The Guardian

Theatre & Dance

New Vic theatre, Newcastle-underLyme; until Saturday The Place, London WC1; until 16 June

Clare Brennan Sarah Crompton

The Card

In a recent article for the Guardian, the theatre director Nicholas Hytner argued that Arts Council England funding should be directed towards professional performances, while a new body should be set up to support community, education and outreach programmes. The response? Instant Twitter uproar, with the proposition being interpreted as setting “one type of art against another”, in the words of Nicholas Serota, replying to Hytner a few days later. The reality for regional companies, and their audiences, is not so divisive – as demonstrated by this entertaining new production from the New Vic, with Claybody Theatre.

The Card is a 1911 comic novel by local Staffordshire lad made good Arnold Bennett. Deborah McAndrew’s sharp, funny and faithful adaptation follows the picaresque progress of Denry Machin, the eponymous “card”, from lowly solicitor’s clerk to youngest-ever mayor of a fictional Potteries town. Fast-flowing action, under Conrad Nelson’s assured direction, races us through time and space: town square; solicitor’s office; grand ballroom with swirling dancers; seaside promenade; storm, shipwreck, rescue; newspaper office; football stadium. These sites of Denry’s adventures are vividly evoked through skilful movement and manipulation of minimal props (Beverley Norris-Edmunds’s choreography; Dawn Allsopp’s design).

As Denry, Gareth Cassidy blends the physical adroitness of silent movie comics with the sly lightness of Alec Guinness in the 1952 film version.

pack. All suits (and gowns) are equal among the eight actor-musicians and dozen-strong community ensemble, accompanied by members of the Acceler8 brass band. Professionals? Amateurs? Indistinguishable! Roles are cleverly distributed, performances well-crafted, and everyone looks their part(s) in Allsopp’s splendid period costumes.

The New Vic, Claybody and other regional companies deal their audiences top-quality theatre by shuffling complex commitments – professional, community, education and outreach. They are finding inventive ways forward; now, funding bodies need to follow suit.

Resolution

ere’s something irresistible about Resolution, the annual festival of new work at the Place, which gives dance-makers a chance to show what they are up to. The audience is always appreciative, the choreography often thoughtprovoking, the dancers skilled and eager. There’s a kind of pot-luck quality about it. You pitch up and see what happens.

Normally, the event takes place in January (hence its title – it’s a new year resolution). But this year’s festival is unfolding now until 16 June. The three works on 27 May, the night I attended, were all engaging and full of promise.

The evening opened with Grown Men Keep Breaking My Heart, a solo by Kennedy Junior Muntanga, devised with Joey Barton, in which Muntanga cajoles members of the audience into playing figures in his family as he explores an incident in his childhood. Muntanga has enough charm to bring it off, yet when he moves – in great sweeping circles of submission and release, soft backflips and tight spins on his heels – you wish he had trusted the choreography more than the words.

Ed Mitchell’s Life Goes On manages to convey a lot through a duet that is tinged with mime and with subtle humour. Dancers Grace Ford and Edan Carter, in matching striped tops, react in supple synchronicity to a tear in their relationship that means they have to put a brave face on things. The choreography is varied and clever, the lighting evocative and the overall effect as they move from loving to murderous in the flash of an eye both controlled and impactful.

So is Petronella Wiehahn’s Gathering Clouds (above), which inventively uses six dancers to explore different moods and react to imagined climatic conditions. After a contemplative opening, with couples moving in languorous response to one another, the movement becomes propulsive, the women moving in tight, fast groups, shoulders heavy, feet light. Impressive.

Critics Art

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2023-06-04T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-04T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://guardian.pressreader.com/article/282080576225202

Guardian/Observer