East Anglia Times reviews Catcher and calls it "A first rate piece of drama"

Img00004-20100616-1002

Suzanne Hawkes reviews Catcher for East Anglia Times:-

"This is a play that has been in development for a year and the time spent has obviously paid off. Tightly written, tightly directed and sensitively portrayed, this is a claustrophobic hot house of a piece that draws you in and twangs at your nerves.

It is December 7 1980. Mark Chapman calls a prostitute to his room. The next day he shoots John Lennon dead outside the Dakota building. No one knows who that woman was – she never sold her story – so this is a fictional take on what happened in that hotel room on that fateful night.

Mitzi Jones plays the woman – beginning with her looking older and faded, coming back to the hotel room years later, desperate to tell someone what happened. Enter Chapman, already looking slightly unhinged, he rings for a companion, she metamorphosis’s before our eyes into a beautiful young tart in a green dress. And so it begins.

Ronan Summers was outstanding as Chapman, basing all his actions on the book Catcher in the Rye, believing he hears voices of people living in his bedroom walls, always on the verge of hysteria but timing his descent so that the build up to total paranoia is more frightening as we experience it along with the woman he nicknames Sunny. Jones too is a stunning actress and brought pathos, world weariness, sassiness and vulnerability to the role of the bystander caught up in the maelstrom of someone else’s delusions. She is almost hostage to his will, but not quite – yet does her escape bring down the events or could she have stopped them? And is it better to pay the price of fame or obscurity?

Interesting questions asked by a first rate piece of drama".
http://www.eadt.co.uk/entertainment/interesting_questions_about_lennon_s_murd...


Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

Paul Gooch says "Catcher by Richard Hurford is one of the best plays I've ever seen." on Radio Suffolk with Stephen Foster

(download)

Radio_suffolk
Live on Stephen Foster's 4pm show on Radio Suffolk, Wednesday 9th June, Paul Gooch shared his views on the best and worst of the Pulse 10 Festival.

Some great quotes...

"A powerful, riveting piece of work."
 
"Ronan Summers is perfect as Mark Chapman, a truly exquisite performance that really sent shivers down the spine."
 
"Richard Hurford's stinging script is absolutely believable with gripping dialogue."
 
To hear the full program click below (Catcher is discussed at 42.42 mins
 

 

Catcher is a hit with Whatsonstage.com - Setting the Pulse Racing

"The drama intensifies as a straight-forward commercial transaction mutates into an exploration of mind-warping emotions. Mitzi Jones and Ronan Summers are both excellent in Suzann McLean’s production." Anne Morley-Priestman.

Click below for the full article

http://www.whatsonstage.com/index.php?pg=207&story=E8831276520093&title=Setti...

Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

**** Remotegoat gives CATCHER four stars and calls it an "Excellent re-imagining of Lennon's assassination"

Catcher0037

"Suzann Mclean's production makes excellent use of it's meagre running time, cramming in more high end drama than a play twice its length. Through taking an inventive angle on a much combed-over piece of recent history, Pilot Theatre have succeeding in creating a highly captivating piece..." James Fritz

Click below to read the full review

Catcher is voted No.1 for Pulse Festival 2010

"The award goes to …… Catcher.
Pilot Theatre Company and York Theatre Royal have produced a piece that holds the attention throughout. Writing and direction are first class but it is the performances that stick in the memory, especially Ronan Summers chillingly intense performance as John Lennon's killer Mark Chapman. Catcher has had a small tour but deserves to be seen by a much wider audience." Glen Pearce.

http://gpearce.blogspot.com/2010/06/best-and-worst-of-pulse-fringe-festival.html
Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

CATCHER the end... for now..!

Reading_book

As Catcher comes to its current end it's a good time to reflect on what we said at the beginning. The following is taken from an article by Charles Hutchinson of The York Press.

 

I would like to thank everyone who played their part in making Catcher the huge success that it was/is.

 

Thank you... and WATCH THIS SPACE!!!!

 

"Richard Hurford’s play is a study of the fatal attraction of fame and obsession that interweaves the lives of Beatle John Lennon, his killer Mark Chapman and Holden Caulfield, the fictional anxious teenager in JD Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye, whose story so influenced Chapman’s deeds.

A fourth figure is present too: the prostitute ordered up by Chapman in his hotel room on his last night before the bullets and fame struck. By contrast with Chapman, she faded away, never to be seen again.

“At the route of the story is the idea of becoming a somebody,” says Ronan Summers, the American-Irish actor making his Theatre Royal debut in the role of Chapman.

“In my opinion, Mark Chapman was a someone because he’d done work overseas in the Lebanon; he’d already worked in hospital as a carer and a Vietnamese resettlement camp for displaced children, so he was somebody, and he had affected people’s lives for good, and yet he didn’t consider himself a somebody because no-one knew his name.”

Times have changed since that fateful December day in 1980, as director Suzann McLean notes. “It’s changed because people used to be happy to build a home and raise kids, and now you have to be somebody,” she says. “If you put your name in Google and nothing comes up, then you’re a nobody. If there’s something there, then you’re a somebody.”

Ronan rejoins: “The Eighties was when it started to change. It used to be that to be famous you had to have a skill, but then there was this idea that you could just be a celebrity and not do anything.

“But for Chapman, there was an abuse of trust by Lennon, who he saw as having become phoney – and that’s where the Catcher In The Rye story comes in, as he felt he had to show the world that it had to change, after he read the book.”

For Suzann, there is no problem in presenting a speculative play; the theme is what matters. “I can do all the research I did on Chapman but I’ll never know the real Mark Chapman. But at the same time, who is the real Suzann McLean? We are who we are in that moment.

“A lot of what Mark Chapman has said has been contradictory, but I want to find a truth in the play. The story is more relevant today than if it had been written in the Eighties because we’ve really grown into a world where everyone wants their minute of fame and it seems it’s not enough just to live and exist.”

 

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/leisure/theatre/8191485.Catcher__The_Studio__York_Theatre_Royal__until_June_5/?ref=rss

Glen's Theatre Blog: Catcher - Pulse Fringe Festival, New Wolsey Studio

http://gpearce.blogspot.com/2010/06/catcher-pulse-fringe-festival-new.html

"This is one of those rare performances that is faultless, with all elements of the production coming together beautifully. Pilot Theatre Company are currently touring catcher on a mini tour but this show will surely go onto a much longer and larger life. There are few days still to go but it will take something extremely special to oust Catcher from its spot as the highlight of the Pulse Fringe Festival." Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

Catcher finishes its run in York.

Yesterday's 2pm show was streamed live from York Theatre Royal Studio. http://pilot-theatre.tv

That marked the penultimate performance in York. A big thank you to all of the Pilot Theatre team and to everyone who works in York Theatre Royal for being such fabulous hosts.

AND a big thank you to everyone who came to see the show. You, the audience, played the most important role and gave the production its momentum and force. It always amazes me how a group of individuals gather together at a certain time and place for no purpose other than to see the performance and share a collective behaviour - laughter becomes infectious, dramatic moments become heightened and the consciousness of the play bounces from the actor to the viewer to the actor. As the director the audience sharpens my artistic self-awareness. So on so many levels thank you. Next stop for Catcher is the Pulse Festival. Tuesday 8th June.

http://www.pulsefringe.com/?lid=1685#booknow

Please continue to spread the word.

Mark__sunny_hold_gun

A great review on an audience member's Blog

2010 May ? With Just A Hint Of Mayhem
http://justwilliam1959.wordpress.com/2010/05/


“Don’t need a gun to blow your mind oh no, oh no.

I had the pleasure of seeing a terrific new play this weekend at York Theatre Royal. It was called ‘Catcher – Before Chapman Shot Lennon‘. As many of you know, Mark David Chapman, the man who murdered John Lennon was obsessed with J D Salinger’s ‘Catcher In The Rye’ The book was in his possession when he shot Lennon, in fact it is said that after he fired those fatal shots he sat down to read the book until the police came. I think he was obsessed with Holden Caulfield, the book’s principal character as well as with fame itself. Before he killed John Lennon he had previously been photographed with Stephen King and Bob Dylan amongst others. Click here to read a really strange and frankly highly unbelievable conspiracy theory that it was Stephen King that shot John Lennon. Personally I think this is complete and utter tosh!

Anyway, back to the play. It is believed that Chapman hired a prostitute and had her come to his hotel on the night before the killing. This woman has never been found and has never made herself known. The play is based on the conversations that Chapman my have had with his hooker in his room. There are just two actors in the whole play which lasts 75 minutes. Mitzi Jones plays the prostitute, both as her older self narrating past events and as her younger self in the room with Chapman. The way she portrays both characters is phenomenal, with just a few simple changes to her clothes and hair, which for me proves how talented an actress she is. Ronan Summers plays Chapman and he, like Mitzi, is brilliant. Very intense and he really seems to capture the potential madness and imbalance in Chapman’s personality.

Obviously as a music fan I was keen to see this play and I would like to thank Rachel V for booking it for us (Rachel, Catwoman and me). If you get the chance to see it you really should, I am sure you won’t be disappointed. You can read a couple of reviews of the play here; One in the York Press and the other from The Stage". Just William.
Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

*** The Independent Review. "Cunningly devised, taut little thriller."

"Chapman is given an earnest, bespectacled credibility in Ronan Summers's portrayal, catching Chapman's vacillating moods – fanaticism, vulnerability, aggression. The excellent Mitzi Jones is imagined as both the prostitute's older, now respectable self, and as the blithe, gullible young girl enthralled then horrified by Chapman's plans. 

When, clutching his copy of Double Fantasy, Chapman leaves the room to re-enact his own double fantasy – getting Lennon to sign the LP sleeve then later firing five bullets at the Beatle outside the Dakota building – he hoped to promote the story of the boy who would be the catcher in the rye. It worked, as does this cunningly devised, taut little thriller." Reviewed by Lynne Walker