Notes from the Beautiful Girls

In the first of our series of "Notes from...", Paul Scott talks about next month's production of BEAUTIFUL GIRLS, a revue of the songs of Stephen Sondheim, the composer-lyricist of musicals such as Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Into The Woods and Company.

"A lot of people have asked: ‘What is Beautiful Girls about?’ and ‘Where does the title come from?’

The answer to the first question is that it is basically a cabaret of 27 of Stephen Sondheim’s best songs, all on a theme of women. When we decided to mount an evening of Sondheim, it quickly became clear that the women nearly always have the best songs - and the best of the men’s songs are about women! In fact, it’s fair to say that his musicals contain unusually good roles for women. So, we found ourselves some unusually good women to perform this fabulous material and who could be said provided the title (it’s actually a number from Follies): Judi Allan, Juliet Ascroft (formerly Wills), Kate Bennett, Rachel Prudden, Joan Self and Jackie Adams on piano, along with myself as token male.

The more you rehearse it, the more you realise what an incredible talent Stephen Sondheim has. No one else can write such an honest lyric and haunting tune as ‘Not a Day Goes By’ one minute and the wonderfully witty innuendo-laden ‘Never Do Anything Twice’ the next. It is exceptionally rewarding material to work on; actors who can sing usually adore it, possibly because the lyrics are often one-act plays in miniature, revealing more about the character, situation or plot than preceding dialogue.

Generally, the majority of the songs haven’t caused too much concern, but there are one or two pieces that are deceptively tricky, such as the trio ‘You Could Drive a Person Crazy’ from Company, written as a pastiche of an Andrews Sisters’ song. Some of the harmonies are very intricate and take a lot of practicing and I suspect Jackie will be quite pleased never to play that one ever again. Actually, Sondheim uses pastiche quite often, and there are several songs in this revue that point this up, including the Gershwinesque ‘Losing My Mind’ and a very funny spoof of ‘The Girl from Ipanema’.

Some people feel that Sondheim doesn’t write memorable tunes. The truth is, he writes music to fit the character and situation for that scene and doesn’t set out to write hit songs and bang them into your head by reprising them umpteen times in the course of a night. We think he is the best theatre composer and lyricist alive today and hope our show proves the point!"

BEAUTIFUL GIRLS, THURSDAY 9 - SATURDAY 11 OCTOBER at 7.45 pm
All seats £8

Production Notes

There will be a new feature on the blog this season, whereby the directors of productions will be making a posting concerning their specific production and the rehearsal process. We hope this will prove interesting to those of you who attend the shows, so you can see exactly what work takes place to bring a play or musical to the stage. These musings, which will be entitled “Notes from….”, will generally be posted here on Wednesdays, two or three weeks before opening nights, thereby whetting your appetite to book your tickets (assuming you have not already done so). I am opening the batting this week on the Sondheim revue Beautiful Girls. See you here Wednesday!

Winter season announced

With the CODS’ production of See How They Run opening this coming Saturday – and the stage having been converted to a wartime vicarage somewhere in Oxfordshire – attention turns to the launch of our winter brochure which will start distribution next week. OK, strictly speaking, winter doesn’t officially start until December, but with the next brochure detailing the productions from October to the beginning of February, I think we can get away with calling it our winter season.

Theatres often say: “this season has a wide variety of productions catering to all tastes” when it isn’t really true, and we’ve been guilty of that ourselves in the past. But this time it is fair to say we have an excellent balance of dramas, comedies and musicals (bucking the trend of the West End and many other theatres which are almost exclusively musicals at present).

The box office is now taking bookings for all the productions listed below, with the exception of The Sorcerer and The Railway Children, which are subject to the company’s own advance booking arrangements. Sorcerer will commence booking on Monday 27 October and Railway Children on Monday 5 January. Full details are available on our main website.

PLAYS
We have two contrasting dramas in November, kicking off with the Victorian-setting of The Gut Girls, followed by the 1977-setting of the very funny Epsom Downs, while the season closes with a professional touring production of Talbot House, the true story of a refuge for soldiers in WWI.

FAMILIES
There are two shows definitely aimed at family audiences. In October, for one night only, we have The King of Spain’s Daughter, presented by the professional Fabulous Old Spot Company – and children and students can attend for just £6! Then, in January, CODS will be in residence for a week with a new musical version of The Railway Children.

MUSICALS
Next month, Ad Hoc present their cabaret revue of the songs of Stephen Sondheim, Beautiful Girls; in November, Cotswold Savoyards return to their roots with a staging of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Sorcerer; and in December, Jacob’s Well Productions will be bringing us the amateur premiere of Paul: Strange Kind of Hero.

CHRISTMAS
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without our annual alternative to pantomime for childish grown-ups, which this year owes a nod to Lewis Carroll while taking a swipe at political correctness – Alice in a Non-PC World.

Tourist Information Box Office

You may be forgiven for thinking that, in the box office, all we have to deal with are people wanting to purchase seats for shows, book a rehearsal room, or possibly enquire about hiring the auditorium. In fact, we also double as an unofficial tourist information office and directory enquiry service.

We regularly receive visitors or deliverymen asking for directions to the Town Hall, the Queens Hotel, the Ladies College, somewhere that repairs watches and, most regularly, the Everyman. Occasionally, we do have people thinking that we are the other venue and suddenly fly out of the doors when they realise they’ve come to the wrong place and they have five minutes to rush round for curtain up. Yesterday, a very nice lady came to the box office in person to tell us that she had tried to get into the theatre via the Regent Arcade entrance only to find it locked and that we might like to do something about it.

A fair proportion of our telephone calls used to come from people wanting to book seats at the Everyman but rang us because the Everyman weren’t in the Yellow Pages - an omission they finally rectified in the most recent printing, resulting in fewer people wanting us to connect them. However, we now appear to have yet another string to our multi-faceted bow, as this conversation from yesterday morning will prove:

Box office: Good morning, Playhouse Theatre, can I help you?
Voice on phone: Hello my love, can you tell me the time please?
Box office: Yes, it’s five-to-ten.
Voice on phone: Thank you, love.

And the gentleman rang off. Yes, apparently we are now also The Speaking Clock.

Credit crunch?

It’s still too early to say whether the ‘credit crunch’ is affecting theatres in the UK. Several shows have posted early closing notices in the West End, but the summer is always the slowest time of the year – people want to be out enjoying the lovely weather (there’s irony) – and many regional theatres have said that, so far, they have noticed no unexpected slowdown in ticket sales. CCTA’s recent production of Beauty and the Beast produced their best result in terms of ticket sales in six years.

We, of course, don’t operate in quite the same way as a major touring venue and our ticket prices are considerably lower. The vast majority of our shows are presented by local non-professional companies, although we regularly welcome local professional outfits like Focus (http://www.focustheatre.co.uk/) and Dreamshed (http://www.dreamshedtheatre.co.uk/). We are certainly looking at increasing the number of professional performances here – witness The King of Spain’s Daughter – but the best way of keeping audiences interested is in presenting a wide variety of productions so that there is, to use the old cliché, “something for everyone”.

To this end, on Thursday 11 September we are hosting a visit from two extremely well-respected local mediums, Anna Galliers and Carol Green, both of whom have featured on television. On their last visit to Cheltenham they sold out the Pillar Room at the Town Hall and they are much in demand both on a one-to-one and group level. Anna and Carol will present an evening of Clairvoyance and Spirit Communication where they will endeavour to bring messages and proof from our loved ones of a continued existence beyond the physical world. You can find more information at http://www.annagalliers.com/ and http://www.carolgreenmedium.co.uk/

King of Spain's Daughter...

It’s all kids at The Playhouse at the moment. Last week, CCTA celebrated their 50th anniversary and I believe there may be some photos in the Echo’s Weekend supplement this Saturday of the former members meeting the current members (this on top of the Central News piece broadcast at various times last Friday and an honourable mention in The Stage newspaper). This week, Theatre Studio are hosting their annual summer school, with over 100 young people working to stage FIVE different productions this coming Saturday.

We’ve also just arranged for a visit this October from The King of Spain’s Daughter. Not real royalty, of course, but the title of a 'theatrical entertainment' from the Fabulous Old Spot Theatre Company, a professional touring troupe based in our own county. Old Spot have a fantastic style all their own, involving music, masks, high drama, low farce and jokes for the kids the adults won’t get (and vice versa). We’re very pleased to be hosting this show for just one night only on Thursday 23 October and tickets go on sale from tomorrow. Further details will be found on our main website and in our forthcoming brochure, which goes to print at the end of this week.

Playhouse on TV...

Now, please do not take that heading to mean that, in future, we’re going to broadcast our productions onto television or via the internet to save you coming out to the theatre on a dark, wet August night (it is August, apparently). Aside from that would miss the whole point about experiencing the magic of a live performance, there are convoluted copyright issues to be taken into account.

What it does mean, however, is that The Playhouse will this week feature on Central News West (I do realise that Cheltenham is one of those places where half the town gets Central News West while the other half gets Central News Midlands – or, rather, Birmingham – but I can’t do much about that).

Reporter Richard Franklin spent yesterday morning with us to do a combined feature on the refurbishment of a flood-stricken theatre and the 50th anniversary of Cheltenham Children’s Theatre (CCTA). Several of the kids were filmed undertaking jobs in the lighting and sound boxes, doing a spot of performing and being interviewed about what they get out of CCTA. The piece will be shown at some point during the 6pm news programme one evening this week, so those of you with the right reception may wish to keep an eye out.

Yours truly was also interviewed and I have no doubt that the kids will come out of it far better than I. They will appear wonderfully natural and interested whereas I will be stilted and dull (and before Steve Evans says it, no change there then). I never feel happy doing those things, despite the fact that I used to work in public relations and received media training! I guess it’s that old chestnut about only feeling comfortable when playing a role and hating being seen as yourself.

The CCTA show Beauty and the Beast opens this evening at 7.30 and we are still trying to encourage ex-members to attend on the Friday evening performance and attend a reception afterwards. In the meantime, we wish the kids all the best for their 50th anniversary.