HAPPY JACK

Nottingham Lace Market Theatre

Happy Jack is a play about Jack and Liz Munroe which starts at the end of their lives and, through a variety of scenes, work back to when they first arranged their first date taking in their wedding, honeymoon and birth of their son among other highlights of their lives.

Jack was a miner and Liz was in "service" and set in the mining village of Upton in West Yorkshire, you can expect a down to earth play depicting "real" people, living a real, some would say normal life, or in other words "working class". They may look to the outside world as not being a couple in love, but for all the shouting, arguing and sniping you can still see a glimmer of the love they hold for each other, and that is a lovely thing to behold.

John Godber is rapidly becoming one of my favourite playwrights, having experienced "Bouncers", "Teechers", "Men Of The World" and now "Happy Jack" in the last couple of years thanks to the various drama and theatre companies in the area.

Godber has this lovely way of transcribing real life people and their foibles, eccentricities, language and normalness into amazingly enjoyable plays like those mentioned. One of our great observationalists.

With this in mind you will find Liz and Jack's characters easy to warm to because you will recognise them both in your own family members or people you know. There are some lovely emotional sections and a whole lot of comedy scenes and Nic Adams and Carole Parkinson encapsulate the characters beautifully. You won't have to spend time getting to know the characters because you already know them in your own circle of friends.

The direction, by Beverley Anthony, was inspiring, using more than just the given area of the stage, Beverley placed our couple within the audience and outside of the upstairs performance area.

Nice use of lighting to evoke emotion, especially at the close of the first part and to make you feel that you were in the cinema with them in the second half.

Nic and Carole drew all the joy and sorrow from Godber's script as well as the Yorkshire accent, which got stronger, especially in the case of Jack, the younger he became and further through the play we got. An excellent piece of casting.

This is one lovely and warm play which will make you laugh out loud and at times make you well up emotionally, another great trait of Godber's to be able to get the emotion of working class people to affect his audience.

It was practically a sell out tonight so get your tickets fast

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Review: Happy Jack, Lace Market Theatre

The Lace Market Theatre is often at its best with upstairs studio productions, and Happy Jack is no exception.

A John Godber play from 1982, and based on the married life of his own grandparents, it’s a two-hander about coal-miner Jack Munroe, the Happy Jack of the title (Nic Adams), and his wife Liz (Carole Parkinson).

It all happens on an acting space completely bare save for two grey, wooden chairs, draped with white cloths which are put to a multitude of uses.

Both Jack and Liz frequently step out of the action to announce the scene, to narrate or even to deliver short monologues. It’s not chronological: the unfolding story is told and revelation of character achieved by apparently random flashbacks – in the final scene Jack and Liz, both awkward and tongue-tied teenagers, are arranging their first date.

One highlight is a wickedly funny night out at the local fleapit, where they get tangled up in the real audience. Another is at a holiday camp in Whitley Bay where Liz wins a ten-pound note in a mildly risqué game. Adams, camping round her chair, is brilliant as the fifties-type compere – both he and Parkinson play other, incidental, roles.

It’s not all laughs. This is a grittily realistic account of married life in straitened times. We get the short, sharp, genuinely upsetting rows over trivialities – besides being free with his fists outside the house, Jack in his younger days is something of a wife-hitter. And there’s the frustrating irrationality of their conversation.

Throughout the play we’re presented with the pathos of two lives consciously unfulfilled and, in a sense, lonely. Perhaps it’s not really love that holds these people together until death: it’s familiarity; and economic necessity.

Adams and Parkinson demonstrate again what accomplished and versatile actors they are; not just as Jack and Liz at different stages of their lives and in different states of health, but in the minor roles. And they both get the Yorkshire accent and dialect beautifully.

A highly subjective carp this, but all through the play there’s that underlying assumption that the Northern working class are the salt of the earth, which is untrue and can get a bit wearing. And what’s more, Jack’s a coal miner.

But both play and production are so good, this potential drawback fades into insignificance. Directed by Beverley Anthony, this is yet another Lace Market success.

Read the original article here.