MySpace a place for friends

(The Stage)

The Bitches Ball

Inspired by a portrait by Joshua Reynolds, the newly formed physical theatre company Penny Dreadful have created a play based on the life of famous actress, poet and courtesan Mary Robinson (1757-1800). Born in poverty, she rose to fame as a great stage actress and became the first mistress of the Prince of Wales before suffering paralysis at the age of 26. Undefeated, Mary went on to write prolifically, earning the title of ..The English Sappho...

The story of this fascinating character deserves to be heard and Penny Dreadful do a fine job of bringing Mary and her era to life. With a versatile and inventive set, the five-strong cast switch between characters and scenes with verve, creating a world that is grotesque, surreal, comic and poignant. The larger than life characters work well in a period known for its overblown costumes and attraction to artifice - snobby aristocrats, bumbling royal advisors, ink-stained journalists and wanton libertines pepper the stage. Mira Dovreni is charming in the role of Mary, moving fluidly between innocence, mischief and desperation. Ian Street..s characterisation of the Prince of Wales is a whining and hilarious joy to watch. Pascale Straiton has natural comic timing and great stage presence as both Malden and the elocution teacher, while Bernadette Russell and Sarah Ratheram play a variety of roles with panache.

The piece as a whole could do with a little tightening and polish to make it as slick as possible but this is a minor criticism of a show that is undeniably entertaining and innovative.

Production information Hoxton Hall Theatre, London, November 21-December 10

Author: Devised by the comapny, scripted by Dawn King

Director: Mick Barnfather

Producer: Penny Dreadful

Cast: Mira Dovreni, Paschale Straiton, Ian Street, Sarah Ratheram, Bernadette Russell

Running time: 1hr 20min

(NEW STATESMAN)

Rollicking show brings a flamboyant 18th-century heroine back to life The main problem with The Bitches Ball, on in London to 10 December and across the country from the New Year, is that the title is all wrong. It would have been much better to call it The Harlot's Progress, or even Stap Me Vitals, because the show, devised by the physical theatre company Penny Dreadful and directed by Mick Barnfather, is a rollicking portrait of 18th-century society, performed in the heroic style of a Hogarth painting or a Gillray caricature.

Ostensibly, it is the biography of the actress and poet Mary Robinson (1757-1800). Who was she? There's a lovely Reynolds portrait of her wearing a fabulously revealing gown in the Wallace Collection, but her celebrity is now completely forgotten. Yet, in her day, she was not only famous for her Shakespeare at Drury Lane, but infamous for bedding the future George IV. However, her life was no ball, and she's no bitch.

She is a bit of a goer, however, played here with energy and humour by Mira Dovreni. Everyone on stage has enormous fun with wigs, dancing shoes, knickerbockers and the general foppery of the Georgian years. Tarot readers, nascent paparazzi, carriage drivers and society ladies in the boxes at Drury Lane are all depicted with ingenuity and energy by the company, which manages to make a rather limited set go an awfully long way.

Our heroine is taken up by the Prince of Wales, depicted by Ian Street as an infantile, illiterate brat, and then cruelly dropped when she becomes too famous. Obvious analogies abound, but the company wisely doesn't go down the Diana route, although the night is peppered with modern imagery that includes a boxful of Georgian ladies tearing up (and eating) tabloid newspapers, and the alarming notion of the future George IV being "given head".

The company of five belts fluently through an array of costumes and characters, but its greatest skill (apart from that of wearing giant white wigs with conviction) is delivering the two-dimensional caricatures who pepper our popular view of Georgian society, without descending into inane clich... In particular, Paschale Straiton's eye-rolling guffaws inhabit the spirit of the Georgian fop. Dovreni gives sparkle to the shadowy figure of Robinson, a woman who loved the limelight and revelled in her own intelligence. She ends up a sad figure, disabled (she was partially paralysed, possibly from an infection following a miscarriage) and socially ostracised, but with enough self-belief to relaunch herself as a bestselling novelist and poet.

The company, which takes joint credit for devising this show, would like us to believe she was ruined by the upper echelons of society, which punished her for behaving above her station - and maybe she was. We will never know the truth; but this engaging evening flamboyantly exhumes Mary Robinson, if only for the duration of the play's run.

(The Times)

Penny Dreadful Productions is a new British physical theatre company dedicated to biographical reclamation. Its work is based upon reaching back into history to uncover the true stories of people whose names were once upon the lips of many, but who today are unfairly overlooked.

Consider Mary Robinson, as Penny Dreadful does in this spirited touring production nimbly directed by Theatre de Complicite veteran Mick Barnfather. Born Mary Darby in Bristol in 1757, this ambitious young woman was a prolific and acclaimed poet who apparently penned much of her verse under the influence of opium. She also found work on the London stage, where she first attracted the attentions of the future King George IV. Shortly after their liaison ended, an infection, possibly related to a miscarriage, led to a severe bout of rheumatic fever that left Robinson permanently disabled. She subsequently supported herself through her writing (including six bestselling novels, two plays and a feminist treatise) and an annuity granted by the Crown (in exchange for some of George..s potentially incriminating letters). She died in 1800. Sir Joshua Reynolds..s portrait of her hangs in the National Gallery.

Working from Dawn King..s company-devised script, Barnfather and a cast of five fashion a boisterous, 75-minute period romp from the ups and downs of Robinson..s colourful life. It plays like a vaudevillian picaresque tinged with pathos and amplified by songs, including a Baroque contrapuntal vocal with a full complement of rude lyrics. The show strikes no deep chords, but as a bouncy satire of 18th-century celebrity with obvious contemporary parallels it works a treat.

Mira Dovreni..s powder-faced, rouge-cheeked fellow actors support her wide-eyed, saucy Mary with broadly comic gusto, each in several roles and often decked out in an array of frilly pantaloons and tulle wigs. Bernadette Russell has a neat turn as our heroine..s countrified mum.

Sarah Ratheram scores twice, first as an orotund teacher and even more effectively as Robinson..s gross, debt-riddled husband. Ian Street..s George is a lisping clown of near-infantile romanticism, while Paschale Stratton makes a fine impression as his doddering but discreet manservant.

Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast, Jan 18-20; touring until Feb 24. www.pennydreadfultheatre.com

(Culture Northern Ireland)

As the audience shuffle into the theatre and finds their seats the five cast members of The Bitches Ball are still and silent. A figure in the centre, draped in grey rags, sits limp, crutches by her sides, a bucket near her feet while around her bodies lie like marionettes waiting for their moment. The lights dim then swell once more… The shrouded figure drags the bucket beneath her raggedy dress and proceeds to do one of the longest pees since Austin Powers was first defrosted. The sound effect is realistic enough to have the audience laughing and squirming at the same time. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Penny Dreadful’s fun, frenzied and fiendishly rude romp through the life and times of Mary Robinson, one of the 18th century’s most colourful characters.

Robinson (1757-1800) was born in poverty but found fame and infamy as both a great actress on the London stage and the mistress of the Prince of Wales. Paralysed at the age of 26, she concentrated on her poetry and was profoundly admired by poets such as Coleridge. An interesting and complex character, Robinson’s tumultuous life has been recreated by Penny Dreadful in a suitably riotous form.

Their slapdash brand of physical theatre with garish costumes, flamboyant characters (with some mere grotesques) is well suited to evoking the 18th century with its dandies, their extravagant attire and fascination with artifice.

Told in a series of flashbacks, we segue seamlessly from Robinson's early poetic promise at school, to her rise in London’s high society and her descent into the seedy world of sexual exploitation. Mira Dovreni is superb as the protagonist. She convinces an audience of Robinson’s basic innocence and naivety while also displaying coquettish charms. Such is the standard, Dovreni’s fellow actors threaten to upstage her during several scenes. Sarah Ratheram has two attempts, first as the teacher who spots Robinson’s poetic talent and later as her repugnant, debt-riddled husband. Ratheram impresses in both roles. Paschale Stratton’s performance as the Prince’s doddering and disapproving servant is a wonderful parody of Sir John Gielgud’s turn as the Dudley’s Moore’s butler in Arthur. However it is Ian Street’s Prince of Wales who steals the show. Playing young George as a fickle, flouncing fool he gets all the laughs in every scene he’s in.

With such a minimal set everything is transformed. The curtains become a bed which becomes a horse-drawn carriage. This in turn becomes a wall, which becomes the frame for a portrait.

Despite its playful nature, the play deals with weighty issues - not the least exposing the 18th century’s hypocrisy in hiding private vice beneath public virtue. Robinson is branded a whore for her sexual conduct, but admits to doing in public only what the gentry do in private.

It is the mercurial identity of Robinson which is the play's greatest creation. She was both exploited and exploiter, artist and prostitute, she was created by the age she lived in and destroyed by it.

Once lauded by the press, she was vilified and now is virtually unknown. As a critique on the fickle nature of celebrity, The Bitches Ball finishes as a moving allegory for our age.