Cheers?

To the Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, for the very first performance of a new play by the sibling writing team of Vyacheslav and Mikhail Durnenkov.

In just under two hours, the pay follows hapless soldier Ilya's return to his hometown after service in the Chechnya war.

Ilya's head injury has left him slow of speech and movement - and with a highly dangerous intolerance for alcohol. And the authors make it plain that in this dreary Russian 'Anytown', having an intolerance to vodka is as problematic as being allergic to water.

So bleak and monochrome is the lifestyle depicted that hitting the bottle seems an entirely appropriate survival strategy.

Ilya's homecoming kicks off with the discovery that his wife has taken up with a new man, and that his little boy has no idea who he is. Then things start to go downhill.

An election is in the offing and each candidate is desperate to have an endorsement from the returning 'hero'. Cue high-definiton depictions of the boorish mayor, the loopily sadistic police chief (he has a Nazi weaponry 'thing') and the seemingly honourable editor of the the local paper.

I followed Ilya's entanglements with this unholy Trinity with a growing sense of despair and sadness, which continued to the play's predictably anguished conclusion.

By now you'll have worked out that The Drunks is not a chuckle-fest. And it was probably wise of the RSC to write to ticket-buyers to warn them of the play's scabrous language.

And yet the 'stage world' created by director Anthony Neilson, designer Tom Piper and the brilliant cast remains uncomfortably and insistently in my head.

I'd like the play to be a grotesque exaggeration of 'life now' in parts of eastern Europe. Maybe it is. Maybe not.

I guess I need to find out.

Open house

A Bard time was had by all today at the splendid RSC Open Day jamboree at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Visitors not in the know may have needed shock treatment, given the on-street prevalence of so many men, women and children suffering from hideous facial scarring - and all of them smiling contentedly. Casualties (bottom right) were all, of course, courtesy of the RSC makeup department.

In past years, the town has been awash with thespian Sirs and Dames participating in the Open Day's dizzying array of activities - everything from scholarly text sessions to revelatory exposures of the intimate ministrations of the Company's small army of backstage dressers.

But this time, canny RSC executive director Vikki Heywood (top left) managed to pull off a truly star-trumping coup de theatre.

She welcomed visitors, for the very first time, to a privileged glimpse of what's going on within the Royal Shakespeare Theatre itself, currently undergoing a massive three-year transformation project.

So today I was able to stand on what will be the Company's main stage (top right) and view the auditorium that has replaced the vast 1930s theatre where I've seen dozens of performances since my first RSC show in, ahem, 1967.

And it looks to me as if Ms Heywood and her team are well on their way to making good their promise of creating a major 'theatre space' that will be simultaneously epic and intimate. The acting area is vast, but it is encompassed on three sides by a three-level 'audience space' in which everyone is remarkably close to the action.

I'm excited.

It'll be a while before the players are able to tread the renewed boards: the contractors are due to hand over the building to the Company in July 2010.

Middle row shows friendly architect Alasdair McKenzie (right) and Tim Court (project manager) on site to answer questions.

Bottom left: Open Day ended with the company director Greg Doran ruffing up the partcipants in the annual Great Shakespeare Quiz.

Don John

Last night, to wintry Stratford-upon-Avon to see the Kneehigh Theatre Company's Don John in the RSC's Courtyard Theatre.

This was a re-telling of the storyline treated so memorably in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni - with the characters transported to the dingy streets of London at the end of the 1970s.

During the course of the first half, a frail old man was senselessly murdered, an unhappy vicar ranted to the audience of his loss of faith and numerous brief couplings took place. And we had sight of possibly the most unappealing selection of underwear ever to grace the Stratford stage.

Those Seventies styles were, indeed, pants.

Characterization was minimal and the writing, to my ear, was stilted and unengaging.

In short, the whole mise en scene conjured up an atmosphere of such sordid despair that my companion and I were of one mind when the interval arrived. We went home.

Of course, things may have changed entirely in the second half, so, please, dear reader, this is simply a diary entry - it's not a review.

Er, for a review - try the excellent Charles Spencer of the Telegraph.

Theatre of war

An outing today to see the National Theatre's celebrated adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's novel War Horse.

Beginning in Edwardian Devonshire, the play follows the linked fortunes of Albert, a farmer's son, and his beloved horse Joey, both of whom are called to serve king and country in the horrors of the Great War.

Working with the remarkable South African Handspring Puppet Theatre, director Marianne Elliott and her mainly young cast conjure up the the deep bond between man and horse in a fast-flowing narrative that takes us from pastoral peace to the bleak devestation of Flanders fields, where men and beasts fell in their hundreds of thousands.

Yes, the horses are puppets. But the word seems uttelry inadaequate to describe what the War Horse audience experiences. Exquisitely crafted from leather and wicker, each horse is operated by three clearly visible men.

At first glance they make no concessions to naturalism - but when they move.... they live and breathe and prance and gallop with such extraordinary truth to life that one is drawn in to their story with an emotional impact that bypasses any hint of sentimentality.

This is a tough afternoon in the theatre, harrowing at times, and yet also deeply moving and uplifting.

Five stars.

Stage by stage

I'm keeping a record of the massive building project that is transforming the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Most of the original Victorian building was destroyed by fire in the 1920s.

It was followed by Elisabeth Scott's Odeon-style building which butted on to what was left of the original fabric at the western end - you can see a fair chunk of the original building to the right of the top picture.

By the 1980s the building housed two auditoriums: the 'main house' seating roughly 1100 people - and the 450-seater Swan Theatre, housed in the horseshoe-shaped space at the back of the original building.

Last spring, the building closed for redevelopment.

• October 2007 (top): The whole of the main auditorium is removed, but Scott's facade and foyer will be retained.
• July 2008 (middle): Demolition complete - a huge cavity where stage and auditorium once were.
• September 2008: Work is well under way on the galleries that will surround the new thrust-stage performing space.

On the Avon side, the building is being stripped bak to its original 1930s aspect - and there will be a new, accessible riverside promenade.

I've been relishing performances here since August 1967.

Sad about the changes? Not at all. I've a strong feeling that the renewed building is going to be a massive success when it opens in 2010.

Read more here: Theatre transformation.

Full on

How exciting to be present last week at the east Devon premiere of the musical version of the inimitable 1997 film.

You'd think perhaps that the Sidmouth Musical Comedy Society's production of The Full Monty - The Musical (Broadway and West End) might be a wee bit 'scaled down'.

Wrong! Director, big cast and pit band took book, lyrics and music by the scruff of the neck and gave a magnificently big-hearted, full-on performance.

The standard of singing was tip-top. Casting was equally spot on with the six principals capturing the courage, humour and vulnerability of their characters with skill and panache.

The musical sticks closely to the storyline of the movie, but with the action swapped from Sheffield to Buffalo in upstate New York. The cast rose splendidly to the challenge of American accents.

One sadness. The musical version has cut the key role played in the film by, er, garden gnomes.

Apart from that, ten out of ten. Hurrah!

Leave not a rack behind....

Mr Gnome recently made a brief site inspection of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre's massive 'transformation' project.

As can be seen (below), the big house by the Avon is undergoing radical surgery. Between the front facade and the fly tower is a vast empty space, formerly filled by the auditorium.

Two years and two months remain until the scheduled re-opening.

Mr G and the HB admit to feelings of nostalgia for the old theatre.

But they applaud the bold vision of company boss Michael Boyd and his team - and wish them all the Bard luck in the world....

Where there's a Will....

Bill the Bard does it again. The Shakespeare novice relished yesterday's performance of Henry V at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Michael Boyd's vibrant production of Shakespeare's best-known history play hits all the right notes, with a tip-top performance by Geoffrey Streatfield in the title role.

Boyd's actors make the most of every square inch of the temporary Courtyard Theatre with thrilling use of ladders, ropes and trapezes (at whiich the foppish French excel).

And, best of all, the cast speak with clarity and confidence. Not always a given these days.

Mr Gnome concurs with almost every word of Charles Spencer's excellent review. (Mr G, unlike Mr Spencer, loved the trapeze aspect.)

And while I'm here....
The seats in the back row of the Courtyard's gallery are not separated by arm rests and are designed to accommodate the slenderest of slim-hipped persons. They are also raised from the floor in the manner of bar stools, with built-in foot rests.
The HB's seat neighbours yesterday were the Novice (slim) and an overseas visitor (not at all slim, but no Pavarotti, either). The HB is an average-sized person.

The problem? Overspill. The large gentleman, seated before the arrival fo the HB and the Novice, had colonised a considerable proportion of the HB's seat, obliging the HB to spend the first half of the show perched on one buttock.

Mono-cheek stress, he finds, is not conducive to Bard-appreciation.

The interval brought an opportunity to move to better seats. For this relief, much thanks.

The HB will be writing to the architects of the new RST, urging them to address some fundamental issues before it's too late.

Bard news

Both Mr G and the HB enjoy going to performances of plays by popular Midlands playwright William Shakespeare.

So vibrant, thrilling and moving was a recent performance of Henry V, that they are going a second time - accompanied by an enthusiastic 'Bard beginner' who has never seen the play before.

In fact this will be only the second time that this gent has seen a Shakespeare performance.

His first was a recent humdinger of a Macbeth. He was gripped.

Here's hoping he has as good a time on Saturday.

No pressure, Will.

There's still time to catch this Royal Shakespeare Company performance. It's in repertory in Stratford-upon-Avon until March, before moving to a venue in London.

Alan Bennett's The Old Country

Mr Gnome likes few things more than an evening at the theatre. His most recent outing has been to see Alan Bennett's intriguing play The Old Country.

Performed by the gutsy players of the Kineton Amateur Dramatic Society, the play went down a storm with the first-night audience in the cosy village hall of this lively Warwickshire community.

Three cheers for the KADS for picking a piece that's very definitely not standard am-dram fare.

And extra hurrahs for director Alison Hunt and the six-strong cast for presenting this very 'nuanced' play with subtlety, energy and a splendid mixture of melancholy and robust humour.

Plot summary? Er, Mr Gnome feels it's better not to give too many details. Enough to say that espionage plays a part - but this is Bennett, not Bond., so no fights or chases. But quite a few surprises as elegant surfaces crumble to reveal murkier truths beneath....

Finally: tip-top front-of-house team, offering a cheery welcome, informative programme and splendid refreshments.

What's not to like?