Sitting In The Cheap Seats

Jonathan Grant’s Dracula looms over Michael Gondelle as Jonathan Harker We may be a little more than a week away from Halloween but Humdrum are offering up a classic slice of horror at The Spring to get people in the mood. As director James George points out, Dracula might no longer be a story that truly shocks, but there is still enough here to make the audience uneasy and at its heart this is a classic story regardless of whether it will make you jump out of your seat.

Brighton. 1963. An engagement party, a mobster back from the dead, a lover on the run from the law, a girl in man’s clothes, a geriatric waiter and trapped in the middle of it all Francis Henshall a washboard player with two bosses and a desperate need for some chips!

Elwood P Dowd and his six foot tall pooka pal Harvey are bothering their family. While they blame the invisible giant rabbit and assume Elwood is crazy, perhaps it’s his relentlessly sunny worldview that is really bothering them!

Stephen Lowe ’s Touched is a curious play… flat on the page, it comes alive on the stage! Lowe’s story of a trio of sisters, their friend and family and the curious time between VE day and the end of the war perfectly highlights the struggles these women had to face, and the freedom they were about to lose!

The Aids epidemic that devastated New York’s gay community in the 80s has been a fertile ground for the arts, inspiring movies, music and notably the theatre. Big hitters like RENT and Angels In America, but long before it became a mainstream subject Larry Kramer ’s visceral, semi-autobiographical account of life within the community’s burgeoning activist organisations shed a light on the plight affecting so many.

Travels With My Aunt is a popular choice this year… Since Humdrum announced this production at The Spring a musical adaptation has been scheduled as part of the new Chichester Festival Theatre season and a touring production will be visiting Winchester.

The BFG is perhaps the most beloved of Roald Dahl’s brilliantly twisted stories for children (though theatre fans may have fallen for Matilda in recent years). It’s certainly one that people keep coming back to as the forthcoming movie adaptation (starring Mark Rylance – which excites us a great deal) will attest. I’m fascinated to see how Humdrum bring such a big story into the confines of The Spring’s cosy studio theatre.

A play by David Mamet that pays tribute to Oscar Wilde… sounds like an odd concept, but Boston Marriage manages to blend the best of both writers, Mamet’s snappy dialogue married to Wilde’s verbose grandeur!

How do you approach a play when the film based on it is steeped in generations of lavish praise and is a regular on “favourite” and “best” lists? Well, if  Humdrum ’s take on Arsenic & Old Lace is anything to go by the answer is to pepper your cast with people who’ve never seen the movie and then let their imaginations run wild.

Cider with Rosie is one of those plays… you know, the ones you’ve definitely heard of and you think you know a bit about but that you’ve somehow never seen. Determined to rectify that I was in buoyant mood as I arrived at the Spring Arts & Heritage Centre for Humdrum’s take on Laurie Lee ’s life story.