Roughcast Theatre’s focus on classic texts – over half of their productions in the last ten years have been Shakespearean – has inevitably meant that the lion’s share of significant parts on offer favoured male performers. The staging of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, with its all-female cast, was therefore a rare and welcome opportunity to see other members of the company, while stalwarts Mark Burridge and Paul Baker served behind the scenes.

The play opens with the scene that Churchill is perhaps best known for, a hallucinatory night out for Catriona Macrae-Gibson’s superbly drawn Marlene and key figures from history and literature. Full marks are due to the fine ensemble cast, and Mark Burridge’s tight direction, for marshalling Churchill’s signature overlapping dialogue. These women talked about themselves, to and over each other, deftly showcasing oppression, delusion and empowerment in equal measure. Annie McClaron’s Pope Joan’s tale was particularly chilling, as was Scarlett  Fisher’s self-regarding Lady Nijo. After a brief visit to the eponymous job agency, where we were treated to a comic turn from Dawn Briggs and Emma Mathews, we visit Marlene’s sister, played by Pat Parris, who was particularly effective as stoic, understated Joyce, the perfect foil for brass necked Marlene. As two sisters, living either side of the tracks, they offered up a compelling and nuanced snapshot of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, exploring a time of huge change that still reverberates forty years on.

Top Girls pushes the boundaries of theatre, with elements of fantasy, time shifts, and frequently incoherent dialogue. It occupies that awkward space between period and contemporary drama, and Roughcast are to be commended for finding a way to present it in a way that manages to confront both how things were, but also how things are. The abiding message appears to be that things have changed, but they haven’t changed much.

David Vass

“Just wanted to say how much we enjoyed the Stoppard plays last night. Comedy is really hard to pull off well and you all really nailed it, especially in such a small space!  Both plays were really good ensemble pieces – I particularly liked the first play so poignant as well  as funny.”

“I want to say congratulations to you and the cast for one of the best shows I’ve seen In a long while.
We really enjoyed both plays last night.  l felt a great affinity with Mr Brown, and his dream of private contentment in a hospital bed.
The Real Inspector Hound was beautifully executed and hilarious.”

“Just returned from the Fisher theatre in Bungay after watching A Separate Peace and The Real Inspector Hound. They were both performed perfectly, characterisation was brilliant and the many lines were all delivered confidently and meaningfully. A fabulously funny night out.”

“Thoroughly enjoyed both plays last night at the Corn Hall.  Great acting in both of course.  A Separate Peace was unusual and thoughtful and Inspector Hound hilarious.  So good to have a proper laugh.”

“I just wanted to say that Inspector Hound was the funniest thing I’ve seen since……… well I don’t remember seeing anything funnier. It got more and more surreal and absurd as it went on – & I loved it. The performances by all the cast were really strong – how you all managed to remember which iteration you were on amazes me!”

David Vass, Diss Express:

Measure for Measure – Rough Cast Theatre Company at Wingfield Barn
Despite Shakespeare’s prodigious output, only a relatively small number of his plays are regularly performed, so Roughcast are to be commended for tackling one of his trickiest, problematic plays, and for making such good sense of its Gordian knot of a narrative.

A play that engages with predatory abuse in such a complex and contrary manner is undoubtedly prescient, but its uneasy tone makes for challenging theatrical decisions. Roughcasts solution was a distinct and bold emphasis on the comedic side of the play. Tim Hall had great fun as a pimped up Pompey Bum, as did Simon Evans as the unctuous Lucia, a character that can swiftly become tiresome in less skilled hands – and there were distinct shades of Malcolm Tucker in the manipulative skills of Mark Burridge’s Vincentio. In this judiciously filleted version, the Duke’s machinations were given centre stage, casting a long shadow over Angelo and Isabella, notwithstanding Peter Long and Cathy Wilson nicely understated performances.

There were occasions when the broad humour tipped over into pantomime – not least in an odd and distracting rumination on Brexit – but for the most part this was a coherent stab at a challenging play that held the audience’s attention throughout.

Charlotte Valori, Operissima:

Vice! Humour! Horror! And a happy ending… Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, RoughCast

David Green, Open Space Theatre Company:

I saw the show at Wingfield on Sunday night and would like to congratulate you and all involved on a good production.The comedy was especially well imagined and executed but there were some excellent performances all round. It was evident that a lot of work had gone into the text so that the meaning of lines was clear to the actor and therefore even to members of the audience such as myself who often struggle with the language!
Very well done.

Saw the play on Sunday at Wingfield. A fantastic production, extremely funny, brilliantly performed and, at times, very moving.

We all thoroughly enjoyed it.

MW

We saw the play last night in Huntingfield and were most impressed.

What a performance and what a beautiful evening.

Thank you.

Allan Pike

Thanks for such a happy, pacy, joyful, funny production of Twelfth Night given by a confident cast who seemed to be enjoying themselves as much as the audience. I could see it again and enjoy it as much.

Thanks for a wonderful evening.

Bruce Cox

Hi Paul

Kim & I attended the performance last night we had an enjoyable time. The whole performance was excellent.

Phil Poulton

Diss Express

Charley’s Aunt has been revived and adapted countless times since its nineteenth century premier in Bury St Edmunds, but seemed a bold choice for Roughcast, a theatre group best known for the gravitas of Shakespeare, Ibsen and Miller.

From the play’s opening moments, however, it quickly became apparent that the company intended to relish the challenge of comedy, with Joshua Gould particularly in command of the heightened performance style required for farce. In the titular role, Ben Willmott did well to avoid the long shadows cast by Arthur Askey and Jack Benny, while Sally Wilkinson and Sophie Scannell breathed life into the underwritten girlfriends. It was refreshing to see Roughcast bringing so much younger talent to the stage, albeit buttressed by the reliable work of company stalwarts Peter Long and Paul Baker.

If the pace slowed towards the end, this was largely the fault of the play, not the company, who battled on gamely. Roughcast always shows great respect for text, but some judicious editing of exposition might have worked wonders. That said, the frequent set changes the full text required were brilliantly handled by Alan Burridge’s imaginative production design, perfectly complementing this solid revival of a seminal work.

David Vass
Diss Express

Diss Express

There is no doubt that RoughCast theatre company can be relied upon to provide a professional production

Sarah Gray directed it beautifully. She set it on board an ocean liner, aptly named Messina after the port in Sicily where the action takes place, and using a variety of carefully chosen props, moves the action effortlessly from scene to scene as the actors take us slickly through the story.

Cathy Gill and Peter Long playing Beatrice and Benedick, the two long-time adversaries, create so many wonderful moments. The relationship between them is expertly executed and wonderful to watch.

Cora Burridge and Warwick Manning play the young lovers Hero and Claudio and it is always good to see younger actors working alongside experienced performers and doing it so well.

Elizabethan humour can be a little out of place today, but not so in this production.

The company worked hard not only to bring out the wit in the dialogue but from the action too, providing us with so many comic moments and creating so many comic characters that it really is a fun show; bright, fast moving and thoroughly entertaining.

Alan Huckle

Eastern Daily Press, 26 April 2010

Forbidden love (incest), obsessive jealousy, teenage desire and problems endured by parents wrapped in gruesome revenge are the ingredients of the latest from RoughCast Theatre given two interesting innovations. Written about 1630, this is a post-Elizabethan/Jacobean classic, drawing heavily on Romeo and Juliet, Othello and other revenge tales. What RoughCast do is to make it relevant to a modern audience. The first big experiment is to to combine young actors from regional company The Keeper’s Daughter, with regular and older performers from RoughCast. The result is a realistic generational conflict.

Directed and produced by Mark Finbow and Emma Martin, they take convincing parts themselves. Young players Ryan Hill and Alice Mottram bring style to the doomed sibling-lovers. Danny Ridealgh and Adrian McKeogh complement the strengths of Simon Evans, Amy Gibbons, Pat Quorn and Paul Barker. The second, effective development is a traverse stage, the audience halved across a rectangular space, the action brought closer to more people. The relationships between older and younger people ring totally true, and the quality of acting prevents the savage cruelty becoming comic.

Recommended for all ages.

Diss Express/Plays international

RoughCast Theatre Company gave us, in John Ford’s 17th century play, a rare chance to see Jacobean revenge tragedy. Like the Gothic novel, the genre sprang up in an over-ripe flowering of blood-soaked dramas, with horrid laughter, a high body count and the tares of incest.

In Mark Finbow’s production, with the audience on either side of the action, the older characters are smartly suited, while the young are straight from high school. Ryan Hill and Alice Mottram, as the forbidden lovers, are as passionate as Romeo and Juliet. Most brothers and sisters would be at each other’s throats. But here it seems natural that a good-looking boy and a coltish coquette should fall in love. Adrian McKeogh (Bergetto) and Ben Willmott (Poggio) provide nerdish humour among the stabbings. Amy Gibbons, as Hippolita, masters the high-flown style of anguish, lubricious revenge and harrowing death. With actors like Pat Quorn, Paul Baker, Pat Parris and Simon Evans, as well as director Mark Finbow and producer Emma Martin, this was a cast packed with talent and experience. The production gave you an urge to see more plays of that period, like The White Devil and The Revenger’s Tragedy.

Basil Abbott

Radio Suffolk

Please click here (2.5 MB MP3 file) for the full interview from 30th April

Eastern Daily Press – David Porter:

“… a sharp, well-costumed and plausible presentation”. On Sarah Farrar’s performance – “a tour-de-force, from manipulative comedy one moment to subtle menace the next – her pent up anger and impatience reinforced by a uniquely expressive face”.

East Anglian Daily Times – Ivan Howlett:

“wonderful stuff, beautifully and classically constructed and played with passion, clarity and aplomb by RoughCast Theatre. Sarah Farrar plays Hedda with a taut, nervy desperation and there are nicely balancing performances all round with Paul Baker’s Judge Brack – smiling insidious and corrupt, the weather vane for the world Hedda sees as almost inescapable”.

Diss Mercury – Basil Abbott:

“Sarah Farrar’s Hedda is a coiled spring fighting 19th century Norse propriety …… with a maleficent glance, a mouth that pouts and a smile like sunlight glinting on a bayonet, she ignites this complex heroine”.

Diss Express – Paul Monkhouse:

“A classic play and an utterly wonderful production”.

Plays International

“Two outdoor Shakespeare productions in one day. On Sunday afternoon Mad Dogs and Englishmen did ‘Henry V’. In the evening it was RoughCast Theatre Company’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. The vasty fields of France were brought to life in a corner of a playing field at New Buckenham, whilst the enchanted wood was created next to a barn in Stradbroke…

“Paul Baker’s production had some of the best Rude Mechanicals I have seen. In their black bowlers, white shirts and braces, they came over as amicable cartoon figures, a fraternity of working men who might suddenly burst into a clog dance. Their play within a play was the funniest version I have witnessed. Barry Givens was a Bottom waiting to happen. After Sir Toby Belch and Falstaff, this was a part he had to play one day. A big, naturally funny man, he is also constantly inventive and eye catching. His pairing with Vanessa Webster (Titania), with her seductive, faery beauty, really was The Dream ticket. Grant Filshill’s Oberon also had that otherworldly, faery quality. Puck is almost unactable, but Simon Evans, given a physical part for once, played it with all his natural stage energy. The production was also well served by the young actors – Emma Owen-Jackson, Emma Cunliffe, Tom Hagley and Joe Edwards – who have the lovers a bounding energy. The Company is going from Stradbroke to France. Good job they aren’t taking ‘Henry V’!”

– Basil Abbott (27 July 2003)

Plays International – ‘Russian Plays are a Treat’ – Basil Abbott (19 November 2002):

Such is the acting strength of the RoughCast Theatre Company that you could draw a top quality company from the people who were doing Front of House.

Four Comedies by Chekhov were introduced by director Bruce Cox as the playwright himself, even if he looked more like Krushchev.

Russian plays need actors who can convey volcanic emotions and yet be aware of that painful strain of shyness and embarrassment which runs through their literature. In The Proposal they had the excellent Simon Evans, always a total actor, as a suitor whose wooing founders on the rocks of property ownership. He, Christine Lucy and Hugh Gandy as her father, enacted a splenetic scene which was a perfect dummy run for a marriage made in Siberia.

Alan Huckle (who appeared in three of the plays) then gave a tour de force monologue on The Evils of Tobacco, which was as good as any of the Talking Heads.

The Wedding presented a Dickensian gathering which made you wonder if the company could have a go at Nicholas Nickleby. Among them, Mike How as a Russian naval Commander, swamping proceedings like a Dreadnought, stood out.

The dream ticket was Barry Givens and Vanessa Webster in The Bear. They are two of my favourite actors. Barry is a big gentle fellow who lives and breathes theatre and has great range.

We came to the Fisher Theatre last night and can say that last night was the best entertainment we have ever had there and we go and see a lot of different stuff. You were all brilliant and it would be unfair to single anyone out as without you all putting everything into it would not have worked. We have been to other plays you have performed which were all good but I think this is the tops. Thank you all for a wonderful evening.

Ken Chilver