21 minute read
Drama
THE ARTS
DRAMA
THEATRE OVERVIEW
On being asked to write for The Carthusian a summary of the Theatre’s achievements during a year of lockdowns, distancing, and the other Covid restrictions we have all had to endure, one might think that there would be slim pickings, little to report. This time last year, as I was reflecting on the enormous good fortune we had had to perform Guys and Dolls just before we were forced to close our doors, none of us thought we had a year ahead of such continued challenges.
But perhaps with challenge comes an increased determination (bordering on madness?) to carry on as normal as much as possible and even to venture beyond. And so, the Ben Travers Theatre has been a busy place since September, adapting along the way, often at short notice, to ensure that the Performing Arts are kept alive in our School. Our resolve has also allowed us to think of new ways forward and new projects, so, in a nutshell, this year has been an exciting and productive one which now paves the way for more to come. Who’d have thought, in this year of all years!
First up in OQ was our annual Lack of Talent show and this year we had to film the performances to be shown in Houses. Not without its logistical challenges but it went ahead, thanks to the organisational skills and perseverance of Eva Pomery (F), her LoT team, and the talented performers who stepped forward to be part of this annual festival of talent. It was fun to have a crew in to film, but we look forward to being back live with LoT at the end of September 2021. Congratulations also to Eva on working so hard on her singing, dancing and acting in those dark and very chilly days of LQ in preparation for Drama School auditions. A happy outcome, as she now takes up her place this summer on the British Youth Music Theatre course, and from September starts her musical theatre training at London’s prestigious Urdang Academy. Well done indeed.
The original plans for the OQ whole School play changed when year group bubbles were announced as the order of the day and so we turned our hands to performing some Shakespeare Shorts. Pushing all the seating out of the way created an enormous playing space, as we’ve not seen it before, to allow us to welcome a distanced audience. With The Dream, Much Ado and Twelfth Night performed over several days to bubbles, we dodged Covid (just, though it did sadly murder Macbeth!) and opened our newly-installed main doors to staff and pupils before the second lockdown began. It was wonderful to see seats filled and pupils supporting their peers. And it was obvious that more than ever we needed drama! Just to have the stage lit and alive was quite something, and those on it did a great job in standing in for isolating friends at the last minute and managing swift costume changes, as they multi-rolled their way along. After all, who needs four fairies when one can be them all! OQ also saw a fabulous day of workshops for our Groundlings, GCSE and A-Level groups, delivered by visiting director Shane Morgan, from RoughHouse Theatre Company. Shane and RoughHouse have worked with us before and we look forward to welcoming them back this coming year. The first of two LAMDA showcase evenings followed soon after, where we were treated to pupils delivering their exam monologues and duologues. The number of Carthusians taking LAMDA lessons continues to rise rapidly, and it is great to have the chance to see the work that they are doing.
We were able to fit in several weeks of ballet with our first ever classes delivered by the Phillipa Hogan School of Dance and this CQ we have finalised a partnership with the dance school that will allow our pupils to access weekly ballet classes, as well as modern dance, from September. This is an exciting venture and just the start of dance of all genres becoming a core part of our performing arts programme – watch this space!
By November, following auditions, preparations were underway for our production of Les Mis, with rehearsals spread across the pews in Chapel – the biggest challenge yet, and not quite the
Below: A Level Drama Right: Les Mis Bottom left: Shakespeare Shorts Festival Bottom right: Lack of Talent
‘ensemble’ approach we needed but that wasn’t going to stop us. What’s written over the following pages gives an idea of what this project meant to us all, to those involved and to those watching. We needed it to happen, and it did. Our Actor in Residence, Dean Chisnall, joined us, wonderfully unexpectedly, as we started those auditions and rehearsals. None of it was planned for this year – his arrival was COVID-induced and just meant to be!
And then how to keep going in LQ when the second lockdown came along and Zoom fatigue threatened to set in? Well, the Les Mis cast had strict instructions to be singing around the house at all times. They and their families were to live and breathe the music until we could be together again. By this stage we had made the decision to push the performances to the end of the school year, in the hope we would be able to open our doors to a live audience and the outside world. And we also turned to radio plays, with a cast of pupils and staff ‘meeting’ every Friday for Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution. Here the strict instructions were to turn Zoom cameras off! It was a lot of fun, just when we needed it most. And we see this as an ongoing project. There is now a place for radio plays in our yearly programme. We have seen work in the BTT from our 2YS A Level Theatre group who performed their devised piece in OQ (see review) and then in CQ they gave us scenes from the hard-hitting That Face and monologues from the extraordinary verbatim piece called Working. They set the bar high for the 1YS group who performed their ingenious, nursery rhyme-based devised piece for us, and also our first cohort of GCSE Drama pupils, currently in the Remove, who were mesmerising in their scenes telling the story of online gaming victim, Breck Bednar. Artifex ended the year, giving pupils the chance to do a series of staged readings in some of our School’s beautiful outdoor settings. How lucky we are to have such theatrical backdrops! So, Theatre has been busy and buzzing at Charterhouse at a time when we might not have expected it to be so, and when we start OQ 2021, we’ll be excited to see new faces, as well as familiar ones, coming through the doors with their enthusiasm and talent. We also look forward to seeing our auditorium full at performances! Come and make up for all those months when you were deprived of it all… We need theatre in our lives and there’s a great one on top of the hill in Godalming! Come and check it out – those new glass doors are always open!
Miss Emily Fox Artistic Director of Theatre
DEAN CHISNALL
In November we were delighted to announce that West End musical theatre star, Dean Chisnall, joined Charterhouse as our first ever Actor in Residence.
It was purely by chance that when Dean got in touch to see if he could be of help in our Theatre, we were just putting up audition posters for our production of Les Misérables! That in itself was enough to set the ball rolling. The idea of having an Actor in Residence had been part of a long-term plan, not one that could possibly present itself, and cement itself, within the space of little more than a week, and during a pandemic. His vision for the theatre at Charterhouse was our vision, so here was a partnership not to be missed! And we thank Covid for it.
Dean has worked non-stop in the professional musical theatre industry for the past fifteen years, both in the West End and on tour, taking on principal roles in hit shows such as Blood Brothers, Evita, Mamma Mia! and Shrek, in which he played the title role, to name but a few. He had been playing the leading role of Jean Valjean in Cameron Mackintosh’s Les Misérables since 2018, in the West End and on tour, until the pandemic paused play. It goes without saying that for us to have a professional Jean Valjean on board to help with this year’s ambitious musical project has been an inspiring experience for us all. We are so grateful to Dean for the experience and dedication he brings to our theatre and to our community as a whole, and we are delighted that he will be staying on with us as Actor in Residence, whilst also continuing his work as a highly respected performer within the industry. Dean is a passionate believer that the theatre should be open to all, that all who want to be involved should have that chance. When he arrived he told us:
“It is an honour and a privilege to be at Charterhouse to help and to nurture the already exemplary pupils and staff at this magnificent school. The history of one of the greatest schools in the world speaks for itself. Just when I thought I’d been lucky enough to achieve many of my dreams in my life, this wonderful opportunity comes along. I’ll endeavour to work as hard as I can to inspire and expand all things theatrical. I truly believe that every pupil should have exposure to drama in some form – the life skills you gain from it are incredibly precious and stand you in good stead for ANY career.”
If I were to give the pupils here tips about how they should approach their work in the theatre (or indeed in their every day), it would be these:
• Be a good human – be gracious and kind. • Always be prepared to make mistakes, forgive yourself and learn from them. • Don’t let fear take over. Fear is good – nerves are important! • Be whoever you want to be. You will always be embraced – especially at Charterhouse. • As a story-teller you have the chance to change someone’s life every day.
There is no greater joy.
Les Misérables
A pre-show note from director Miss Fox:
“So, what’s your favourite musical then Miss Fox?” “Les Mis – obviously!” I reply without hesitation. I am not unusual in that respect of course. That question is often met with the eager admission that a person has seen this most extraordinary of musicals multiple times. I think I’m up to five! And by the end of this week does that count as ten?! To be honest it feels like a lot more than that (in a good way!) – our company has been living and breathing the show now for quite a few months (and our Actor in Residence a good few years!) since we held auditions back in November, and I know that our Les Mis family will carry with them always the experience of having been part of this.
I write this programme note as the Theatre has emptied after our first technical rehearsal. The dressing room and the barricade have fallen silent, the working lights are back on in the auditorium, so the magic of the stage is somewhat diminished, or at least on hold temporarily, but it stands there, promising to deliver much in the week to come. A few props abandoned (note to self to be stricter with cast about that!), a candlestick here, an apron there, and tucked behind a flat are Javert’s truncheon and Fantine’s wig, which seem to have a life of their own and are never where you need them to be! I’m sitting here wondering how on earth we will ever get this up and running in time –I’m starting to doubt myself – and then I remember that we are thrice blessed in this theatre. Back in March 2020 we cheated lockdown by a matter of days to bring Guys and Dolls to the BTT. Then, although we couldn’t make our originally planned dates of March 2021 for Les Mis, it seems like a small miracle that we have managed to get it to you today at all, let alone in its entirety. And now the smell of damp carpet and auditorium seats is the aromatic reminder of this morning and the deluge of biblical proportions that emptied itself through our theatre roof. Some say blocked gutters but I say smiling theatre Gods, testing our resolve and ever so carefully (and goodness knows how) avoiding not only the set but every single light in the gantries. So, thrice blessed.
But actually we’re so much more blessed than that. Blessed that Victor Hugo created this beautiful story for us to tell and that Claude-Michel Schönberg set it to such magical music for us to sing. Blessed that as a School we are able to embark on projects such as this in a theatre such as this. Blessed that the wretched pandemic in fact brought Dean Chisnall to us – I can’t thank him enough for the support, years of experience and passion he brings. Ask any of the cast members about our trip last week to see him perform as Valjean at the Sondheim, and they will tell you it was life-changing! We should never doubt the power of the theatre to have that effect on us.
And so, it seems to me that we have a lot to be thankful for here. For this production we have formed a Les Misérables bubble of dedicated, determined and talented Carthusians in the most challenging of times, many of whom have come on the journey in their GCSE or A-Level year, many of whom had not acted or sung since their Year 1 nativity when we started out and some of whom have had to step in and step up for others who sadly couldn’t see the journey’s end. The production has perhaps provided pupils with something of a lockdown rudder, a lifeline, and we have seen the whole company grow in all sorts of ways since we came together. Thank you to Mr Shepherd and Miss Corderoy who have so expertly coached big singing voices out of small ones over the months. If you are looking for evidence of our School values, they are all happening in abundance during the
performance you are about to see. These Carthusians are, I think, quite rightly proud of what they have achieved, against the odds. They have surprised themselves (and their directors multiple times!) along the way. I hope that their families, friends and our whole School can share in that pride too.
And finally, before I gather up some vocal scores that have seen better days, reposition some of the black bins in the auditorium in case the heavens open again over night, and lock up our Ben Travers Theatre, I sit here and thank our lucky Les Mis stars that with that dedicated, determined and talented creative team, cast and crew, with whom I have the great pleasure to work, we made it. Truth be told, I never really doubted we would!
Emily Fox (and a few days after this programme note went to print, as we prepared for our dress rehearsal, we were struck another Covid blow that threatened one last and very real time to stop the show completely… but no, we were blessed yet again. Oh ye Theatre Gods! What you put us through!)
Eddie Chai (R) as Jean Valjean
An audience member reviews:
‘The Time is Now, The Day is Here’, these lyrics from ‘One Day More’ never more relevant for the cast of Les Misérables as they made it to opening night. Many obstacles had been overcome – putting on a show in a global pandemic is no mean feat. As the band (an exciting mix of pupils and professional musicians) struck up the opening chords, the impressive set lit in red, white and blue, lucky ticket-holders in the audience were poised and ready for the musical that charts a pivotal point in history.
From the opening number as the prisoners sang ‘Look Down’ through to the beer-swilling pub locals in ‘Master of the House’, and the chilling moments at the barricades, there was a real sense of ensemble. It was abundantly clear this was a team effort. The supporting cast worked extremely hard multi-rolling to create the many different scenes and it was great to read from the programme that for some of the cast this was their first taste of performing.
The ensemble were so energised and focused throughout – Theo Needs (B), Daniel Cross (R), Guy Ellis (W) and Andrew Shum (V), to name but a few, never missing a beat. And high praise to true team player, Ciarán O’Lionaird, for taking on so many parts and stepping in at the very last minute as Madame Thénardier, complete with wig and fan. His enjoyment, alongside Jesse Jabaru (R) as the convincingly greedy swindler Thénardier, palpable.
Our leading man, Eddie Chai (R), played a beautifully nuanced Jean Valjean, directed by Miss Fox and West End Jean Valjean, and Charterhouse Actor in Residence, Dean Chisnall (no pressure!). Chai’s stunning rendition of ‘Bring Him Home’ in absolute stillness held the audience with every word as he played this huge role with ease and control. Matthew Parnall (G) gave such an assured and imposing performance as Javert and the two combined to create great tension. A stand-out moment was Parnall show-casing his vocal ability during ‘Stars’ against a beautiful backdrop, and bringing out a softer, more reflective side to his character.
Hattie Palmer (F) played a charming Cosette and Xavier Currill (R) a perfect hero as Marius. A particularly poignant moment was his ‘Empty Chairs at Empty Tables’, the ensemble under the arches, facing the audience to produce a very haunting effect, and the lyrics feeling particularly significant.
Eva Pomery (F) excelled as the lovestruck Éponine showing considered characterisation through her physicality and communication of the lyrics. She has a bright future ahead as she pursues a career in Musical Theatre.
The show was performed with tremendous heart. Although billed, as required, as the ‘School Edition’, this epic tale was conveyed in full, every single word sung on the journey through 19th Century France – high praise, then, to the entire cast and creative team for such an impressive achievement.
We have been deprived of shared experiences over the last year and it was a privilege, and heartwarming, to be in an audience to watch a company come together against the odds. For the pupils, being part of the production must have provided great escapism and a silver lining in this most unusual of years.
I look forward to working with pupils old and new in the Theatre this coming year, and hope to encourage many of them to follow in the footsteps of the Les Misérables cast. Bravo.
Mrs Elizabeth Bennett (LAMDA co-ordinator)
Miss Corderoy gives a conductor’s perspective:
What a wonderful working partnership was fostered here between the BTT and the RVW (Music Department). The cast were supported beautifully by a band made up of professionals and Carthusians. We were fortunate enough to welcome players from the pits of the West End, as well as our very own Music Faculty – for pupils to play alongside players of such a high calibre is a rare and special opportunity. Once again Covid reared its ugly head. Come performance week we found ourselves in an almost unheard-of scenario – the first time cast and band would hear each other, would be on the opening night itself. Both parties rose to the occasion wonderfully, however. After months of rehearsing alongside the piano, the cast were in total awe of the sound produced by the 20-piece ensemble; new life was breathed into the performance at an all-important moment.
A final word from Mr Dean Chisnall:
It was a magical week in the BTT – our pupils FINALLY got their chance to perform Les Mis. My goodness it was worth the wait and I really couldn’t be more proud of them if I tried. What family spirit we created! This wasn’t just a cast and crew of people standing on or working back stage – it was a community pulling together in the most inspiring of ways to deliver a stellar evening of entertainment and to create memories for life. A shame not to perform in front of the sell-out crowd we’d originally packed in, but grateful parents, pupils, friends and family came along in their bubbles and rose to their feet in the finale to celebrate the company’s hard work and incomparable talents. A real rollercoaster of an experience ended on the highest note possible. There’s nothing that reassures your faith in the human spirit quite like Les Misérables. Thank you to all who took part, from a very emotional and grateful Mr C!
(Victor Hugo)
A Level Drama
Who are we? What are we really afraid of? These fundamental questions about ourselves were answered by this year’s 2YS A-Level Drama & Theatre pupils in the form of a short play. This was their devised exam, where pupils are given a stimulus and a practitioner from which they create a piece of theatre. This year the stimulus was Joseph K by Tom Basden, which is based on Kafka’s The Trial, and the practitioner, Berkoff.
The mysteriousness and suspense were instantly created with a quiet but penetrating music in the background, which sounded as if it echoed one’s heartbeat. Frederick Bott (D), Pétrus Desbois (W), and Piers Ninham (g) all took turns acting as the main character, Joe, who is asked questions by two interrogators about his fears. Facing inwards, they stood tall either side of Joe, who sat uncomfortably centre stage. Each of the three actors was responsible for being one of Joe’s three split personalities: first he was interrogated about his fear of the dark; in the next scene, a different actor was in the role of Joe and had a different fear, this time of closed spaces; in the third, Joe feared memories.
After this series of interrogations, Joe, again with contrasting personalities, then appeared in a few real-life situations. In each of these scenes, all Joe said was the word ‘really’ repeatedly. His emotions, however, were conveyed very effectively by the three talented actors, through the different tones with which they said the same word: he was at one time excited to propose to marry, and in the following scene he was devastated to find out that he had been fired from his job. Joe then found himself interrogated again, but this time the sense of mystery had disappeared – the whole theatre was lit up as if the conflict between Joe’s characters had been resolved. The audience found out that Joe was in fact being interrogated for murder: he had killed his other personalities.
This brought an end to the play, perhaps leaving the audience even more confused about themselves than before. The questions posed at the start might have taken some time to digest, but the effort put into creating this play was clear from the outset. There have been difficult circumstances, with two other pupils having to stay at home, therefore cutting the cast from five to three. Despite this, the message of the play was told powerfully, not only with impressive acting, but also effective stage settings, lighting, and music. It was wonderful to have an opportunity to watch live theatre in such challenging times, and hopefully there is a lot more to come.
