bowes Museum

All the world's a stage", as Shakespeare wrote, and following last weeks production of one of the Bard's most famous, and funniest plays, The Castle Players proved yet again that not only is the world a stage, so is a garden, a tree and a muddy patch of lawn. This year it's "As You Like It", a very funny story of cross & double cross, hidden identities, requited and unrequited love all written with 'Old Will's' humorous quill in hand.

Despite the horrendous weather we have suffered over the past 6 weeks, this few, this happy few, (this band of brothers?) have toiled to ensure that they would not be outdone by rain, wind and mud and thus the annual summer production could go ahead.  Rehearsing in temporary accommodation was one thing, but when the dress rehearsals and stage setting had to be done under the threat of torrential downpours even the most stoic of supporters must have cast a disbelieving eye towards the opening night. But what is a bit of mud & rain when the thrill of performing awaits (and a hot shower and warming toddy afterwards).

The stage was set within the grounds of the iconic Bowes Museum on the rear lawn with the 

canopy of a huge tree providing the lighting rig and centre piece, the castle gardens and walls playing as the backdrop and two grandstand terraces forming the auditorium. 

The production of this show was truly amazing; the costumes, the sets, the inclusion of live sheep (who at times had perfect timing for interrupting the best intended dramatic pauses), the minstrels - everything was perfect and made even more so by being staged outside.  We were very, very lucky to have picked the one fair & fine evening in a month to attend this oasis of culture in a bleak & dreary week so one can only imagine how testing it was for the cast & crew to have battled through on Tuesday & Wednesday when the heavens fell, the ground rose and even the sheep would have looked a little perplexed.

I don't like using the phrase 'Amateur' - it suggests of pitiful attempts at 'doing their best', appreciated only by cast family members and the director who has ideas of grandeur.  This was as far away from an 'amateur' production as you could ever see.  The actors were all immensely dedicated in delivering a performance worthy of the bard's name with very clever casting and obvious enjoyment being had by everyone concerned.  The direction was tight, intuitive and completely at one with ensuring the pace of delivery still allowed time for the audience to unravel the multitude of layers so often present in Shakespeare's comedies.

The use of live minstrel music added an authenticity which created an additional layer, especially as the evening waned and the natural light dimmed.  In fact the setting outside gave an etheral quality which would have been impossible in a traditional theatre.

The lead characters were immediately recognisable, which came from exquisite opening introductions; all too often Shakespearean directors rush headlong into the guts of the play (feeling that they need to seek out the well known phrases to keep the audience on board) and they leave the audience playing catch up.  Simon Pell and Mary Stastny, the directors, ensured that each main character was allowed sufficient time onstage so the audience could easily identify with them.  This made for a much smoother movement through the first act and heightened the second act's humorous subplots, especially as the love interests strengthened and partners wooed and 'shooed' in equal measure. 

Whilst the whole cast were wonderful in their performances, special mention goes out to a few who really caught the eye;  Andy Moorhouse as Jaques was a brilliant tortured soul who reminded me of James Garnon playing James 1st in Anne Boleyn; Laura Pennell who played Celia had such a mischievous glint in her eye throughout the whole play and of course, Peter Cockerill as Silvius the shepherd, who spent the first 2 hours of the evening searching the extensive grounds of Bowes Museum for his 'love' Phoebe.

When you look at the cast list, production team and additional support you can appreciate just how professional (in all but name) this production is -lest we not forget that all these people give of their time, effort, skills, hard work and dedication in the true love of performance - more than a little humbling.

It is clear to see why the Castle Players have been invited to attend and perform for the RSC in Stratford this weekend; there can be few other productions in the country who capture the real essence of The Bard's work with infectious enthusiasm and downright enjoyment.  Congratulations to everyone concerned, you do our region proud.