REVIEWS

TWINKLE, LITTLE STAR

12 - 26 January

Mansfield Chad, Tony Spittles, Wednesday 16 January 2008

Panto legend Kenneth Alan Taylor's in top form in 'Twinkle Little Star' FANS of actor, writer and director Kenneth Alan Taylor will know that he's been a panto legend for more than two decades with his flamboyant family entertainment at Nottingham Playhouse.

But for those making the short trip out of the city to the Lakeside Arts Centre will see a different side to Kenneth, and the whole fizzy world of panto, in the dark, adult play 'Twinkle Little Star.'This 90-minute one-man show — on until Saturday 26th before touring to Wakefield, South Shields and York — is a tour-de-force for Kenneth who plays an ageing panto dame, reflecting on a lifetime in the theatre and the changes in his stage and personal life.

Writer Philip Meeks got the inspiration for this new take on panto from one show in Newcastle which saw a Big Brother-type winner catapulted before the footlights, sharing the stage with a seasoned performer who no longer had top billing. This loss of face, and the dumbing down of the panto tradition, were beautifully articulated by Kenneth who, as down-on-his-luck Harold Thropp, arrives at his dingy, basement dressing room ready for another gruelling panto run as Widow Twankey. Now sidelined in favour of the Z-list pop star of the moment, Harold looks back at the time he gave up working at an electrical shop to tread the boards as the youngest panto dame in Britain.

In a script full of witty and sharp observations, the has-been stage star rues the ever-changing and downmarket edge to panto, whether it was being greeted by a company manager "who looked like she was 12" to a pop-based programme that saw his many dress changes curtailed, the same fate befalling the end-of-show tradition of an audience singsong sheet or youngsters being invited up on stage.

However, this is not a show for children, but it's one where the wonderment and innocence of panto fun and games seems to have changed, and not always for the better — especially with a shocking finale that I did not expect.

Nottingham Evening Post, Alan Geary, Thursday 17 January 2008

For someone famously associated with panto - his latest is currently running in Nottingham - this one-hander seems a brave venture. Kenneth Alan Taylor plays Harold Thropp, a gay old pantomime dame "teetering on the brink of clapped-out". The action takes place in his dressing room, where, as he transforms himself into Widow Twankey, he talks to the audience.

It's a real-time monologue revealing the often seedy side of panto and simultaneously telling the pathos-filled tale of Thropp's life, much of it in pre-Wolfenden cottaging days. Writer Philip Meeks tells us in the programme that the character was suggested by the late John Inman.

Taylor does one-handers about elderly men well but for sheer excellence of acting this stands out. From his masterly timing to the way he uses hands and finger-tips he's totally convincing. Thropp comes over as a non-saintly, oddly prudish gay, a curmudgeon at odds with contemporary youth and most things modern.

Mark Walters's set is brilliantly conceived. A dressing-room, yes, but, done in primary colours, it's deliberately made to look as fake as a pantomime set. Background sound is evocative of a world of stage entertainment now past.

And there's a wicked twist in the tale.

BBC Nottingham,  Nick Brunger, Thursday 17 January

A fading Widow Twankey gives us a glimpse of the seedier side of pantomime as he plots revenge against the reality TV star who has made his life a misery. In a dingy basement dressing room Harold Thropp prepares to become Widow Twankey for the final time. Forced into dressing room number 5 by today's generation of pantomime stars – a fading pop star, the mandatory Australian soap actor and a reality TV contestant – he looks back over a long career on the boards.

Once the youngest dame in Britain he no longer has to use make up to paint the character lines on his face. He has also given up the six inch heels is which he chased Prince Charming up the palace steps for a pair of boots that lets him get "as close to the ground as possible."

But as he makes up in preparation to help switch on the town's Christmas lights Harold plots his revenge on Jezz, the Genie, who got his part by winning a "Big Brother" style telly show and who has turned the rest of the cast against him. The final twist in this carefully crafted revenger's comedy reveals that stars can twinkle in more ways than one.

First choice for the role

Thropp is brought to life by the Lakeside's first choice for the role, Nottingham's favourite pantomime Dame Kenneth Alan Taylor. Ken's just directed his 24th panto for the Nottingham Playhouse – although sadly sidestepping the role of Dame in recent years.

Actor and character both share a love of the traditions of pantomime. But while Alan Taylor has managed to keep those traditions alive each year at the Playhouse, Thropp hates the way they have become eroded by the so-called stars off the telly who help put bums on seats.

As we watch in real time the dressing room preparations we learn some of the secrets of the craft – how to make your legs look their best in not one but two pairs of tights – and how its considered bad luck to allow the rest of the cast to see you don your make-up. We also learn how a stroke of bad luck put Harold back on the boards after retirement – and how a skill learnt in the past might help him get his revenge on Jezz.

How the writer found his plot

Writer Philip Meeks got the idea for the play on a miserable night in Newcastle looking at window display's outside the city's Theatre Royal. "John Inman was in Aladdin as Twankey with some dreadful bloke who'd made an arse of himself on Big Brother," he said.

"I thought it must be awful for someone who's made playing Dame a significant and serious part of his working life to perform against someone who's only talent is being themselves. When I learned I was in town on the day the Christmas lights were being turned on I soon had my plot worked out."

Spooky

After previous single handed performances at the Lakeside in "Krapp's Last Tape" and "A Visit From Miss Prothero" Kenneth Alan Taylor's command of this role will come as no surprise.

Those in the know say that Ken himself is a million miles removed from the miserable and careworn old actor he plays in Twinkle; but there has to be room for more than a little suspension of disbelief when he's breathing life into a part that could so easily be confused with his own character.

The spooky thing is that he will be back at the Nottingham Playhouse later this year in Aladdin - playing Widow Twankey! Let's hope that his fellow actors get to see him as Harold Thrupp and learn a little respect for a fine old thesp. Otherwise – like the play's Jezz – they could end up twinkling in a way they least expect!

Metro, Wayne Burrows, Thursday 17 January

According to its author, Philip Meeks, this one-man show was inspired by the late John Inman, whose name appeared on a theatre poster alongside a former Big Brother contestant. Enter Harold Thropp, the fictional ageing pantomime dame who will hold our attention for the duration of this startling piece of theatre.

With Inman himself gone, it’s hard to imagine a more perfect actor for the role than Kenneth Alan Taylor, whose love of panto is second to none, and whose last appearance at Lakeside was in Samuel Beckett’s powerful reflection on age and memory, Krapp’s Last Tape. Thropp considers his life and has realised, as his audience might shout, it’s behind him. He gripes about his dressing room and political correctness, remembers the man he loved and lost and plots his revenge on the reality TV star who humiliated him the previous year.

We hear about the glory days of British theatre, the risks and pleasures of 1950’s cottaging, an electrical apprenticeship and a dysfunctional relationship with a less-than-doting mother, all while Thropp transforms himself from an elderly gent to an outlandish parody of femininity. The exhilarating switches in mood – from grumpy comedy to bleak sentiment and borderline madness – are more than matched by Taylor’s virtuoso performance, in which the words Beckett and the pantomime dame collide in an unlikely but memorable confessional.

Evening Post, Jeremy Lewis, Friday 18 January

Kenneth Alan Taylor remembers the first moment he got his hands on the script for Twinkle Little Star, the monologue by Philip Meeks which runs a detailed rule over the life of a fading pantomime dame.

“The very first line grabbed me straight away,” says Taylor, who as a writer, actor and star knows a thing or two about Christmases in greasepaint and noisy frocks – the curtain is about to fall on Dick Whittington, his 24th annual romp at Nottingham Playhouse. “The character is preparing to play Widow Twankey for the very final time. He is called Harold Thropp and he is charming, witty, vicious and sad.” That’s plenty for Taylor to be getting on with in this Lakeside co-production with York Theatre Royal.

“It’s a very complex and amazing piece of theatre,” adds the performer. “Harold is a completely rounded character. I can’t say too much, but eventually you get his whole life story and learn why he is doing what he is doing.”

On the face of it you’d have thought Taylor would have identified with Thropp. They have long careers as panto dames in common, but they are very different chaps. Thropp is nastier, and he also happens to be gay; in fact, although this is not a “gay” play, the character’s long term relationship is a strong and recurring theme of the story.

Writer Meeks has told how he was inspired by the irony of seeing John Inman (never mind the crude squeaking and wrist-flapping in Are You Being Served?, he was a proper theatre pro) having to share top billing in the Newcastle panto with an untalented, inexperienced nobody who just happens to have been on Big Brother.

Clearly such injustices also upset fellow pros Taylor and his co-directors Matt Aston and Damian Cruden (York Theatre Royal): there is plenty of chuntering over pre-rehearsal coffee as we discuss the position in which the tetchy Thropp finds himself. “He is now fifth on the bill, after an Australian soap star and a clapped-out pop singer,” says Taylor. “Of course he is bitter. So would I be!” Aston sums it up: “What some people don’t realise is that to be good at pantomime, you’ve got to be a good actor.”

A good actor plays a good actor at Lakeside’s Djanogly Theatre.

Left Lion, Adrian Bhagat, Monday 21 January

If someone mentions Kenneth Alan Taylor, you will no doubt think of pantomime. Famously, Taylor has not only written and produced the Nottingham Playhouse pantomime for the last 24 years but he always plays the dame. What you might not know is that he is a fantastic actor and this play gives him a perfect opportunity to demonstrate this.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Philip Meeks' play is that it wasn't written with K.A.T. in mind. The play is a monologue delivered by Harold Thropp, an aged pantomime dame, reminiscing about a life spent doing what he loved and regretting the loss of history and tradition.

Thropp sits in a dingy dressing  room cleverly reproduced on stage in a pantomime style where the furniture is drawn as if in a comic book. Harold goes through his well practised routine as he dons frock, wig and make-up to be Widow Twankey at the turning on of the town's Christmas lights. He arrives fuming that he has been given a third-class dressing room and this is to be a constant theme as he complains of the decline in respect for pantomime traditions. His arch enemy is Jezz, the famous-for-being-famous reality TV star who is the real draw for the audience. Harold suffers multiple indignities and humiliations as his scenes and costume changes are cut in favour of his brutish nemesis's cheesy pop tunes.

In between these foul-mouthed rants, Harold's mood becomes more reflective as he tells of his early career as the youngest pantomime dame and the joy of his early performances. He remembers with warmth nights spent cottaging in London's public conveniences and the odd characters he found there, troubles with the law and his many happy years with his now deceased partner.

Harold, living within a world of memory and sentiment, seems to be as obsolete and unsuited to the modern world as others see him. Though he is pitiful, bitter and malicious, we also grow to have respect for him and the tradition he represents as he coaxes us into seeing the world through his eyes. Although this piece is mostly a character study, Harold's plan for revenge on Jezz is gradually revealed and we share his delightful anticipation of its fulfilment.

Since the Lakeside began producing its own plays, they have yet to present anything of less than top-notch quality; mostly it seems thanks to the wonderfully talented producer Matt Aston who co-directs this piece. Twinkle Little Star is another triumph for the Lakeside.

BBC Nottingham, Friday 18 January

Nottingham's best loved dame - Kenneth Alan Taylor - on his latest role as the man behind Widow Twankey.

"Now the wrong side of 60 he feels like the best years are behind him."
These are of course the thoughts of Harold Thropp, once the youngest dame in Britain and not those of Nottinghamshire's own star dame.

Kenneth Alan Taylor - writer, director and star - has delighted audiences for 24 years with his pantomimes at the Nottingham Playhouse. His name is as 'Nottingham' as Torvill and Dean, Paul Smith, Raleigh and Alan Sillitoe. 

He's presently on stage at Lakeside, Nottingham, in Twinkle Little Star, a production about an ageing actor.

The two dames

Despite both Kenneth and Harold regularly dressing up as women Kenneth insists that Harold couldn't be further away from his own character. "He's nothing like me whatsoever!" The Nottingham legend's been on stage for over two decades but still finds this solo performance nerve-wracking. "There's quite a few tricky technical bits in it for me to do, you know, things I've done for years but it's very different when you're doing it in front of an audience, when you're saying the lines of another character and you're putting makeup on."

Although being a family favourite Kenneth is keen to point out that his new role is not for children.

"It's very, very funny but it has its bleaker, darker moments with adult humour in it. But there's not too much bad language... well there is a little bit."

Good news

Gaining three grandchildren since he last played the dame in 2001, panto lovers will be delighted to hear that, for one last time, Kenneth will be "putting on the sling backs and false bust again" and returning to the stage as Widow Twankey in Aladdin in 2008.

The Stage, Pat Ashworth, Wednesday 23 January

 
This real-time monologue from a panto dame making his final appearance as Widow Twankey is the perfect vehicle for Kenneth Alan Taylor. A master of the craft, his own Dame performances used to border on the anarchic and he is returning to play Twankey once more in 2008.

It is a riveting piece, played out here on a quirky comic strip set that suggests all the wonderful silliness of panto. Harold Thropp is the wrong side of 60. He is assigned to a basement dressing-room, upstaged by a talentless soap star and overlooked and underestimated by a shallow theatre management that bulldozes the panto tradition and can’t even spell. His revenge is sweet, in the darkest and most triumphant of climaxes.

Taylor is hypnotic to watch as he potters around his dressing room, performing practised pre-show rituals like unpacking his kettle, scattering his face powder, unwrapping the tools of his trade from folded cloth, pulling on his glossy tights. His account of Thropp’s life as a gay man in the era of police raids on public toilets is outrageous but the parallel tragedy of lost love is aching.

The audience is fiercely on his side, drawn into despising the third-rate show as much as he does and loving this dogged, arch, comic trouper. Distant sounds of piano and chorus rehearsing and fragments of voices and memories flutter in and out. When Tropp finally dons the Twankey wig, he is utterly transformed, walking like a dame and speaking like a dame. It is brilliant.