Anthea Thompson
After her great success last year with Shirley Valentine, Anthea Thompson returns to the recently reopened (thank goodness) Kalk Bay Theatre with another hit play by Willy Russell. Even though the film of Educating Rita came out way back in 1983, many lines are as unforgettable as they are still entertaining.
Also remarkable is how when the adult student Rita, a Liverpudlian hairdresser whose real name is Susan, bent on self-improvement, describes the appalling conditions of her government schooling with its violence and apathetic teachers (a speech omitted from the film), she could be describing many of our neglected and vandalised local schools today.
In this modern day Pygmalion, the teacher is unwilling. Professor Frank Bryant is a washed-up alcoholic, failed poet and professional cynic. The play, scathingly critical of academia, is sympathetic to his reasons. Yet Frank meets his match in Rita, a determined optimist, craving everything she imagines he ought to be and the life she fantasizes he leads.
Filled with irony, this gentle satire on literacy, on the class system, on the tutor of life as opposed to the pedagogy of art, entertains at every delicious twist.
Anthea Thompson (Rita) is as impressive and David Dennis (Frank) as reliable as always.
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I was appalled recently to find on a USA website selling sniper rifles, sniper’s paradise (and no, I was not planning a trip to Zimbabwe), a banner advert running along the top of their homepage with the slogan “just in time for Christmas” with a photo next to it of President-elect Obama wearing a Father Christmas hat! As Meryle Secrest remarks in her biography of Stephen Sondheim, there never seems to be an appropriate time to stage Assassins.
With music and lyrics by Sondheim and book by John Weidman, this is a searingly subversive work, a theatrical séance using portraits of presidential assassins to scrutinize how the American dream so easily turns into nightmare. There is much to celebrate here: the inaugural production of the NewSpace theatre, the genius of Sondheim’s lyrics, and the admirable production values. Director Fred Abrahamse has pulled out all the stops for this one and kept in good faith with the original stagings. Musical director Stefan Lombard has managed a superb re-orchestration of Sondheim’s often satirical score.
Add to this, great performances from Andre Jacobs, David Dennis, Anthea Thompson, Marcel Meyer, and Tammy Meyer, and Assassins is not-to-be missed. We are indeed fortunate to have a brand new independent theatre and a Sondheim musical production of this calibre right on our doorstep. Do take advantage.
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