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The astounding Will Groves, as Ephestian Quomodo, who makes this show a masterpiece Michaelmas Term Edward's Boys Levi Fox Hall Stratford-upon-Avon ***** Is there any
stopping Edward’s Boys? For sixteen years, since they launched in 2008
with John Marston’s
The Dutch Courtesan,
they have been winning accolade after accolade – from scholars, critics,
experts in the field – for the quality, imagination and inventiveness of
their stagings, under
the nursing direction of Perry Mills, now Deputy Head of King Edward VI
School, Stratford-upon-Avon: Shakespeare’s school, as tradition (and
common sense) would have it. Dekker, Lyly, Ford, Beaumont (of Beaumont and
Fletcher), Jonson – there is scarcely a playwright of the 1590s or early
Jacobean period this impish troupe has not had the cheek to mount on
stage. They educate, they interpret, they enlighten, but above all they
entertain. Isn’t that what plays are for? And at that time, for a
period, it was the boys’ companies – St. Paul’s, or at Blackfriars, or
anywhere they could get a toe in - which not only rivalled the adult
companies. As some would have it, they outshone them. This March at Stratford (Oxford, London) with
their usual aplomb they battered away at Middleton. The Boys – we shall
sometimes call them that – are old hands at Thomas Middleton
(1580-1627): A Mad World my Masters and A Chaste Maid in
Cheapside – their third and fourth stagings (2009-10); A Trick to
Catch the Old One – all masterpieces. For Middleton, like Marston
or Webster, is right up there with, possibly surpassing, Marlowe and Ben
Johnson. His plots are scarily ingenious, his characterisations
notoriously clever and impudent, his power of language unbelievably
acute, incisive, ear-bending. He is, in short, a master. The power of language is one of those umpteen
things these (King) Edward’s Boys excel at. So vast is this play’s cast
– another triumph, to pick out 30-odd actors not one of whom failed to
shine. I couldn’t identify actual (real) names for everyone, but they
were all, from the most senior to the tiniest, gobsmackingly good. Outrageously, disgracefully talented, and always
in depth. From the wiliest manoeuvrer most to doddery old crone, to the
nippiest wee subservient, racing lackey. And with the Boys they just
keep on coming. How is it possible to garner, year on year, such a bunch
of young geniuses? How does Mills – and they – pull it off again and
again?
Tommy Duxbury (Sim) looks like a big lead for the future And with a text – and production – that literally whizzes along (Middleton always does, says the Director, who keeps on proving it), supplemented by astoundingly brazen music, much of it high-quality jazz, from an - oh so gifted – band, this staging never looked back for a moment. A nightmare to keep up with, given all the posing and pretending the characters alight upon. The Boys’ gift of speaking, enunciation, it would
be hard to better (Sim, the star’s young son, Tommy Duxbury, could
spruce up his diction a bit, but he is a massive potential for the
future, and his scarlet-waistcoated costume was as knockout as his
obvious gifts – indeed as Charlie Waters’ Orion in Summer’s Last Will
and Testament. And he can sing. Gee, can he sing. Already almost a
match for the astonishing Callum Maughan, or the phenomenal – wait for
it – Sixth form girl (shock horror: Talia Calvert?) who showed
how a pro should do it.
Will Groves has been Edward’s Boys’ rising star
since at least 2019’s staggering The Malcontent (Marston). His
French Lady’s maid, handmaiden or soubrette, remains one of the funniest
things I’ve ever seen Edward’s Boys produce (though Dan Power in the
Nashe ran him close). Groves has edged his way up into this truly
outstanding male role. Yet the ‘girl’ parts kept coming: before the
last-minute cancellation of Jonson’s The Silent Woman (first
staged by the Boys of Blackfriars in 1609, quite late in the Boys’
troupes period), Will was topcast as the eponymous woman (or ‘Epicoene’:
actually a boy disguised as a woman). The rotten obligatory cancellation
was both his loss, and ours. An appalling disappointment for all, given
the hard work that preceded. Think of all the gestures and faces and
endless invention he might have dreamed up amid his non-utterance.
Will, I mean his character, Ephestian Quomodo (a
rather odd name in Greek, unless meant to denote ‘coveting’, but in
Latin ‘by any means possible’), is finally – or nearly – caught out by
his own devices, signing the opposite; though wily as ever, and blessed
with good fortune, he gets away with it in the end. Probably slipped the
Judge a fiver. I thought Groves’ previous male role was a
bit dreary. Though possibly not well scripted. The utter opposite now.
Here is an actor who could walk onto the professional stage tomorrow.
When he is animated, he produces so many different, almost dancing ways
of being energised it is mind-boggling. Every part of his body, from
scampering legs upwards, is called into action. A million devices in his
actorial knickers. A kaleidoscope of activity. When he’s cock-a-hoop,
his face and arms work overtime. He can adapt the pacing of lines so
they become almost elasticated. (Actually that’s a skill the director
has long inculcated into all his players.) Will has a way – utterly
arresting - of rounding off his words with a manipulation of his mouth,
so that the moment extends beyond the actual line. Now that’s
professional standard. Flailing, winning, failing, boasting, shrieking,
bouncing, pretending. Juddering, jolting, quivering, throbbing with
life, and with scheming. He can point, or wave, or shrug, or maul the
audience, or play off them, with such a range of gesture – gesticulating
– that one wonders when he will run out of ideas. He never does. His
yobbish shopkeeper accent – cockney delivered with positively Glaswegian
aplomb - is awesome; yet it keeps swapping, unpredictably, to normal, to
yet another, even posh to impress. Talk about a performance. His
soliloquies were breathtaking. A man of ideas. Up to Jack Hawkins in
The Malcontent – and what an actor he was. Will never lets
up. His gifts seem unbeatable. Wow: hats off. How we weep for that lost
Silent Woman. One of the countless delights of Edward’s Boys is
watching actors grow from minor roles into often brilliant major parts.
One easily won. Tom Howitt (Shortyard, an obscene name like those in
Restoration Comedy, posing as ‘Blastfield’) easily took the laurels. His
range has developed astonishingly. His ability deviously to impersonate
and manipulate was encouraged by Middleton’s wacky text to outshine
Quomodo’s. A lot of the playfulness emanated from Howitt. Peeing
included. He too can hold a stage alone. Shifting characters as quick as
a tornado, he turns up as himself, then moustachioed, brown-coated
Police Inspector straight out of Maigret, then a bearded pseudo
magistrate, and is a hoot every time.
Howitt too is an example, like Groves, of the
amazing capacity of these boys to learn reams of text, some of it all
but unintelligible to me, but completely mastered by them.
Extraordinary. The wondrous Jed Trimnell dazzled as his aide-de-camp,
Falselight (‘Idem’): another who managed to bring a girl to life in such
a subtle and understated (and touching, and beautiful) way previously,
and now as a bloke all but unsurpassable. A giggle to offset Howitt; but
donning at least as many, in fact more, disguises. What a transition;
and what excellence as – a natural actor (and joker, one now discovered:
the mature, eye-catching, so welcomely ingenious grown-up Trimnell. Almost at the start, Rearage and Salewood (Theo
Richter, Charlie Hutton) made a right royal raucous pair, one of them
(daft Jacobean/Cavalier locks) completely crazy parading screwed-up
face, zany, irrepressible movements, and almost irrepressibly fanatical.
The dupe, the sucker of this mischievous tale is Master (Richard) Easy,
a credulous, unsuspecting twerp – albeit landowner – from the (then)
famously gullible county of Essex. It’s his doomed north-of-the-Thames
estate that Quomodo has set himself to snaffle, by fair means or foul.
Enrique Burchell, I feel, might have done with a little more attention
from the Director. Easy, played rather straight, could (should?) have
been more lumpen, more dozy, more clueless. When he extraordinarily
exploded with anger near the end, it belied all that had preceded – and
was impressive, almost scaring. An Essex accent – especially as Easy is
not yet, but aspires to be, a gentleman (his aim whilst in the London)
is surely like the capital’s East End (so is some of north Kent). Hence
cockney, at least in part. It was Will Groves who contrived this
extraordinary, totally original, in-yer-face, grotesque over the top
cockney. But the dupe, or dope, cannot be well spoken, or he doesn’t
sound loopy enough. For diction, and for presence onstage, few others
could match Thapelo Ray (Lethe). He simply took the audience by the
horns, and shook it. Every time. A big personality. An amazingly deft,
ingeniously-structured characterisation, and in every sense a big
performance, an actor of real note. Another unbelievable star was Callum
Maughan’s dotty old Scottish lady, Mother Gruel, who is in search of her
missing son (this very same Andrew Lethe (‘forgetful’; there are lots of
implications in more names, several of them very rude indeed). Noone
could have created a lovable, tottering, barmy, lunatic creature like
Callum. A bundle of belly-laughs.
Callum Maughan as the bizarre Mother Gruel Michaelmas Term, a first year sixth former
shrewdly pens in the programme, contains ‘scenes that express
misogynistic, racist, homophobic and antisemitic beliefs’, before taking
a very sensible line on reservations about ‘docking’ such elements from
a historical period. Mind you, Mother Gruel is none of that, unless
creating a crazed old hag is in any sense misogyny. Her name is quite
like the real name of Lady Macbeth, Gruoch, but she’s not an old cow at
all. Just a touchingly hapless old bag lady. Maughan not only constructed the bizarrest
character of the whole lot (croaking voice, stumbling gait, unceasing
gruesomeness). But he also transferred effortlessly to the band, to sing
(in string bass voice), and finally to an amazing display on the
trumpet. This ability of characters to shift effortlessly and dazzlingly
from cast to ensemble musician was one of the many phenomenal
achievements of the music, among whom the versatility of Zach Hodges –
drums, guitar, mini keyboard, blond, eye-shading, posy dark glasses, a
real smoothie – was quite stunning. One of the most striking aspects was the way the
band, whoever was playing, consistently cut off in an instant. How could
they know such a complex score, instinctively, to pull this off, every
time? Hodges was the most watchable. He was like a pro. Could have been
playing Glastonbury. Should have stood in for Charlie Watts. Dynamic, a
rhythmic maestro, an impeccable artiste, like a demonic swordsman, he
plied his trade to perfection. If anyone almost stole Zach’s thunder, it was
Joshua Tan, the tiny (junior: Year 7? 8?) violinist Joshua Tan). Every
beginning perfect, every intonation exceptional, every mood captured to
perfection. All the confidence of a seasoned soloist. Gosh. Amongst the
other cast who intermittently joined him, if anyone deserves credit it
would be Joe McCormack, who took to his guitar – the two of them
together – like a swan to water. One of the really natty moments was
when McCormack was passed his guitar by Hodges, who I’d swear had just
swapped it for his, and lo! This outrageously talented band struck up
once more.
Joshua Tan, the astonishingly talented young solo violin Besides being so proficient, Joe was actually the
musical Director – so yet more versatile. Who thought up the spectacular
collection of Jazz hits, Elvis-like booms and croons, plus Blondie (‘One
way or another I’m gonna find ya’) and a wicked revisiting of the
Stones’ Satisfaction (both of those Maughan: this audience went
crazy each time). Plus rep spanning the 50s to the 90s? You ceased to
ponder the appropriateness of these potty interludes – in fact most were
brilliantly relevant. A dead ringer for the Benny Hill show (the Boys
have probably never heard of him?) The audience basked in them. You’d
think they’d make a five-Act play impossibly longer. But we were rapt.
Never bored for a second. The cast wouldn’t let us. And that’s the thing, or a big thing, about Edward’s Boys. They consistently keep you guessing. You never know what’s going to hit you next. A paradox? They come in droves. An unexpected witticism? I gave up counting. Discourtesy, vulgarity, coarseness, gaucherie, sauciness, shamelessness? Here comes a bucketful more. Slaps in the face? Leg-pulls? Tongue-twisters? These boys are Mills’ marvels, and they won’t let you forget it. Luckless (lucky) audience: not a hope of getting away. You’re deep in the mud, and they keep on slinging. McCormack is a kind of professional girl – I’m
sure I’ve seen him perform as at least three, and I’d swear the snug wig
that sat athwart him is the same as one he’s worn before. The only
caveat was that she, Thomasine, was left standing front stage right too
long: some invention was needed here, not from her (though she might
have helped), but in the plan. There were other girls, of course. Thomas
Griffin as their daughter, Susan, not cherubic but canny, complete with
a kind of Für Elise beginner’s piano scales, managed to raise a
laugh almost every time by his fey and cheeky demeanour. Joe’s Madam
Quomoda has a servant, Winifred (Peter Walton), another jollifier and
cheerer-up when onstage.
Joe McCormack (Thomasine, long-suffering lady of the house) Cameron Spruce’s glorious hyperactivity could
(like Groves and Howitt) merit a review of his own. Nominally the
Peasant girl’s (Rufus’) dad, he seemed to burst into countless scenes
like some geyser in a Carry On film. He always found something
different to do, scratting around, sometimes whizzing at electric speed,
faster even than Adriel Vipin’s delightful zooming tiny. Another star?
Certainly range enough. Even beat Python’s Ministry of Silly
Walks. So I guess so. The most significant lass was, or could have
been, Rufus Round as his offspring, the reluctant rural wench whom this
wicked, pushy father (Spruce) is trying to urge into harlotry. Round, I
have always thought, may have oodles of talent, or perhaps I mean
potential: still needs work. He pulled off that West Country-like accent
– I guess actually Eastern Counties, I can never work out the
difference - pretty skilfully. But he struggled to create a range of
reactions to his undesirable fate. The screwed-up face was just right – once, twice
or thrice. But not repetitively. It was, I felt, another example of
certain young performers needing a bit of additional directorial focus
(easy to say, given the frightening time constraints). I remember we (as
boys) used to be made to sketch out an (imaginary) biography of our
characters, to enable us to find different facets, a range of ideas to
play with in performance. That sort of thing might have helped him gain
personality. But how the delightful Round managed to make this sexless,
tight-legged yokel Wench – who could blame her? -- look ugly (bumpkinish?)
was remarkable. Spot on. How could one not raise a cheer for Adriel
Vipin’s scampering servant boy? And even more, for Harry Adams as a
spectacularly resourceful hair stylist, a real artist: so many fertile,
ingenious little touches, ponderings, fabrications, decisions – ‘How you
stand – or lie’ (of whoring) – naughty, brilliant. Yet this roundup stands as a tribute to the whole
gang (‘All must have prizes’ – Alice in Wonderland’s Dodo): this entire
gaggle of (it has been said) testosterone-filled (and sometimes
-displaying) youths. And to their Director. And to the adult Props
devisers (dotty signs, telephones, dice-play, golf clubs, policemen
outfits, a hilarious non-postbox, an insane map of Essex); and the
Costumiers (so clever, and naughtily apt, although with this company
ordinary jeans can still work fine). The wigs and make-up too (almost
all the beards were incredibly realistic). The exuberance never let up. That’s Edward’s
Boys. Almost a headache of impertinent effrontery all round. They mangle
your nerves, and buffet you to exhaustion. High class satire of a
Juvenal standard. And that, of course, is what Middleton wrote it for. Roderic Dunnett 03-23 |
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