Once - The Phoenix Theatre

All these productions requiring actor-musicians; one wonders how actors who don’t play an instrument find any work at all...!

Once is not your average musical. There are no show tunes. No jazz hands. It’s not full of noise and spectacle. If you came to this expecting a Hairspray or a Wicked, you might go away feeling a little disappointed. Or you might go away unexpectedly delighted, depending on your musical tastes.

I had some idea of what to expect, as I’d seen the film of Once (before it was turned into a musical). I knew it was a very understated film – and it has been translated into a very understated musical. I liked it – but I know a few musical theatre fans who would probably not enjoy it so much.

The music is all slightly folky, slightly indie. I was reminded of Damien Rice: the lead actor’s delivery was similar; the female harmonies layered on top were reminiscent of his tracks; and the songs themselves had the same kind of low-key, bittersweet, melancholy kind of feel. I can imagine this musical attracting quite a different audience from a lot of West End shows.

But whoever the audience was, at the end of the matinee performance I saw on 16^th November 2013, they gave the cast a substantial standing ovation at the end of the show.

I heard people commenting on how much like real life it was (not something you’d associate with most musical theatre). And, for all its theatricality, it did feel like Once was striving for a sense of authenticity.

On the incoming, audience members bought drinks from the onstage bar. They milled about in their coats on the stage as the cast started playing in a folk jam session, well-choreographed to appear spontaneous. As the audience members were gradually ushered to their seats, the jam session seamlessly turned into the start of the play. The lights went down only after we’d all already fallen silent, and the bar remained the set for the whole piece, regardless of where the action was supposed to be taking place.

Somehow this acknowledgement of its own artifice – this very lack of fourth wall-style realism in the set – this somehow added to that sense of authenticity. As if, just like the audience, the characters were real people treading those boards and in that same bar.

That the actors were playing instruments on stage helped too. When several strings on the lead actor’s guitar went during a song, it felt raw and powerful and real.

Of course, Once is every bit as scripted, sculpted and choreographed as any other musical – but it does feel different. The story, the music, the performances, the set – Once seems to speak in a different language from most musicals. In some ways, you could see it as doing something similar to what The Beggar’s Opera did a few hundred years ago: putting recognisable characters from the here and now on stage and telling their stories with music from the here and now.

A folk opera for our times, perhaps. Or an indie musical. Either way, it’s quite a trick to pull off.

The Canterbury Tales - The Pantaloons

Like a lot of people, I studied part of The Canterbury Tales at school. I’ll be honest and admit that I don’t remember a great deal about the text – except that I remember thinking it wasn’t as difficult as I expected it to be.

At around the same time, I saw the film A Knight’s Tale, with Heath Ledger and Paul Bettany. So Chaucer was always that slightly impish Paul Bettany figure in my head.

These two vague notions are probably always going to inform any encounter I have with The Canterbury Tales. And happily, they fit right in with The Pantaloons’ take on the tales – which is not difficult at all, and definitely slightly impish.

I went to the Underground Theatre in Eastbourne to see The Pantaloons’ production of The Canterbury Tales (10^th Nov 2013). As soon as we walked in, we could feel a bit of a buzz in the air. The cast were in character, chatting with audience members – and, unlike the very reserved audience The Pantaloons had to play to at Michelham Priory in the summer (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with largely the same cast), this audience was chatting back.

It may have been partly because everyone seemed to know each other (as the cast remarked upon more than once), but there was definitely a friendly sort of atmosphere in the almost sold-out UGT.

And that atmosphere carried on right the way through this colourful, funny and energetic take on The Canterbury Tales. Incorporating song, rhyme, puppets, chickens, Shakespeare, opera, improvisation and more, The Pantaloons took us through each of Chaucer’s tales in turn. They’d even printed a list in the programme so you could mark which tales you liked best, and at the end they asked for our favourite. (I think it was the chickens that won the audience vote in Eastbourne).

I’d seen The Pantaloons do The Canterbury Tales before – a couple of years ago, with a different cast and out in the open air. Having only seen them perform outdoors before, I wasn’t sure how their style would translate to an indoor setting.

But it was great. The house lights were only half dimmed, so we could all still see each other (which helped with the audience interaction bits), and in a way I think the indoor setting actually helped to build the atmosphere. Walking through the doors into the auditorium was a bit like going through the wardrobe into Narnia. Outside was the normal, workaday world – and suddenly inside we were in the bright, boisterous Pantaloon-land.

I used to work front of house in a theatre, and one of my favourite parts of the job was seeing the audience leave with smiles on their faces at the end of a show. I think I would have enjoyed working for a Pantaloons performance.

The Pantaloons are currently on tour with The Canterbury Tales and Grimm Fairy Tales (which I’ll be seeing when they return to Eastbourne in December). See their website www.thepantaloons.co.uk for full tour details.