2013-05-19T19:12:51-04:00 Joel Samuels http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=Joel Samuels Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Joel Samuels Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2192034 2012-11-26T11:04:06-05:00 2013-01-26T05:12:01-05:00

Joel Samuels http://www.huffingtonpost.com/Joel Samuels/
But working with Rebel Theatre this Winter we are bringing to life a show to delight the young and old that, hopefully, will give audiences as much fun as a traditional Pantomime with, perhaps, a dash more of a story to get your teeth into....

Earlier this year I co-produced the initial Fringe run of Philip Ridley's Mercury Fur - the much praised play eventually transferring to the West End where it continued to astound audiences as 'the most intimate production of the most intense play ever written.' We were much praised for our daringness in creating such a show and for having the guts to do something challenging and invigorating.

It was as I thought about what I'd like to do next, that a chance conversation last Summer with the director Simon Pollard about an exciting new theatre-venue opening in a converted warehouse in South London, created the possibility of doing something equally daring and excitingly different in the run up to Christmas.

Rania Jumaily and Laura Crampsie have opened The Last Refuge in Peckham at a time when more conventional theatres are feeling the pinch of cuts and unfortunately are having to charge visiting companies extortionate hire rates: the Last Refuge don't charge companies a straight hire rate which gives companies like Rebel Theatre the chance to be inventive and experimental without the constrictions of being desperate to earn back the hire fees. In our case when Simon pitched the idea of an alternative Christmas show we were delighted that Rania responded with a very clear: "Yeah, babes, it sounds fab!"

Our idea was to find a play that married the feeling of being outside the mainstream of theatreland - and what could be more outside the mainstream then our lovingly converted warehouse in Peckham Rye - with the edge that sometimes can be lacking in fairytales and Panto's.

Twelve years ago Simon went to see Playbox Theatre's brand new Christmas commission Beyond Beauty, by LA-based playwright and screenwriter Ron Hutchinson. Playbox is one of Europe's leading arts operations for children and young people and the play featured 40 young actors of varying ages. It rang a chord with Simon as a brilliantly subversive take on the Sleeping Beauty fairytale, perfect for those looking for their Christmas theatre-treats to have a little more soul.

What he didn't know was that the play would eventually go through various different production companies hands wanting to turn it into television series or films: luckily for us it never got past the development stage and, to quote Ron Hutchinson himself, the play 'went to sleep,' until Simon jumped at the chance to awaken it this Winter. We have worked with Ron to rewrite the play for a cast of eight and marry it to both the space that we are performing in and the local area surrounding the space itself. This play has been reborn as a fairytale very much of its time and location.

Now I should be clear that I don't hate conventional theatre-spaces nor do I loathe pantomime but, frankly, there isn't enough theatre at this time of year that works to make you think: that combines top quality slapstick comedy with poignancy and pathos. Whilst aside from panto there is the temptation to program various forms of fairytale; these inevitably buy into a form of storytelling that hasn't evolved in far too long. The fairytale princess marries the prince and regardless of the journey that gets us there we know exactly where the story is going to go: and they all lived happily ever after.

In that sense Beyond Beauty is my ideal Christmas show and, beyond that, it is my perfect take on a fairytale: no Disney style candy-coated joy for our Princess here, rather the truth of what happens when a young lad from Peckham stumbles into an enchanted castle on his way home from a night out, finds a beautiful girl sleeping like a statue and feels compelled to kiss her. Will they get married? Will the King and Queen adapt to a life without the luxury of a grand castle? And what on earth is the Banger Pie? These are all questions that we answer in Beyond Beauty, all within the environs of our enchanted castle, tucked away in a warehouse off the back of Rye Lane opposite Peckham Rye station.

So come down to South London in the run up to this Christmas for something completely different and we guarantee you a blooming good time with ne'er a Disneyfied ending nor a 'he's behind you' in sight.

Beyond Beauty, by Ron Hutchinson, 27th November to 15th December, 7.30pm Tuesday to Saturday and 3pm on Sundays at the Last Refuge in Peckham Rye. Tickets: www.thelastrefuge.co.uk/book-tickets]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1379363 2012-03-26T08:39:30-04:00 2012-05-26T05:12:01-04:00

Joel Samuels http://www.huffingtonpost.com/Joel Samuels/  
At the same time as the Greenhouse Theatre Company was born as a concept, the London riots began in Tottenham. What followed shocked us all and has been widely discussed, written about and even - as evidenced in The Riots, by Gillian Slovo at the Tricycle - responded to on the stage.
 
Meanwhile, having just been thrust into existence the Greenhouse Theatre Company needed the right show for our debut; something that matched up to our no-fear, the right play for the right time approach. We read a lot of plays at that time: from Priestly to Simon Stephens by way of little-known rediscoveries by Charles Wood and David Pinner.
 
It was then that we stumbled onto Mercury Fur, by Philip Ridley. I had seen and been mesmerised by the original production, starring Ben Whishaw and Rob Boulter at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2005, a production adored by many and attacked by some for its supposedly fantastical depiction of British youth in a London decimated by rioting, looting and violence. However, it was something that I had not touched or read in over six years.
 
As a company we sat down and we read. And we stopped for breath. And we read some more.
 
Writing six years previously it was as if Ridley had predicted the future, had posited his characters in a world in which last summer's riots never stopped, a world in which the London riots led to a society in which children grew up without parents, where drugs keep the populace repressed and destroy memories: in short, Ridley had written a play that seemed to respond to last summer, seemed to use last summer as a starting point and postulate on the consequences. Six years previously.
 
As I write we have been in rehearsals for two weeks and the strength and beauty of Ridley's writing has become more and more apparent every day. As have the shocking accuracies of what he envisaged back in 2005. The writing that we are dealing with feels like a response to now: a grim parable of disillusioned, disenchanted youth and yet a play so overwhelmingly concerned with love that it feels like you are being embraced with every word.
 
I asked Olly Alexander, the actor playing the role of Naz in our production - and also playing Herbet Pocket in Mike Newell's big screen adaptation of Great Expectations released later this year - what it is like to be speaking the near-poetry that Philip Ridley puts in his characters mouths and how close it comes to goings on in our own society: "You try not to think about it but it is hard not to draw parallels. I'm playing a fifteen year old kid who has seen the worst things in the world happen and it would be really easy to say 'well that's just fantasy', but these things do happen every day." In what sense? "There are atrocities like the one's described in the show committed all the time; it would be narrow minded as anything to be like 'these things don't happen here.' Because they did, people got run down by cars and punched off bikes and people's homes were set on fire. These things genuinely occurred."
 
There are so many layers to Mercury Fur and so many reasons that we are doing this play, a perhaps risky play for a debut production. However, it is perhaps most extraordinary that, while we were laying out plans and a structure for our theatre company as parts of London burnt, on my bookshelf was a play that not only encapsulates the fear of what may have happened if those few days had turned into weeks, months then years, but does so whilst retaining beauty and love at its centre. A play, written in 2005, performed now in 2012 for three weeks above a pub in Angel that feels like it actually makes a point about our world that is worth hearing: no matter how horrific humanity can be (pretty bloody horrific) there will always be something, somewhere to redeem us.

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