Reviews from newspapers about Yorkshire theatre company, Sprite Productions

What The Papers Say

2011 - Macbeth

York Press:

SURPRISINGLY, it has taken until Sprite’s seventh season for the company in summer residence at Ripley Castle to stage the Scottish play, but it matches all expectations of the physical possibilities of the woodland setting.

Furthermore, the show is all the better for being on a bigger scale than in previous years, the cast of 19 being twice the size of As You Like It’s roster last year.

Sprite’s director this season is Charlotte Bennett, assistant director for the three years, whose knowledge of the lie of the land is an advantage in deciding where best will serve each scene in a play where the supernatural soliciting of the Witches is so important.

Charlotte has made two major decisions, the first being to stage the play in 1042AD, the year in which Shakespeare set it: a time when combat in battle was brutal and armour was almost as inadequate as some say it is now in the British Army. To complement this, fight choreography by Liam Evans-Ford is muscular, crude and noisy.

The second directorial brush strike involves the Witches, wild-haired Catherine Pugh, Eiry Hughes and Laura Cubit, not only being on hand whenever MacBeth needs advice, but also guiding the audience through the promenade performance after silently and slowly drifting through the picnicking throng.

I say “guiding” but cajoling would be more accurate, as they rush everyone them from location to location with unnerving giggling glee to the accompaniment of distant drums.

Fires burn, smoke rises, feathers hang from the witches’ cauldron lair, in Nicky Bunch’s set design, as the cast moves from scene to scene with alacrity, such is the spiralling killing spree of the usurping MacBeth (Matt Cross), after vaulting ambition has led him to murder the king, Duncan (Nigel Hastings).

Cross’s close-cropped and bearded MacBeth is an everyman in looks and voice, but once Laura Rees’s Lady MacBeth ignites his already nascent plans, his eyes have it, and in the finale, when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, he shows far more fighting spirit and has better trash talk than David “Little Toe” Haye.

Several scenes stand out: the Porter is often an irritation with his “Knock Knock” drunken delays in coming to the door, but here Phillip Langhornbe’s wine-swilling version integrates with the audience to humorous effect.

The appearance of Banquo’s ghost (Rhys Meredith), walking down the banqueting table peopled by members of the audience, is striking too, and better still is the witches’ cauldron counselling of MacBeth, where the newly dead re-appear so eerily.

Sound and fury emanates from Richard Corgan’s stentorian MacDuff, surely pitching for a career as the new Brian Blessed. Rather more quietly impressive is Laura Rees’s Lady MacBeth, whose “damned spot” sleepwalking speech is truly haunting, especially when she clings to the Doctor (Meredith).

Tickets are selling fast for the last week, so please check availability, but ideally try to see the 9pm show on July 7; the darker, the better for this MacBeth.

MacBeth, Sprite Productions, Ripley Castle, near Harrogate, until July 10. Box office: 01423 770632 or spriteproductions.co.uk

Charles Hutchinson

The Northern Echo

THIS must be the only production of Shakespeare’s Scottish play where the audience are warned beforehand not to visit the toilet during the performance because there are men with big swords running around the woods near the portable loos.

Charlotte Bennett’s staging also invites some of the audience to the feast and to sit at the long table in Dunsinane Palace’s great hall as MacBeth entertains at a banquet.

It’s not a peaceful meal as the ghost of Banquo, dripping blood and looking like he’s escaped from a zombie movie, turns up – although, admittedly, he can only be seen by the increasingly disturbed MacBeth (and the audience, of course).

In its annual – this is the seventh – outdoor show in the grounds and woods at Ripley Castle, near Ripon, Sprite Productions likes to ring the changes. So if you go down to the woods today, or any other night until Sunday, you’re sure of a big surprise.

Choosing to stage one of Shakespeare’s darkest tragedies, MacBeth makes a welcome change to the lightheartedness of the usual outdoor plays like A Midsummer Night’s Dream or last year’s As You Like It. The weather may not have played along, providing bright sunshine rather than stormy skies, but this production is fast-paced, well-spoken and, after a slightly hesitant start, grips as the murderous machinations of the MacBeths are played out in their scheme to secure the throne.

Spurred on by hubble, bubble, toil and trouble witches (Eiry Hughes, Laura aCubitt, Catherine Pugh), the couple kill men, women and even children who stand in their way.

Matt Cross’s MacBeth at least appears to have a conscience, although that gets put aside in his increasingly powerful quest to seize the throne. As well as thoughtfully putting over some of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches, Cross is no mean fighter, as his final confrontation with an angry MacDuff demonstrates.

The behaviour of Laura Rees as his Lady MacBeth would make a March hare seem sane.

In anything, her lust for the crown is even stronger than that of her other half.

A nice touch is having the witches – who first materialise as living statues on the lawns of Ripley Castle – lead the audience into the woods in this promenade production.

Performances tonight, Wed, Fri and Saturday 7.30pm.

Wednesday and Saturday matinee 2pm. Late show Thurs 9pm. Sun 4pm. Bookings and information 01423-770632.

Steve Pratt

2010 - As You Like It

York Press:

AFTER four years of Lucy Kerbel productions, Sprite has a new a director in charge for As You Like It (the audience’s choice of comedy for this summer’s show).

Step forward Alex Hassell, artistic director of The Factory, whose experimental, interactive version of Hamlet had a thrilling one-night stand at Ripley in 2008.

In the wake of Sprite’s one-off visit to the island on the castle lake for The Tempest last summer, the company has made a “conscious move” to re-examine its style of promenade shows.

Hassell had intended to stage scenes in the village, even one in a house window, but distracting peripheral noise made that wish impractical – although a far more distracting noise was to make Friday’s finale even more memorable.

And so Hassell and new location designer Nicky Bunch focused their scenes on more familiar Ripley Castle terrain: the walled gardens and assorted locations in the woodland once the story switches to the Forest of Arden.

The audience – a full house of 200 – was kept on the move, chivvied along by cast members either in song or in exhortations to speed on their way. Ideally, the changes could have been quicker to aid concentration and momentum, but there was always the joy of discovering another aspect of the castle grounds, be it Orlando’s house “on fire”, or Duke Senior’s forest den, or the trees bearing the poems of the love-struck Orlando (Alan Morrissey), held in place with an arrow, as he woos Rosalind (Katie McGuinness).

Nothing is overplayed for humour under Hassell’s charming direction. Instead he succeeds in conveying Shakespeare’s “deeply beautiful philosophical whimsy”, a spirit captured in the performances of Alex Barclay, Emma King, Nigel Hastings and Tony Taylor in his dual duke roles.

Rhys Meredith’s Jaques is melancholia personified, his Seven Ages of Man speech having just the right weight, while the heady woodland scent of romance is strong and magical in the hands of Morrissey and McGuinness, pictured above.

Hassell’s biggest innovation is to give Sprite’s ever-present joker, Jack Whitam, a licence to improvise in the fool’s role as Touchstone. Whitam stays in character and in period argot while riffing off the audience, commenting on choice of shoes and all the while seducing one “volunteer” into “marrying” him over a series of impromptu scenes.

Whitam keeps you on your toes, like a master of ceremonies should, while stimulating new buds of comedy from an old play. You expect the unexpected with The Factory’s shows and now Sprite is following suit, but nothing could have prepared you for the booming ten-minute burst of fireworks from a Ripley party function that purely by accident coincided with the whirling circles of fire to signal the start of the closing scene.

Such is the nature of live theatre in the wild woods, and even if such a coincidence never happens again, there are still plenty of fireworks in Whitam’s comic tour de force.

Charles Hutchinson

Northern Echo:

A fierce-looking man brandishing a shotgun appears on top of the garden wall and instructs us to move along quickly.

Another rebukes us for smiling and urges us to move rapidly, because the Duke doesn’t like to be kept waiting.

At other points, the audience for the annual open-air productions in the gardens and woods of Ripley Castle, near Harrogate, are called sheep and threatened with the sheep dip.

After the interval, we are herded together and called goats. As you can tell, there’s no special treatment for the audience as Alex Hassell takes the directorial reins of Sprite’s outdoor Shakespearean bonanza for the first time.

He’s done a good job, introducing elements of the house style of The Factory, the theatre company he runs and which takes, shall we say, a more free-and-easy attitude to the Bard.

This is the company which staged Hamlet and asked the audience to bring along objects to be used as props.

While this production of As You Like It still serves the text, this year there’s an element of improvisation, with one lucky audience member centrestage for a spot of tomfoolery that livens up things no end.

In these scenes, Jack Whitam’s amusing cheeky chappie, jester Touchstone, comes into his own with some brilliant adlibbing.

After last year’s The Tempest, which played on the island in the centre of the lake, As You Like It – chosen by an audience vote – returns to the promenade style of previous productions, being set in a series of locations in the castle gardens and woods.

The show doesn’t make it into Ripley village as planned – the logistics didn’t work out – but no matter, this is a surefooted Bardathon that entertains greatly.

It has an energy and sense of play that propels the production through the stickier patches of the plot which, as usual, involves cross-dressing, unrequited love, comical servants and familiar speeches (“All the world’s a stage” being one of them).

By the time we get to the attack by a lion – offstage, for which the production team must be truly thankful – you do wonder what drug Shakespeare was on when writing this play, for it’s not the most tightly plotted or convincing dramatically of his work.

Somehow, that doesn’t matter here because Hassell and his cast have injected enough life and soul into the proceedings to make us care what happens to Orlando and Rosalind, well played by Alan Morrissey and Katie McGuinness, with persistence and passion.

Rhys Meredith’s Jaques is a melancholic chap much given to musings and mutterings of a downbeat nature, while others (including Nigel Hastings and Alex Barclay making the most of a variety of roles) are worrying about their love lives and that lion.

Once again, Spirite’s producers, Liam and Hester Evans-Ford, have given us an outdoor Shakespeare that’s as good as anything you’d see within a proscenium arch.

Steve Pratt

2009 - The Tempest

Yorkshire Post:

Bridging the gap between the stage and the great outdoors

Yorkshire audiences recently saw a staggering production of the play on tour in Leeds and Sheffield, staged by the RSC. But no matter how good the RSC version was, it doesn't have what Sprite has – an actual island on a lake in the grounds of Ripley Castle on which to stage the performance.

While other companies might not even consider the idea (the island is 50 meters away from the "mainland") it is the fact that Liam is able to think in such ambitious terms that has seen the company go from strength to strength, growing in audience and ambition each year. Three years ago, Liam brought in young director Lucy Kerbel to run the show, a move which saw the professionalism of the productions increase.

Nick Ahad

2008 - Twelfth Night

Yorkshire Post:

Refusing to be cowed by the elements, the production company staged the full version, performed in promenade with the audience following the action around the grounds.

Little wonder the production team refused to be defeated by rain: the brains behind Sprite know they are on to a good thing with the grounds. Shakespeare's most famous stage direction might be "exit, pursued by a bear", but how much more beautiful is "enter Viola, rowed across a lake in the grounds of a castle"?

Director Lucy Kerbel is gifted with magnificent settings, which she uses magnificently. Shakespeare's comedy of mistaken identity is stripped down by Kerbel, who allows the text to work its magic.

This young company deserves support and, even if it raineth every day, one hopes the audiences will keep coming.

Nick Ahad

Northern Echo:

This is an exceptionally good production.

Sprite, now in its fourth year of staging plays in Ripley Castle grounds, is a young company, which means this is Shakespeare that's not stiff and stuffy, but fresh and exuberant.

There isn't a weak link among the cast, so picking out people is perhaps unfair. But I liked Phoebe Whyte's boyish enthusiasm as Cesario/Viola and Joanna Croll's eager courting of him/her as Olivia, despite protestations that she's off men.

Steve Pratt

2007 - Much Ado About Nothing

Yorkshire Post:

Shakespeare so good within tent!

Young up - and - coming director Lucy Kerbel does an incredible job of making Shakespeare's language immediate. She infuses the script with a freshness and lightness that not many directors would manage.

She is blessed with a set of strong performances, none stronger than Tom Andrews, as Benedick, who took enormous pleasure in the free rein the slightly anarchic circumstances granted him.

This might be midsummer madness, but Sprite has proved there is method in it.

Nick Ahad

Harrogate Advertiser:

A real tour de force

It felt as if we were on the set of a film version of the play.

Well worth a visit!

Katie Oxtoby

2006 - Romeo and Juliet

York Evening Post:

As befits a director with Royal Court and National Theatre credentials, Kerbel constantly delights with her details, never more so than when Romeo gently pulls Juliet away from a ring of dancers. They stand for maybe a minute, smiling, giggling and not knowing what to say as the first flush of love overtakes them. The chemistry is instant, swept along by Geoffrey R. Hense's omnipresent violin.

Charles Hutchinson

Northern Echo:

In this promenade production, director Lucy Kerbel moves her actors, along with the chair and rug-carrying audience, to various locations, including a walled garden for the balcony scene. Hayley Nebauer's quirky costumes have an originality that reflects the often-unexpected tone of the staging. This extends to the casting of Romeo, not a conventional pretty boy lover in Ashley Rolfe but an intense, passionate young man swept off his feet by Sarah Bedi's Juliet. Unlike too many aged Juliets, she actually looks as though she might still be at school. Most importantly, the pair have a chemistry that makes their young love. Romeo and Juliet proves that Sprite Productions is not a one-hit wonder. I look forward to their Much Ado About Nothing next summer.

Steve Pratt

2005 - A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Northern Echo:

The setting and - on press night, at least - the weather were perfect for this promenade production of Shakespeare's magical play.

Sprite Productions, the company behind this outdoor staging, is a relatively new outfit, but has done wonders assembling the right ingredients in the right order for this spirited show.

The settings are spectacular but the mainly youthful cast, are by no means overshadowed. The thwarted lovers (Hester Evans, Tristan Beint, Joanna Croll and Glyn Williams) have real energy and passion, Peter Stephens' Bottom is a sight to behold and the final Pyramus and Thisbe comedy sketch gets the laughs.

Steve Pratt

Harrogate Advertiser:

This is Shakespeare at its best. No attempt has been made to contrive the play to convey a modern message but there has been great effort made to bring the humour and the passion to life within a wonderful natural setting.