Saturday 19 December 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Cinderella

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Cinderella

Jacksons Lane, Highgate

It may be easy to presume that you know the story of Cinderella and find it hard to believe that you could be surprised by a production of it. But then you obviously haven’t been along to Jacksons Lane to see their contemporary version of the classic fairytale complete with a Dr Martins wearing heroine.

Sending the damsel in distress hurtling forward in time, we are presented with Cinderella as a schoolgirl not scrubbing floors for a wicked step mother but trying desperately to fit into a school full of talented acrobats and magicians. Dr Kane is the resident Mr Nasty, headmaster of the school with a Cowell-esque disregard for anyone who he doesn’t feel has talent. And, unfortunately for Cinders, she is one of these.

Cinderella is a fun and impressive production that is perfectly pitched at children of all ages without talking down or patronising them. Jam packed with bright colours, fast music and impressive stunts, it manages to keep the predominately young audience entertained for the 90 minute duration while giving a nod to the accompanying adults with satirical digs at Britain’s obsession with reality TV/telephone voting shows. Stacha Hicks’ Cinderella is adorably naïve as she tries to find her way while pursuing Victor (Christian Lee), the Prince Charming star pupil whose ingenious magic tricks are spell bounding.

Largely deviating from the original plot, key elements are retained making the central plot recognisable. Kaveh Rahnama and Lauren Hendry, who make up So & So Circus on the side, are a male-female ugly sisters whose acrobatic and clowning routines draw gasps from the assembled crowd.

Cinderella isn’t rocket science and it isn’t going to create an Osborne style revolution in British theatre. It is, however, thoroughly exciting and entertaining which is exactly what you want at Christmas.


Phil Burt

Cinderella runs at Jacksons Lane until 3rd January 2010

Sunday 13 December 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: A Christmas Carol

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A Christmas Carol

Southwark Playhouse, London Bridge

Trying to pick your way through the large amount of turkey that appears on the Christmas stages can be difficult. Skipping between nonsensical pantos and classical ballets, it may seem hard to find a middle ground and a theatrical experience that avoids conventions and stereotypes. That’s why it’s great to have the Southwark Playhouse and productions like A Christmas Carol, which provides us with a real Christmas treat.

Symbiotically placing Neil Bartlett’s Dickensian adaptation within the atmospheric setting of the London vaults, director Ellie Jones creates a promenade performance where audience members pick their way through the dank spaces experiencing the sensations of Victorian London. Sensible footwear and warm jackets are a must as we follow Ebenezer Scrooge on his night time journey with the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. Throughout the journey we are surprised with strange characters and inventive uses of props as desks double up to become cupboards and wardrobes, beds reveal hidden pathways and ghosts emerge through an array of household furniture.

While audience participation is often both feared and actively avoided, particularly in the uber-sensitive world of contemporary London, the cast of A Christmas Carol interact in a manner that makes the collected audience want to join in and become part of the story, whether it be joining the Cratchit’s for supper or creating decorations and dancing with Scrooge at Christmas parties past. And it’s this audience participation that brings life to the production and pulls all deeper into the heart of the story. Spontaneous eruptions of singing coupled with bursts of Christmas music re-awaken the feelings of joyous times spent with friends and family around a warm fire, and it’s not long before we start to empathise towards the menacing Scrooge, played superbly by David Fielder with an array of facial and corporeal expressions perfectly conveying the bitterness and eventual excitement of his character. Fielder is supported with strong performances from Steve Hansell as the put-upon Bob Cratchit, Sarah Paul playing his wife, and their children, who make one look forward to the impending happy ending.

By subverting the traditions and breaking the conventions, the Southwark Playhouse offer up a wonderfully alternative production of the classic tale that doesn’t involve a cinema screen and Jim Carrey. A perfect way to get you in the mood for the yuletide season.

Alex Wilshire

A Christmas Carol runs at the Southwark Playhouse until 9th January

Saturday 12 December 2009

PREVIEW: Shows for the Kids This Christmas

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It’s sad to say but Christmas really is a time for the kids. As much as watching Home Alone for the hundredth time and wandering around London watching drunken office workers fall out of bars is fun, the true magic and excitement of the Yuletide season pretty much dies once you hit 13. The same sentiment is reflected in the theatre as suburban venues are taken over by a host of half-recognisable has-beens camping it up more than Boy George at Pride.

But never fear. If you do want to give some children an entry point into the world of live performance but can’t face Melinda Messenger doing her best Barbara Windsor impression, this year there are some child-friendly productions that don’t necessitate group shouting, don’t patronise the audience and don’t turn sweets into sinister missles.

Normally associated with controversial reworkings of canonical plays, Katie Mitchell shows her lighter side with the stage version of Dr Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat. Taking over the National’s Cottlesloe Theatre, Mitchell brings life to the much-loved American classic offering what promises to be a lively and engaging theatre experience for 3-6 year olds.

Across town another modernisation is taking place as circus and physical theatre venue Jackson’s Lane update the much-loved fairy tale Cinderella. Playing with elements of contemporary life - reality TV shows, space hoppers and the like – the rags to riches tale is brought hurtling into the twenty-first century complete with acrobatic stunts and magic tricks.

A similar array of tricks and stunts is on offer at the Barbican as site-specific performance artists Lone Twin create a cabaret spectacular specifically aimed at children. Cabaret Simon brings together a host of acts including flamenco dervish Samantha Quy, Mr Melon the world’s clumsiest circus performer and the mind-bending experimenter Little Professor Walton. Word of warning – there’s a strict no entry policy for unaccompanied adults.

If you’re more into the classics and are keen to induct some under 5s into the dance culture preparing them for the work of George Balanchine at a later date, Sadler’s Wells is bringing back the balletic adaptation of Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman. Exciting children for years, this production continues to be a firm family favourite and a perfect way to celebrate the festive season with all the family.

The Cat in the Hat runs at the Cottlesloe Theatre until 18th January when it transfers to the Young Vic

Cinderella runs at Jackson’s Lane Theatre until 3rd January

Cabaret Simon runs at the Barbican Pit until 31st December

The Snowman runs at Sadler’s Wells Peacock Theatre until 10th January

Sunday 6 December 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Mrs Klein

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Mrs Klein

The Almeida, Islington

Few plays these days can claim to be tight-knit, well-made and plausible. Mrs Klein, however, is both traditional and fresh. Its conventional form and presentation may initially appear unimaginative, but their real import is exposed as they gradually reveal Mrs Klein's dysfunction. As it wriggles and squirms against the boundaries of acceptability, she attempts to sustain herself as an acceptable woman.

Tim Hatley's set provides a backdrop of oppressive red opulence. This narrows and constricts the space and works well in tandem with the obsessive self-focus of Mrs Klein, her daughter Melitta and - although for a time cleverly disguised - her assistant Paula.

Clare Higgins is a superb and intricate Mrs Klein; every avenue of character is thoroughly considered and we feel as though a more fully rounded performance could not be demanded. Likewise, Nicola Walker's Melitta and Zoe Waites' Paula are dually frustrating and sympathetic.

Mrs Klein, based on the real psychoanalyst Melanie Klein (who died in 1960), is both wise and incredibly naive. Her attempts to factualise fantasy via analysis, and her fixation with 'getting somewhere' prove to be her downfall, and ultimately more important than confronting her responsibilities to her daughter. Thea Sharrock's production is a very fine realisation of a play with characters blighted by their addictions to truth, analogy and love. For the most part, the plot falls into place very naturally, yet it’s ending seems more like a coda than an ending completely integrated with what precedes it.

Helena S. Rampley

Read Helena's interview with Mrs Klein playwright Nicholas Wright HERE

Monday 23 November 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Money

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Money
– Shunt Theatre Company
42-44 Bermondsey Street, London Bridge

Since settling in their home in the labyrinthian vaults under London Bridge, Shunt has successfully established themselves as a unique collective who continually produce experimental work. Having now been turfed out of the hallowed space of the Shunt Lounge – along with a large number of Londoners trying to make the trendy bar their local watering hole – it is now left to the group to make the move to the new space as seamless as possible.

Money is Shunt's third production since the company formed in 1998, and their first since 2006, taking for it’s theme the speculation in Emile Zola's novel L'Argent. And here the collective place the action inside a disused tobacco factory off Bermondsey Road in South London. A giant piece of machinery occupies the centre of the warehouse, and according to the company, the purpose of this machine is unknown.

Black out. Heavy grinding and hissing sounds. Black out again. The prelude is ominous. Once ushered into the 'machine' by the invigilators dressed as doomsday motorcyclists, the audience find themselves in an enclosed space waiting to be transported in a whirlwind of total darkness.

Slowly the audience are able to piece together elements of the fragmentary narrative as we sequentially are introduced to Aristide Saccard, asking for a loan from the financier whose office the audience now find themselves in. They’re introduced to his, at times, savage girlfriend as well as the moneyman in question while the space continually shifts with floors dissolving, ceilings disappearing and doors banging. More than just a theme park simulator, the audience is then invited to go upstairs to drink and play, becoming part of the action themselves.

The only way to experience Shunt's ingenuity is physically. The experience of being in an alternative site outside the realms of the traditional theatrical space is one of the company's motifs in making theatre and in this instance the content of the show is deliberately vague and fractured allowing the staging to be centralised. A spectacle indeed. I only wonder whether they needed Zola's story to achieve it.

Ingrid Hu

Money runs at Shunt until 22nd December

Sunday 22 November 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Cock

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Cock

Royal Court: Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Sloane Square

The tradition that has evolved in the last ten years of forming a title out of expletives no doubt contributed in part to the ticket sell-out for Cock. However, unlike the trend it points to, Cock is far removed from the superficial and the sensational. It is in fact, quite against my expectations, shockingly provocative and moving. If the title gets people through the doors then no matter; this play deserves to have a full house.

A stark, empty stage is transformed and embodied by an exceptional cast of four. Strip lighting above a circular green stage set in the round allows seamless scene changes, and the absence of all props removes any fussiness. What this demands of the actors is flawlessly achieved: incredible stamina combined with intense character knowledge and evocation. Anthony Scott as M is utterly gripping. M's whimsical ironising of every situation is shown to be the outward sign of his deep-set insecurities and need for affection. Although he initially seems caricature, M becomes frustrating and lovable at the same time. Scott is breathtakingly moving.

With no visual distractions, Cock relies and thrives on compelling character work and complex, engaging subject matter. Bartlett's head-on confrontational approach to societal pigeonholing is revealing and emotionally fuelled. Gay, straight, bi: why do we assume that these words are definitions of a person, that they constitute a person's identity? Such terminology has left John (Ben Whishaw) in the mess we see him in.

Fresh, funny and more thoughtful than I ever anticipated, Cock is both satisfying and bewildering.

Helena S. Rampley

Cock runs at the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs until 19th December

Friday 13 November 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: The Trial

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The Trial
- Belt Up Theatre
Southwark Playhouse, London Bridge

Think of a theatre, and you think of rows of creaking seats. Think of a play about to start, and you think of shuffling, of “excuse me’s”, and politeness. Think of the house lights going down, and you think of the stage slowly being lit. These may all be common accessories to theatre, but they by no means constitute it. In fact, after seeing The Trial, they seem to be more unwanted distractions than desirable elements. Being robbed of sight, sense and seats heightens every sensation. Discomfort has never been this enticing.

Belt Up Theatre plunge the audience, one by one, into a bewildering and boundless darkness. Alert to each command that is given, we are utterly in the hands of sinister pierrots, dressed in black. Josef K is the only fathomable being, and thus we become him, as we follow his flailing for an answer, through the vaulted tunnels of dark and light under London Bridge.

Puppets to our raw reactions, every sense is stimulated. A piano is hauntingly played in the distance as we become aware of someone behind us, making a vomiting sound into our ears. Cold, smoky air fills the Vaults with a haze, and your own space is not your own as you are pushed, shoved, and constantly forced to move.

The incomprehensibly large space is made even more incomprehensible by the scenes that are in-set into the previously impenetrable walls. Although nothing in the production is as terrifying or disorientating as our initial entrance, we are left constantly clinging to the light and to the visibility of others, as we become aware that
both can, and will be, inexplicably and suddenly stolen again.

Helena S. Rampley

The Trial runs at the Southwark Playhouse until 28th November

Tuesday 10 November 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: My Baby Just Cares For Me

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My Baby Just Cares For Me
– Full Beam Visual Theatre
Jackson's Lane, Highgate

Tonight, Jackson’s Lane presents a sensitive and thought provoking tale about the deterioration of an aging father. The play focuses on his changing relationship with the daughter who commits to cares for him and overcoming the problems that the pair ensue. Full Beam Visual Theatre here succinctly comment on the current decay in the care system questioning the levels of support that are on offer for both the elderly and, more importantly, their carers.

The decline of the father is cleverly, yet subtly, portrayed through the distinctive alterations in the puppet and astutely observed mannerisms commanded by puppeteer Adam Fuller. The intervention of projected images of the past and atmospheric sound track serve as reminders to a past that holds many cherished memories.

The lack of communication between the two characters is a poignant indication of how the issue of aging is rarely spoken or even considered. Through text messages the daughter is frequently reminded of her other responsibilities as she is committed to balancing her life and caring for her father. Unfortunately, this element is never fully explored and often feels confusing and distracting.

The anxiety and frustration of the daughter is evident as the story progresses but she remains predominantly silent throughout, which at times seems unnecessary and awkward.

With little exchange between the characters, the performance does, at times, begin to drag and could certain parts could have been cut and trimmed without damaging the whole. An insightful and unconventional approach to a subject that is rarely discussed, however it would have benefited from more dialogue and less dramatisation.

Rob Crosse

Sunday 8 November 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Misterioso

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Misterioso: A Journey Into The Silence of Thelonious Monk
- Theatralia
Riverside Studios, Hammersmith

Vibrantly silent and delicately loud, Misterioso is a sensitive and intriguing exploration of the curious life of Thelonious Monk. A five piece jazz band form the focal point of the show, punctuated by narrative interludes from Monk's close friend, Baroness Pannonica played by Tamsin Shasha. Written by David Walter Hall, Pannonica's speeches are both deftly crafted and emotively delivered.

The musical core of the piece, with its impressive bass slapping and choreography, is captivatingly frenetic, yet also intuitively crisp. This is complemented by the often frenzied digital projection and text - designed by SDNA - that encompasses the entire back wall of the stage. A sense of ordered chaos is created, and of being on the edge of understanding.

The action that takes place within this sound world is varied and stimulating. It is at times hedonistic, as Shasha distributes wine to the cabaret style tables at the front of the stage. It is at times wild, as members of the audience are encouraged to dance and absorb the jazz club atmosphere. Yet it is also at times contemplative, as both Shasha and Christina Oshunniyi (who plays both Monk's wife, Nellie, and Billie Holiday) take a back seat and allow the music to reign supreme.

Misterioso moves between the extravagant and impetuous, and the subdued and almost bewildering. Although there could perhaps be a little more of Monk's life told through story, Shasha's subtly incorporated aerial work at the end of the piece reflects the way that music, and indeed silence, has the power to transcend words.

Helena S. Rampley

Monday 2 November 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Fish Clay Perspex

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Fish Clay Perspex
– FaultyOptic
Jackson’s Lane – 30th October 2009

The streets of Highgate may fast becoming populated with masked faces and Dracula-a-like party goers, but there’s something much scarier and more exciting going on inside the North London gem that is Jackson’s Lane. And here FaultyOptic offer up something that will leave a stronger impression than a pair of plastic pointy teeth.

Presenting the first of the Suspense triptych, FaultyOptic’s Fish Clay Perspex follows three brief bittersweet stories of trials, tribulations and an examination of three bizarre and rather confused characters. The performance begins with a solitary old man picking up stones on a beach who soon finds himself with an over-sized fish stuck to his head. Next up, a seemingly psychotic potter who penchant for avant-garde sculpting that finds him slicing up an Elizabeth II resembling bust. Finally we see two ‘Pointy Pants’ men, stuck behind a Perspex sheet continually trapped by the ever-moving marker pens and masking tape. Hence the title, Fish Clay Perspex. Tying all three tales together is a simple piece of cotton wool that, taking on a variety of personas, draws each character from their world and re-presents them as a collected trio in what appears to be the afterlife.

The skill of FaultyOptic lies in the fact that while you can clearly see the puppeteers controlling their subject, they soon become almost invisible as life is seamlessly recreated before our eyes. Watching strong work like this Edward Gordon Craig’s theories about the value of the marionette over the actor become much more plausible. Because while it is good to watch an autonomous actor trippingly recite the lines of Shakespeare, the puppet show is much more effective and energising as we, the audience, are the ones complicit in making the action come to life.

We suspend our disbelief, we allow our imagination to take over and we believe that the inanimate object presented to us has a life and a will of its very own. And that is why this group is so haunting, so compelling and need to be seen.


Ruby Green

Friday 30 October 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Great Pretenders

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Great Pretenders: The Musical

Upstairs at the Gatehouse, Highgate

You could quite easily sit through Great Pretenders, a small-scale musical about wannabe tribute acts, and be a prude. Or, with even greater ease, you could sit back and enjoy it.

Skepticism is not dispelled by the slightly shaky and underwhelming opening, bizarrely entitled 'When the day is over'. Neither is it dispelled by the introduction of the almost irritatingly idealistic Joyce (Jennifer Saayeng) and the predictably vulgar Irishman, Liam - Luke Jastal. But this is not a show about profundity and obfuscation. It is an energy-fuelled and well-rounded piece about petty rivalry and uprooting secrets that succeeds in the balance and clarity of its story.

Although there is often a feeling of the inevitable - with plot, music and gags - there are definite moments of surprise. The macho PJ, played by Leon Kay, reveals himself to be a Liza Minnellli impersonator, and to have a deeper crisis about the acceptance and tolerance of this than we might at first imagine. So too, the tense reunion between Rebecca Bainbridge’s Paula and Andy (David Higgins) - the most convincingly played storyline in the show - is compelling, despite its sentimentality.

The fantastically detailed set, designed by Gemma Harris, enhanced the plausibility of the dressing room scenario. Graffiti on the inside of the toilet door, postcards round the mirrors and cluttered coffee cups give the sense of a backstage area that has been used and abused.

Great Pretenders is superficial, but this is overridden by the fact that it is undeniably entertaining. Escapist, yes, but pretentious it is not.

Helena S. Rampley

Great Pretenders: The Musical runs until 15th November

Friday 9 October 2009

FEATURE: Suspense Festival at Jacksons Lane

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Puppets can divide opinion. For some, the skilled manipulation of the inanimate objects is a gift to be marvelled at, as they are brought to life and made to sit on swings, go for walks and even order coffee like miniature munchkins. For others, the realism is too much, tapping into Freud’s idea of the uncanny and bringing on nightmares more frightening than Jan Svankmajer’s Otesánek. If you find yourself siding with the latter, make sure you stay away from Highgate’s Jacksons Lane this November where puppets are most definitely the order of the day as Suspense takes over.

The Suspense festival is the first puppetry festival to take place in London in over 25 years and has a clear mission to show that not all puppets are child-friendly Sesame Street characters. Over the course of ten days, and at seven venues across London, the festival will present adult audiences with work from a variety of UK and International practitioners revealing the artform to be sophisticated, grotesque, irrational and, above all, incredibly potent.

Innovative dance venue Jacksons Lane will be showcasing three events from the festival’s programme providing haunting tales of chance, sickness and decaying old age from prominent British companies.

Starting with FaultyOptic’s Fish Clay Perspex, audience’s will be given the chance to see the London International Mime Festival veterans not only manipulate the puppets but also miniature armless figures, clay, pens and pieces of plastic as they present a collection of short ‘character studies’ musing on ideas of chance, doubt and turmoil providing audience’s with a compelling, spellbinding and, at times, revolting experience and a chance to suspend their disbelief and enter an alternate reality.

Second on the bill are South-western trio Full Beam Visual Theatre. Watching Strictly Come Dancing contestant Jo Wood (playing the defenceless, deserted woman with the theatricality of a pantomime dame) makes us all aware that the baby boomers - and Stones’ affiliated personalities - are coming to the point in their lives when they need to wave goodbye to their drugs-induced hedonistic days and instead settle down for a cup of cocoa and the Antiques Roadshow. My Baby Just Cares For Me explores the difficulty of looking after an older generation that doesn’t want to grow up and questions how to make life plans match up with pension plans.

Finally, Heartbreak Soup follows the story of a young boy caught in a limbo-like existence as he awaits transplant surgery. Spending his time under his hospital bed, Cuddy dreams of a time when he’ll be able to run and jump, shutting himself off from the drab confined surroundings he forced to inhabit. While it may sound serious and gut-wrenching, The Empty Space promise a heart-warming, uplifting experience for its audience.

Once again, Jacksons Lane show they are at the forefront of experimental performance in the capital’s current theatrical climate. While, there’s ongoing feuds between theatre companies, producers and the Arts Council, we are here shown that fear of the recession should not hamper creativeness.

Lily Eckhoff

Fish Clay Perspex runs from 30th – 31st October
My Baby Just Cares For Me runs from 5th – 6th November
Heartbreak Soup runs from 7th – 8th November

To book tickets contact Jacksons Lane HERE and for full programme details check out Suspense London Puppetry Festival site HERE

Monday 5 October 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Secrets Birthday Party

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Secrets Vaudevillian Birthday Party

Southwark Playhouse, 3rd October

Beneath the arches of London Bridge lies Southwark Playhouse Secrets, the cabaret-style side show from the innovative theatre. The dimly lit walls of grey brick, red decor and bare white bulbs give the hidden location a feel of shabby glamour. Combined with a late bar and a sense of happy-go-lucky, this is the perfect scenario for a variety of mystery acts comprised to celebrate the new season of the post-show and lunchtime entertainments.

Knowing that the whole venture was conceived with a more-or-less £0 budget - requiring the performers to give themselves for free - it was hard to know what to expect of this evening. And as it happened, it was a real mixed bag.

Nudity was the order of the night at Southwark, some of it prepared for, and some more of a surprise. A burlesque dancer flaunted through and amongst the audience, with huge purple feathers and little else. Although scantly clad, the voluptuous Khandie Khisses managed to remain poised and never seedy. Wes Zaharuk, however, became unexpectedly and unnecessarily undressed during his performance. One of his several questionable routines involves, incomprehensibly, attaching two plungers to his nipples and invading the faces of audience members. Like the rest of his act, this is a complete non sequitur, and leaves you wondering what exactly it is that he is claiming to be skilled at.

Further bizarreness ensued. The ring master of a flea circus looked very professional in his red outfit, but succeeded to entertain the audience with the spectacular amount of tricks that went wrong. Keeping a brave face at all times, he was at least endearing if not very practised. An androgynous musical saw player was also slightly bewildering; untuned notes accompanying the score of Atonement was entertaining in a curious kind of way.

The potential of a fantastic scenario was slightly dampened by a couple of underwhelming acts. The draw of the event was evident from the initial crowd that filled the stage and bar area. If a core of the successful and intriguing acts could be established, then the audience would no doubt dwindle much less than it did on this occasion.

Helena S. Rampley

For the full line-up of Secrets new season just click HERE

Friday 11 September 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Bedtime Solos

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Bedtime Solos
- Across the Pond Theatre Company
Old Red Lion Theatre, Angel

Is physical proximity enough? Or is it necessary for two people to know the innermost workings of each other's minds in order to have a fulfilling relationship? Bedtime Solos exposes the different worlds inhabited by two people who supposedly share a high level of intimacy, while two stiff single beds show the distance within their union.

Self-obsession and reticence reign as each of the partners tells themselves bedtime stories of their pasts. Jakob Holder – the play’s author - masterfully integrates and eeks out references to the banal but pervasive events that cloud their childhood memories. Even during sex, and 'the greatest feeling in the universe', the couple are still far away from one another; he caught up in the re-imagination of wetting himself, and she in the traumatic fantasy of brash but apparently loving sex behind a dumpster.

As each partner becomes more involved with their own elaborate emotional world, together they become more tangled up in mental tantrums and conundrums. They begin to expect the other to understand the vaguest of hints to something too deep within their psyche to be guessed at.

Holder is something special. The agility, honesty and originality of the thought processes the characters go through makes you wish this was something you had written. It is natural and unforced, yet fresh and unpredictable. The private notions that enter the head of a man trying to stave off orgasm - of a cat, of cats, of dead cats, of the smell of vomit, of poking smelly dead cats with a stick - makes this play absurd yet very real.

Intricate shadow play, unfalteringly absorbing performances from Heather Wilds and Scott Christie, and a uniquely poetic script make Bedtime Solos flow past in a sense of post-coital timelessness.

Helena S. Rampley
Photo: Christian Alegria

Bedtime Solos runs at the Old Red Lion until 26th September

Friday 4 September 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Stories for the Starlit Sky

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Stories for the Starlit Sky
- Daniel Kitson
Regents Park Open Air Theatre

While a production starting at midnight in the picturesque Regents Park Open Air Theatre may conjure images of a relaxed picnic enjoyed in the beautiful fairy-lit surrounding, this is theatre land, and there is a clear hierarchy. You see, when not setting the scene for the bearded comic genius, the Open Air Theatre is playing home to Hello Dolly! and, in a classic case of theatre self importance, we are told to wait by the roadside until the musical audience has drifted off into the night air.

This is a test of any true Daniel Kitson fan, but luckily we are a hardy stock. Armed with blankets and booze, the already exciting event is given an added level of intrigue as we are forced to wait, it’s as if we’re some sort of speakeasy, a community of fans who have secretly met up in the middle of the night away from the prying eyes of the law. And as we’re finally allowed entry and Kitson takes to the stage to tell his tale, our pilgrimage is rewarded.

The final episode in his set of three midnight readings, finds a father telling his son a story whilst the two share a cup of cocoa - a mise en abyme if you will – following a group of retired assassins retreating to the comforts of a rural village. The story is perfectly broken down into chapters with Gavin Osborne singing and playing guitar in the intervals.

The idea for this performance arose 4 years ago, and having seen Kitson perform Stories for the Wobbly Hearted at the Melbourne Comedy Festival it feels like a natural progression. The duo work succinctly together and allow you to totally suspend your disbelief. I can honestly say it was one of the most interesting and original pieces I have seen at the theatre for a very long time, I hope to see more of this sort. It shows how effective a story told simply can be, and showing there’s no need for music, costumes or unfounded pomposity.

Izzy O’Callaghan

Thursday 27 August 2009

FEATURE: Esk Valley Theatre

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It is one of the most unlikely places to find a theatre company. Driving through the village of Glaisdale, perched on the side of a hill in the heart of the North York Moors, my dad drives past the ‘theatre’ twice before finally noticing it. I, on the other hand, find all of this familiar and can’t wait to get through the doors of the village hall and take my seat for what I know will be a satisfying experience.

Almost a year and a half ago, I wrote to Esk Valley Theatre asking if they would take on a prospective Drama student for work experience during their annual summer performance. I had no idea what their shows were like, having only ever seen advertisements for their plays stuck into the grass verges of the moor roads whilst driving to Whitby. It was a huge leap into the unknown but I had chosen the best possible people to ask.

Founded in 2005 by actor Mark Stratton and choreographer Sheila Carter, EVT brings professional theatre to the North York Moors. This is not the kind of ramshackle but striving outfit which often shuffles on stage at village halls but a sharp, crisp theatre company, professional to its core. EVT is an integral part of the community which fiercely and rightly regard it as ‘their’ theatre.

For two months in the summer of 2008, I made tea for everyone in sight, sat at the back of rehearsals generally overawed by it all, and once the run began, sold ice creams and programmes like there was no tomorrow. I watched countless audience members come out bowled over after watching Vacuum by new writer Deborah McAndrew - a sharp, funny, deeply unsettling and absolutely mesmerising thriller.

This summer I returned, this time as an audience member for John Godber’s April in Paris, directed by Stratton himself. Another two-hander, it lacks the bite of the previous year’s production, but in no way falls short as entertainment. Yorkshire couple Bet and Al live in a monotonous, stifling world. Al has been unemployed for six months and Bet, his working wife, keeps her hopes alive by entering magazine competitions. When she actually wins a romantic break to Paris, the couple are catapulted abroad for the first time, stripped of all that’s familiar and have to find their way back to each other before returning home.

As ever with Godber, it’s achingly funny and with an overwhelmingly Yorkshire audience, the humour is spot on and thoroughly engages the 100-strong spectators. Stratton’s subtle direction ensures that Eamonn Fleming and Fiona Wass put in absorbing performances as Al and Bet. Both have worked previously with Godber’s company Hull Truck, as have Stratton and the rest of the production team. They are perfectly placed to make the most of the play and do so, giving an energetic and true performance. Fleming’s Al is beautifully revealed: edgy, frustrated, his self-belief undermined by the futility of unemployment, but with ambitions to become a painter. The scene in the Louvre when he begins identifying the painters with pride and joy, is one of the most sincere and touching moments. Fiona Wass fills Bet full of genuine hopes and dreams, and the audience can easily identify with her longing to escape her grey home life and to slide seamlessly into the glamour of Paris. Between them, they truthfully recreate the bickering of a long established couple who know just how to hurt each other, although at times the relentless pace needs more pathos to be really effective.

Another highlight of the show is the set design. Pip Leckenby, who works frequently with Alan Ayckbourn and Hull Truck, has created a simple but very evocative set which beautifully compliments the direction. Cream with printed images of crosswords and newspapers, which are then flipped to reveal colour paintings of Parisian landmarks, it captures the buoyant mood of Bet and Al. Mood and location are also brilliantly created through the sole use of two chairs and clever lighting design by Graham Kirk.

For the month of August the village hall is completely taken over, a seating and lighting rake is brought in, and local volunteers staff the bar and ticket desk. EVT produce theatre of the finest quality, generating a real feeling of pride and excitement in the community. We read time and time again in the press how the theatre industry is trying to engage new audiences and find ways of making theatre matter in today’s world. I suggest that they look no further than the tiny village of Glaisdale. It’s an obvious way forward and I’m glad I had chance to be part of it.

www.eskvalleytheatre.co.uk

Jane Williamson

Sunday 23 August 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Down-A

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Down-a - In Beween Butoh Dance Company
Camden People's Theatre, Euston

Agile, ethereal and completely disturbing; don't go home alone after watching Down-a. This butoh performance involves two performers who simultaneously physicalise the 'guilt of the human soul'. The show opens with white noise and a woman (Flavia Ghisalberti) straining backwards against a wooden chair, evoking the experience of ECT. Initially this seems slightly ludicrous, but, as with the rest of the performance, the image is so intense that our prolonged exposure to it makes it feel utterly real. As Ezio Tangini enters, repeatedly popping his shoulder out of joint, this visceral performance takes on an obscene quality.

Generating new thoughts in the mind of the audience is an obvious prerogative for many shows, and making them feel uncomfortable is one way to achieve this. However, staring into the eyes of those who have invested money to come and watch your performance, whilst whispering without words, is invasive and unnecessarily accusatory. Watching this engenders a feeling of self-loathing, as the performers unload their disgust onto you.

If fear is something you crave, then Down-a will more than satisfy you. Ghisalberti at one point becomes a possessed puppet, with quivering, half closed eyes. In the tiny space of Camden People's Theatre, this is terrifying. In yet another amazing physical feat, Tangini riles, flails and bangs his head on the floor repeatedly. As he moves towards a light, the audience is reminded of its own hubris and the denigration of The Fall. Although well executed at every point, the audience leaves this piece self-flagellating, but not quite sure why. We are overwhelmed by our senses and an immense, incomprehensible guilt floods our reason.

Helena S. Rampley

Down-a runs as part of the Camden Fringe until Monday 24th August

Friday 21 August 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: No Way Out (Huis Clos)

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No Way Out (Huis Clos)

Southwark Playhouse, London Bridge

Latecomers are annoying. No matter how much they try to make themselves invisible by sneaking in all hunched over and squeaky shoed, they can be seen and do manage to cause a disturbance. Tonight, the entrance of two rather dishevelled, embarrassed looking slow-pokes comes on cue as Garcin, padding the cell he has just been locked in, calls for someone to open the door. In walk Benny and June No Watch not necessarily answering his calls but certainly distracting all from the rising tension.

Tonight we are at the Southwark Playhouse for No Way Out (Huis Clos), John Paul Sartre’s black comedy that is offered here in a translation by Frank Hauser. The action begins with Garcin (Miguel Oyarzun) entering the prison like space of the transformed playhouse with the door bolted behind him. It soon transpires that he is to be confined to this sinister Orwellian feeling room - where he expects to meet torturers, racks and burning flames – until the end of time. He is then joined, not by the two sneaky squeakers, but first by the flame haired Elisa de Grey’s Ines and then the glamorous Estelle, played by Alexis Terry. We soon realise that they are not in some form of 1950s interrogation room, but in Hell and that they will be each others interrogators as we uncover why they have been sent to the burning depths.

The premise of the play is a highly evocative one. Three characters, trapped in a room in Hell simultaneously becoming each others confidants and persecutors. And the play starts on fine form placing one foot in the comic, with the other sitting comfortably in the tragic. However, the undulating tempo moving from high frequency screaming to down beat soul searching soon becomes rather predictable and repetitive. Oyarzun is successfully brooding, progressing from distinguished gent to almost sadistic brute as the heat in the room goes up and his clothes begin to come off. Likewise, Terry’s poised elegance is soon cast aside as her actions become increasingly manic and she is exposed for being an attention-seeking nymphomaniac. Unfortunately Elisa de Grey’s performance jars with the rest as her over-excessive facial expressions and spiky accusational tone make her seem like the precocious younger child who craves love and attention.

The dark, almost dank feel of the Southwark Playhouse lends itself beautifully to Sartre’s play and I can’t help but feel that had Luke Kernaghan followed through some of his directorial ideas more fully – the recurring image of the Tango seems disjointed with the action and its only when reading about Kernaghan’s interest in the Argentinian war that it becomes clear – this could have been a truly exciting play.

Phil Burt

No Way Out (Huis Clos) runs until 12th September

Tuesday 18 August 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Mascha & Vascha

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Mascha and Vascha
– Strange Ladies
Camden People’s Theatre, Euston

Old people can often seem rather eccentric. Whether it’s the choice to wander around with a freshly set purple barnet, the sporadic – and highly offensive – racist/sexist/homophobic comment, or simply the unnecessary obsession with cats, there’s a lot about the older generation that we just don’t understand. But you’d be hard pushed to find an odder pair of 90-year-old women than the two on offer at the Camden People’s Theatre tonight presented by the aptly named Paris-based performance duo Strange Ladies.

Mascha and Vascha finds the two title characters in the later stage of their lives with a simple wish to go outside for a walk. However, things are not as they seem in this world as runaway chickens, mountains of washing and full-blown wrestling matches all manage to stop them from fulfilling their dream. Splicing together moments of absurd hilarity with touching everyday humanity, Hanna Pyliotis and Lily Sykes – the Strange Ladies themselves – show their audience a day in the life of these two friends; a day that manages to be heart-warming yet frightening in a relationship at times reminiscent of Roald Dahl’s The Twits.

The influence of absurdist theatrical tradition is clearly evident throughout the performance with constantly alternating tempos, seemingly nonsensical utterances and exchanges, and sporadic flits between the concrete everyday and the abstract world of the imagination. The sense of a never-ending wait to go outside, which never materialises, echoes the inaction of Waiting For Godot’s Didi and Gogo who also wait for something that never happens. Like Beckett’s duo, Mascha and Vascha fill their day with mundane domestic chores – such as Pyliotis dramatically hanging out washing and repeatedly peeling onions causing even the audience’s eyes to water – to stave off the empty void of the inactivity forced upon them by old age and isolation

Sykes and Pyliotis are at once charming and sinister in their roles as the two life long friends. With eases of movement and astute comic timing, they inhabit the roles of the elderly women without ever looking awkward or out of place. The commanding presence of Sykes makes you at once fear her and fear for her as she struggles to come to terms with the losses she has suffered, while the clown-like physical movements of Pyliotis make you empathise with her as the put upon friend.

In the post-ironic, post-League of Gentlemen age we live in, Mascha and Vascha, at time seems a little out of date and clumsy, yet this still manages to be a confusing, baffling and thoroughly entertaining piece of theatre. After all, where else can you see two women fight it out like Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Warrior with a little Benny Hill thrown in for good measure?

Ruby Green

Mascha and Vascha runs at the Camden People’s Theatre 21st August

Tuesday 4 August 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Flavio, Medium de los Muertos

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Flavio, Medium de los Muertos

Royal Vauxhall Tavern, Kennington Lane

I see dead people. Well not really, but there were a number of lifeless faces on Friday night, as Mike Okarma fails to crack a smile at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.

Okarma makes his Camden Fringe debut with the bizarre one-man show Flavio, Medium de los Muertos, in which he parades a succession of obscure characters before an increasingly bemused audience. The premise - a comedy séance - is a thinly-disguised vehicle for Okarma to showcase his impressionist talent. Throughout the evening he is ‘inhabited’ by a range of clichés, from the Jewish grandmother distressed by her godson’s homosexuality, to Tapioca, the tough-talking Detroit gospel singer. Unfortunately, despite his gift for accents and character observation, Okarma’s creations lack any kind of charisma, and he has to resort to a Chippendales stripping routine in order to get a cheap laugh.

Although Flavio is brimming with bravado, Okarma himself is an uncomfortable figure on the stage. He appears to lack confidence, grasping for lines and displaying an awkward desperation when interacting with the audience. The modest crowd at the RVT are friendly and encouraging, trying hard to find something to laugh at, but they are left disappointed as Okarma struts and squawks his way through yet another tired American stereotype.

Possibly the most peculiar part of Flavio is Okarma’s decision to insert motivational messages into each of his characters’ rambling stories. As the audience are urged to “live their lives to the full, each and every day”, the whole evening begins to feel like an extended ‘Final Thought’ from Jerry Springer. It’s difficult to tell whether these sugary sentiments are supposed to be the punchline in this strange creation, but if so, they fail to strike a chord with this reviewer.

Amy Jane Clewes

Flavio, Medium de los Muertos will run as part of the Camden Fringe Festival until 7th August

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Senza Lamento (Without Lament)

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Senza Lamento (Without Lament)

Roundhouse Theatre Studio, Chalk Farm

The Roundhouse is no stranger to large-scale spectacular shows. The epic size of the circular space has housed everything from tribal balladeer Bat for Lashes, Cirque de Soleil's trampolining French men and perhaps the bloodiest renditions of Shakespeare's Histories plays. But one thing most people don't know is that the iconic venue also plays host to a much smaller, more intimate studio. And this studio is set to play a vital role in the current Camden Fringe Festival.

This afternoon, its the turn of Maria Rita Slavi and Nicole Pschetz with their physical-theatre production Senza Lamento (Without Lament), which has just finished its short stint at Merton Abbey Wells as part of 2009's Abbeyfest. Originally created as a site-specific piece in an abandoned house in Italy, the work has been recently adapted for stage and follows an imaginary encounter between two images of the same person; one past and one present. Nicole plays Woman in Dark Blue, a figure who has seemingly lost her sense of identity in the busy city in which she lives. She then meets Woman in Green, Maria, herself in a past form and the two embark on a journey of discovering, punishing and consoling one another.

From the outset, the movement of each performer contains an elegant poise that is at times breathtaking. The piece begins with Woman in Black entering and performing a mournful dance accompanied only by an umbrella, a suitcase and the occasional glimpse of Woman in Green. Nicole manipulates the two props with the utmost ease meaning that they no longer represent simple everyday objects but instead become significant harbourers of memories. The strength and dynamic tension of her body is shown as she wrestles with said umbrella, changing the tempo of her movements in order to make the section appear, at times, as if it is taking place in slow motion. The whole sequence echoes the work of artists such as Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Lecoq or, more recently, James Thierree, an influence that was clearly established during the pair’s training in Corporeal Mime.

There are also traces of Pina Bausch throughout the piece: as the pair repeatedly gag and pull at one another before dropping to the floor, one is distinctly reminded of the danger and risk undertaken by a Bausch performer. The formal dress of both dancers recalls the attire worn in Kontakthof while if the plastic cups Woman in Green frantically moves around towards the performance’s close were replaced by chairs, it would appear as a scene taken straight out of Café Müller.

While there is a sense that this performance was perhaps more powerful in its original form as a site specific work, it still has charm in the close space of the Roundhouse Theatre Studio. And though it is at times confusing with regards to the exact relationship between the two performers, the beauty of the fluid shapes and lines they create on stage means that any ambiguity just adds to the appeal.

Lily Eckhoff

Sunday 2 August 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Hooked The Musical

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Hooked: The Musical

Theatre 503, Battersea

I'm not going to lie to you, my favourite musical is Joseph & His Technicolour Dreamcoat. So, as I arrive at the Latchmere 503 - secretly hoping to catch a glimpse of Lee Mead in a loin cloth - and I'm faced with an altogether more contemporary production, I realise things are going to be quite different. Drugs! Lap Dancers! Sex! I'm beginning starting to miss those seven fat cows. Yes this is indeed one modern musical, and, according to a recent interview, loosely based on the real life experiences of producer Matthew James.

The story (if a little predictable) commences with a cabaret number with all three excellent dancing ladies - Manal El-Feitury as Odette, Lucy Smethurst as Monique and underused Laura Bailey as Angel - that will have many an eye popping out. We are then informed by the drug addicted PR ace Ben (Jason Langley) that he has experienced an overdose in a lap dancing club and we are to witness the reason for this event through a series of flashbacks.

Ben happens to be having an affair with Smethurst's gorgeous lap dancer Monique, a Romanian aspiring singer who has been brought over to the UK by the club owner Parnell - Terry Burns - to work in his club and to perform other 'tasks'. The two actors beautifully compliment each other in their shared scenes as Monique's evident vulnerability is contrasted with the manipulative side of the club owning pimp, easily conveyed by Burns.

Jessica Sherman, playing Ben's stay at home wife Emma, is rather clumsily a complete contrast to Monique: Emma in her white linens while Monique parades around in heels and burlesque outfit. She too has some good solo numbers, my favourite being 'Patience' when she finally dumps her cheating husband in a relationship counsellor's office ending with a declamatory "Fuck You". However, certain strong numbers, such as 'Dont Let Me Down' excellently sung by Smethurst and Langley, sit a odds with the flow of the production, and would be better standing alone as simple pop songs.

After much soul searching, and a few more solo numbers, Ben and Emma are reunited in time for their troubles conceiving a child to disappear as they are conveniently donated a baby by the now drug addicted Monique. Phew! This is true soap opera stuff with shiny beautiful people, like an episode of Hollyoaks mixed with Chicago and X Factor. Sometimes you just can't help but be addicted.

Dennis Kuipers

Hooked: The Musical
runs at the Theatre 503 at 7.30pm 31st July - 2nd August before transferring to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It will run at the G2, George Sq. from 7th - 30th August, nightly at 11.15pm.

Friday 31 July 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Wanderlust

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Wanderlust - Anonymous Ensemble
Jacksons Lane, Highgate

The theatre can so often be a stuffy, boring affair. Polite etiquette means that we calmly sip our pre-performance drinks, shuffle to our seats when instructed and titter when the action on stage allows us to. So what happens when a ten-foot Bavarian powerhouse takes charge, forcing audience members to impersonate vampires, drink shots of vodka and sing about a tree pussy? A glimpse of the true strength of theatre, that's what.

For one night only Anonymous Ensemble take over the intimate Jacksons Lane Theatre with their award nominated production, Wanderlust. The performance - described as an interactive, burlesque, promenade extravaganza - follows the story of Tall Hilda as she describes her life from her vodka swilling antics with a travelling circus and her journeys with a violin playing gypsy and his dead wide, through to her apocalyptic cries for the power of love and dancing. But its not a straightforward chronological tale that we treated to here; its an experience that we can take part in, enjoy and take away with us as our very own.

From the outset we are warned that we will be required to participate in this performance, and it is not long before we are up off our feet cosying under a mock circus tent and throwing fake snowballs at one another. Its important not to underestimate the achievement of the trio on stage as they lure a tired and somewhat jaded audience out of their comfortable seats and allow themselves to be open to ritual humiliation. Jessica Weinstein excels as the giant showgirl, who seduces us to join her own stage and allow her to take total control. Her ballsy demeanour and exquisite comic timing mean that you are compulsively drawn to her and are not only willing to do everything she asks, you want to impress her while you do it.

Wanderlust highlights the joy and spirit of theatre: the joining of like-minded people to learn and experience something together. It also shows that the theatre can teach you, not just through philosophical statements and declaration but making you relaxed and open. Instead of questioning and analysing every moment, we go with it, enjoy it and become both free and unified as a collective. And for a 70 minute show to achieve that, especially in this age of increased individualism, is nothing short of a miracle.

Phil Burt

Wanderlust will be performed again at Madame JoJos, Soho on 2nd August

Monday 27 July 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Blood Wedding

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Blood Wedding
- Metta Theatre
Southwark Playhouse

Under the railway arches, Southwark Playhouse hosts a wedding party for a young couple. You enter either as the bride's or the groom's guest. Dress code? Colourful. You will be greeted with a glass of juice and handed a piece of paper that has the order of service and lyrics of a couple of songs.

So expect some singing and party affair, in Metta Theatre's re-contextualised Blood Wedding by Frederico Garcia Lorca. Piano, guitar, percussion and glockenspiel make up a live band playing engaging and jazzy tunes that sets a central American atmosphere. The audience is led to sing and dance to celebrate, but the sound of the trains above quickly transports us to a clammy space where, on the wedding day, the new couple and their family confront family histories and unsettled passions.

While the original story itself is full of symbolism, this production places knife-crime as its central theme, and sets to share Lorca's words with contemporary London audience, where knife-crime is increasingly becoming a social reality.

The company's talented performers give fervent speeches, and all accompany themselves with either singing or musical instruments, as they dig deeper into their characters' flaws and conscience. Naomi Wirthner's powerful performance as The Mother is impressive, and her voice and singing provide an underlying fear that echoes throughout the show. As the show progresses, the emotional richness compounds, and the wedding decor becomes redundant.

Southwark Playhouse's heavy and blackened brickwork provides a challenging architecture for the designers. But under Poppy Buton-Morgan's direction all ingredients seem to blend and just manage to capture the orchidaceous ambience that is vivid in Lorca's writing. Stabbings and murder are recurring subjects, however, the accents of the performers, their costumes, and the overall ambience contribute to an ambiguous time and place, which contradict the relevance that the show strives to convey. Indeed, it creates a fresh angle to the story, but perhaps with a little more reference to here and now.

A unique wedding that invites you to be part of. Take a friend with you, or you will be less compelled to dance and will be left alone at the reception that follows.

Ingrid Hu

Blood Wedding runs until 15th August

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Ghosts, or Those Who Return

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Ghosts,
or Those Who Return
Arcola Theatre, Dalston

In theory, there is nothing preventing Ibsen’s Ghosts from being as relevant today as it was in 1882. Originally dismissed as “an open drain” by a scandalized Victorian audience, its themes of incest, sexual disease and euthanasia are still hitting headlines in 2009. I was expecting Bijan Sheibani’s new adaptation at the Arcola to inject fresh life into the claustrophobic tale, but I left disappointed.

Sheibani and his designer Alex Eales have stuck rigidly to Ibsen’s original stage directions. The set at the Arcola is a generic nineteenth century drawing room, with glossy cornicing framing pale blue walls. There is little acknowledgement in the design of the dark loneliness at the heart of the play, aside from the drizzling rain splattering half-heartedly on the windows. It is left to Jon Clark and Emma Laxton to try and squeeze some atmosphere out of this dry, dull setting, which they do admirably. Laxton’s music is hauntingly melancholic and Clark’s subtle lighting is appropriate, although by the last act the audience are left squinting through the twilight.

Against this backdrop Mrs Alving, Pastor Manders and the syphilitic Oswald trade secrets and revelations. Suzanne Burden gives a strong performance as the miserable matriarch, although her initial restrain is more convincing than her melodramatic outbursts as the play draws to a close. Harry Lloyd’s Osvald is a joy to watch, skillfully underplaying the ‘exhaustion’ which plagues his character and alternating beautifully between puppyish affection for Regine and strained introspection.

Paul Hickey’s Pastor, however, is more problematic. Originally intended as an empathetic character, Pastor Manders was the lens through which Ibsen confronted Victorian society with its own hypocrisy. Although Hickey shows brief moments of emotional depth, for the most part he is left wringing his hands and fretting over the youth of the nation in a weak caricature of a church minister. He quickly becomes a comedic figure, eliciting more laughs than Jim Bywater’s bumbling Engstrand.

Without a convincing link to the Victorian mindset, the audience are left to view the play through the jaded eyes of the 21st century. Osvald’s decline into syphilitic dementia is sad, but not shocking. His mother’s struggles seem needless and his father’s infidelity barely evokes a reaction. Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s new translation is full of rich imagery; the characters speak of loneliness, despair and decay. Unfortunately, the poor staging and flippant handling of the text do not do justice to this darkly tragic story.

Amy Jane Clewes

Ghosts, or Those Who Return runs until 22nd August

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Feeble Minds

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Feeble Minds
- Spare Tyre Theatre
Rich Mix Arts Centre, Bethnal Green

Reality TV rarely confronts us with reality. Theatre, however, always does. Spare Tyre Theatre's latest production, Feeble Minds, is an extraordinary piece of theatre that puts life right in your face, with little room to retreat.

Director Arti Prashar brings together inc. Theatre Ensemble - a collective made of 11 artists with a range of learning disabilities and actors over the age of 60 from the group HotPots - in creating a play based on Shakespeare's Timon of Athens. One of Shakespeare's problem plays, Timon of Athens is a bitter commentary on subjects such as greed, indulgence and materialism in his day. Rather than an adaptation, Feeble Minds is a work inspired by these topics, with a contemporary makeover and a strong emphasis on multi-sensory experience.

On entering the space, a collection of hung kitchen utensils create a rich soundscape which is then followed by various recordings of the sounds of everyday life - running water, cooking noises, and, of course, music. Slowly this becomes layered with projections of text, the singing and dancing of the actors and, rather evocatively, the smell of food. It is only on retrospect that it is clear that this is a show for the visually impaired and those who are hard of hearing. In all honesty, as an under-35-year-old and able audience member, I am astonished by the performance in front of me. Emotions and expressions are delivered with such honesty that it is at once shocking and thought provoking.

A truly courageous undertaking, the elderly and the less abled have so much to share with the contemporary audience. They represent a reality that most of us choose to ignore, until it intervenes and becomes part of our life. But then, they have set out to prove that The Bard's work is as universal as ever, and see it as a unique challenge. As the director says, it is a 'risky and daring' project. Are you feeling brave to see it?

Ingrid Hu

Tuesday 21 July 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: The Visitor

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The Visitor
- OMADA Theatre Company
Tristan Bates Theatre, Covent Garden - 20th July

Sometimes the repercussions of our actions can force unforeseeable changes upon our previously unquestioned daily routines. For Miranda and Morris, their resignedly repetitive existence within a World War II compound is compelled to change. Miranda's unthinking act of compassion in bringing home the injured 'visitor' pulls apart two people who have been brought into an unnaturally close proximity.

The initially unfathomable opening has a Pinteresque quality. Graham, the visitor, is more of a hostage than a guest. Gradually it becomes clear that almost no one is anywhere or does anything by their own volition: Miranda has to reuse the same old tea bag over and over again, Morris is forced to trade at The Mercantile, and all (bar Graham) only reside in this hovel because they were brought there, Nazi fashion, in a 'hot dog' van.

Notably strong performances come from Samantha Whaley as Miranda and Michael Armstrong as Morris. Both portray their simplistic and sheltered characters with great conviction and no hint of irony or derision, despite some of their obviously dubious opinions, such as Morris' fundamentalism. The smaller roles of Maxwell and Graham are also both carried off well, but are harder to play, given that the characters are less developed. The role of Maxwell is perhaps the most bizarre being an entertaining, but not easily recognisable, fusion of a gay Walter the Softy of the Beano fame, and the Artful Dodger.

The most disappointing aspect of The Visitor is that it is not longer. The alternative history of the play is slightly confused, and it is not clear whether the inclusion of a TV set and Marks and Spencer's carrier bag are intentional or unwittingly anachronistic. However, the variety of pace and tone would certainly sustain the intrigue of the audience well beyond the 45 minute running time, and a longer piece would allow the able writer and cast to really flourish.

Helena S. Rampley

Sunday 19 July 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Damages

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Damages
Old Red Lion Theatre, Angel

Its no new thing to say that newspapers are not what they used to be. At one time Fleet Street was the bringer of truth, the voice of reason offering us an insight into news stories taking place around the globe - an insight that would at once inform and educate us. Now, certain papers appear content with simply reporting the fact that Lily Allen managed to draw breath today. Gone is the interest in world leaders and their political decision-making, in are the tales of drug abuse, love spats and knicker flashing.

Its this change of agenda - and the precarious relationship between fame hungry celebrities and the muck-racking hacks that can make or break their fledgling career - that provides the centre piece for Damages, Lucid Muse's revival of Steve Thompson's 2004 play about the world of tabloid journalism and the lives that it can affect, calling for the “end of cheese and sleaze.” Set in real time, the play follows the final hours before a paper is due to go to press and unleash on its reading public a photograph of a children’s presenter caught topless with a man who happens to not be her husband. What initially appears to be a simple question of invasion of privacy, takes a much darker turn as personal feelings and potential honey traps come into play.

The humid July evening outside makes the small space of the Old Red Lion theatre both stuffy and claustrophobic enhancing the tense action on stage beautifully. As the print deadline draws ever closer, you too feel the sweat pricking the back of your neck, your palms beginning to clam up and the sense of panic that’s doing the rounds. This feeling is also increased by the raised voices of the cast as they thrash out their personal and professional differences. It’s a cast that is very apt at handling the sparring dialogue and quick witted comebacks, in particular the charming young whiz-kid Bas, Simeon Perlin, and his Ice Queen ex-girlfriend Abigail, played with precision by Perlin’s Lucid Muse co-founder Joanna Bell.

The only problem with this production is the question of relevance. A lot has happened in the five years since this was first performed at the Bush Theatre – papers have become more shocking, we have more access to celebs and it seems rather unlikely that there would be any question about running a topless shot of a golden girl anymore. With a set that looks as though it is a left over from Channel 4’s Drop The Dead Donkey, it has the feeling of being a bit out of date, especially given the media satires now available to us such as In The Loop and Newswipe, who both push the issue so much further.

A really enjoyable performance, its definitely worth watching. However, it is questionable that its going to cause stop anyone digesting the next bit of celeb gossip the minute they leave the theatre.

Ruby Green

Damages runs until July 25th

Wednesday 15 July 2009

NEWS: Barbican plays host to year's most exciting season

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Since it's birth in 2000, the Barbican Bite festival has brought some of the most prestigious artists and performers from around the globe to London from Russia's Lev Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre (Platonov, 2007), to Pina Bausch of Germany (Kontakthof, 2002), by way of Brazil and Grupo XIX de Teatro (Hysteria, 2008). For years they have been offering a platform to the finest and most experimental International work and, by the looks of the Bite:09 programme, they are going from strength to strength.

Among the numerous prestigious offerings are Teatr Zar, the multinational group who aim to show that theatre is to be heard not only seen. From 24th September they will be performing Gospels of Childhood, their three-part ritualistic lamentation of birth, death, pleasusre and pain, told through song, chanting and movement.

James Thiérrée returns to Britain after his 2007 Sadlers Wells production Au Revoir Parapluie with Raoul, a story of a man with no beginning or end who tumbles through a series of utopian fantasies in a world which is at once entirely alien and clearly recognisable. Combining his trademark cross-fertilisation of acrobatics, mime and clown-like charm, Thiérrée promises to tease his audiences with this delightful, visual comedy.

Not afraid to leave the confines of the Silk Street venue, once again Barbican offers a number of off-site productions to entice people off the streets and into new places. One example is They Only Come At Night: Visions from Slung Low. The promenade performance will begin at the Barbican Box Office and will combine live performance, dance, music and digital projection as Slung Low take attendants through the fast-paced theatrical world.

These are just a few of the wonderful and innovative projections that will be available from September. For more information and to book tickets check out the Barbican website

www.barbican.org.uk/bite09/

Monday 13 July 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Project X

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Project X
- Love & Madness: The Madness Season
Riverside Studios, Hammersmith

Taking your seat in a theatre, you can be forgiven for assuming certain things are about to take place. The etiquette and traditions of British theatre-going have been in place for over a century meaning that for majority of people a theatre ticket means not only watching a performance but going for a pre-theatre meal, buying a programme and enjoying an interval ice cream. Bearing this in mind, Love & Madness' Project X is a truly tantalising prospect. Expect the unexpected.

As the company began devising the production - while rehearsing for the Riverside residential a Dodin-esque fashion - there was an understanding that it could take on any shape or form, be performed in any space and could deal with any subject matter. Love & Madness take the rules and threw them out the proverbial window. But what is the end result? If I say the words cornflakes, weasels and Nirvana, you may get some idea.

While Love & Madness have opted to keep the performance within the traditional theatrical space, its no holds barred when it comes to performance style and plot. The latter concerns Ron Cheeseman, an average looking 33 year old postman who goes about his mundane daily routine perfectly content. That is until he learns about the small issue of death. And so follows Ron's earth shattering realisations that he has no understanding of childhood, the aging process or indeed mothers, realisations that lead him to a half baked suicide attempt and a twist that could give M. Night Shyamalan a run for his money.

The beauty of this production is how different it is to everything else from the Madness season. After dealing with murdering gangsters, insane army generals and grave exhumations, here we see Love & Madness letting their hair down and having fun. And it is a fun that is both exciting and intoxicating for the audience to see. John Giles is heartbreaking as the confused posite while there are some stand out performances from chorus members Will Beer and Toby Wharton whose expressive faces and comedically fluid movements bring tears to the eyes. Director Matthew Sim offers a wonderfully crazed Willy Wonka style Head Weasel (the only hint I'm going to offer about the road this story takes) who manages to walk the fine line between sinister over-lord and uber-camp menance with elegance and poise.

This production has the feel of a University style production where the actors dare to explore, to take risks, to experiment with new ideas and, ultimately, to have fun. You get the feeling that all performances should be this brave and exciting. As they wave farewell to the Riverside Studios, Love & Madness can be confident that they have not only gained a new, wider fan base, but they have shown the Hammersmith audiences that true theatre is not about a star name offering a half-baked turn as Hamlet. Its about the collective soul, the group and the ensemble. And that is something we shall forever be grateful for.

Phil Burt

Project X runs in rep until July 25th

Saturday 11 July 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Fucking Men

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Fucking Men
Arts Theatre, Covent Garden

With its unabashedly sexual title, set and content, it is hard to say whether Joe DiPietro's display of 'the empty existence of the urban gay male' does the reputation of gay culture more harm than good. Whilst Fucking Men delivers a frank, no holes barred account of gay relationships, the necessity to sensationalise the characters and the liaisons they involve themselves in suggests a willingness to revel in and even endorse the remaining taboos that surround homosexuality. The title has to be partly blanked out on promotional material and referred to by box office staff as 'F'ing Men'. In this respect, the play seems to be revisiting previously trodden ground; the play texts of Ravenhill's 1996 Shopping and Fucking initially had to be sold in paper bags. Is society still childishly attracted to a play just because it has an expletive in its title?

Despite the scandal of the title and the occasional overtly stereotypical presentation (pink y-fronts, a studded belt and a love of Brokeback Mountain) Fucking Men is undeniably entertaining. A large cast and a fairly short play aid the show's pace, switching rapidly but clearly between different encounters. Characters remain on stage for a time after their scenes, which is initially confusing, but eventually contributes to the depiction of the casual anonymity of the sex the characters experience.

DiPietro shows a blunt divide between love and sex. Couples who love each other very rarely have sex, and those who have sex very rarely love each other. The world these characters inhabit, despite the prevalence of physical intimacy, is unquestionably isolated. All of the characters rehearse monologues which they then integrate into sexual scenarios, disclosing their desperate quest to affirm their identity, and to attempt to live out their individual imagined dramas.

Fucking Men
brings the audience face to face with many home truths. "People don't call when you're desperate, that's the first rule of life" demonstrates the frequent inability to interact successfully and to find what is 'sincere'. This play is honest and funny and, apart from a few dodgy accents, very smooth. It does not however present the gay community in a very even-handed way. From DiPietro's account, it would seem that gay men inhabit a loveless underground world of hedonism and dishonesty. Yes, it is liberated to be able to show this, and yes the play is lively and enjoyable. However, in its reinforcing the notion of the gay community as a staunchly separate world, Fucking Men is something of a self-sacrifice. By ignoring the fact that heterosexual relationships can be just as blighted by the issues shown as gay relationships, DiPietro perhaps does the gay community damage.

Helena S Rampley

Fucking Men runs until 31st December

Saturday 4 July 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Mincemeat

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Mincemeat
- Cardboard Citizens
Cordy House, Shoreditch

After watching Cardboard Citizens' latest production Mincemeat, I cannot help but feel that I have done a good deed by simply turning up to see a show.

Set in Cordy House, a disused building on Curtain Road in trend-setting Shoreditch, Mincemeat is a promenade performance based upon a series of reconstructions and fictionalized characters and stories surrounding Operation Mincemeat, which took place during the Second World War. The British Intelligence’s successful deception plan was depicted in Ewen Montagu’s 1953 book The Man Who Never Was and then subsequently made into a film of the same title.

The show commences with a false start of sorts, as a van filled with kidnappers is driven into the warehouse’s ground floor space from the street. The audience is then led to a different room where the story is introduced. From there, the actors shift among characters and the audience is taken to imagined spaces within the building where the intelligent use of interior architecture depict various scenes. Sometimes the audience are allowed to sit and seamlessly become part of the setting, while in other rooms the audience are the invisible onlookers witnessing the events, following the main character as he uncovers his true identity. The play’s close takes us back to the room in which we began, but by now it has been converted into a wartime shelter complete with bunker beds allowing audience and performers merge. Overall the production is cleverly executed, without tailor made costumes but also without excessive scenery.

The feel good factor comes from the fact that, rather than seeing a show with potentially like-minded theatre-goers, the audience represents a beautiful slice of Londoners from all walks of life. Needless to say, the ensemble itself comprises a wide range of real life characters and however superficial this observation may be, the energy of a true and engaging social theatre is definitely in the air.

If you are not sure about seeing a show supported by The Big Issue, then hopefully Kate Winslet - the company's new ambassador - will encourage you. Go see it.

Ingrid Hu

Mincemeat runs until 12th July

Saturday 27 June 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Phèdre

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Phèdre
- NT Live
National Theatre, Waterloo

The National Theatre’s latest initiative to bring theatre to the masses sees a live version of Jean Racine’s Phèdre broadcasted to cinema audiences worldwide.

King Theseus, the King of Athens, has been missing for months. His wife Phèdre is left to look after their children and, believing Theseus to be dead, her nurse Oenone convinces her to admit her rampant lust for stepson Hippolytus. However, Hippolytus is in love with Aricia, the grand-daughter of Erechteus, the former King of Athens─ who Theseus despises. When Theseus returns from the underworld, this collection of guilty passions rear their ugly head.

Dominic Cooper plays the implacable Hippolytus, who rises to the challenge of conveying some of the play’s most complex emotions: seething hatred, stifled passion and sombre austerity. Still young in years, Cooper definitively illustrates that his repertoire can extend to more mature roles. The imposing authority of his father Theseus is captured effectively by Stanley Townsend’s incredible booming voice. However, any hint that this figure could have had numerous female conquests and slain yet more monsters, is somewhat mitigated by his rather incongruous attire.

The lady of the moment is evidently Dame Helen Mirren. As Phèdre, she has to play the fine line between anguish and madness, without letting it seem histrionic. For the most part, I think she does this and excels in heightening the emotional intensity of the long monologues to maximum effect. As her aid, Margaret Tyzack’s Oenone is suitably witty in places. Ruth Negga also plays Aricia with a perceptive understanding of both the character’s tenderness and emotional fortitude.

In the pre-theatre introduction, Phèdre’s director Nicholas Hytner comments that NT Live affords an audience the luxury of seeing the actors close up, of witnessing their every move. Certainly, every expression, every tremble, every grimace, even every intake of breath, is on display. However, although Ted Hughes’ translation is a magnificent achievement, rendering Racine’s words readily accessible to audiences, the overall production is let down by lack of pauses and lack of an interval. As an incredibly intense piece of theatre, there is the sensation that much of the power and visceral emotion that each actor so carefully builds up, becomes lost. This is illustrated by John Shrapnel’s final monologue as Thérmène. Having recounted with great vigour Hippolytus’ death, the power of Shrapnel’s performance loses some of its magnitude as the story goes on, just that bit too long, particularly for cinema audiences’ to bear.

NT Live has pioneered a wonderful project to bring theatre to the cinema and a talented cast render a compelling production of Racine’s powerful work. Hytner describes the project’s aim “to convey something of the excitement of live theatre to the world.” This is certainly where the project succeeds, although it would be interesting to see the production in the theatre itself, as there is no denying that expectations and experience would be different─ and certainly more powerful ─when an audience sees these actors in the flesh.

Ruth Collins

Phèdre will run at the Lyttleton Theatre until 27th August

Thursday 18 June 2009

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: A Skull in Connemara

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A Skull in Connemara
- Love & Madness: The Madness Season
Riverside Studios, Hammersmith

The ensemble is one of the most creatively perfect states in which to develop true works of theatre. Sneer as much as you want as you advocate the constant change around of casts bringing in a breath of fresh air, but Konstantin Stanislavski was definitely on to something as he preached the unique and rich experience of devising pieces surrounded by those you are familiar with, those you know deeply, and those whose feelings you know almost intuitively. A Skull in Connemara, the third offering from Love & Madness' season at the Riverside Studios, gives us an insight into just how effective an ensemble can be. It also shows us that it is not only the actor's familiarity with each other that propels the performance forward, but also the audience's familiarity with the actors.

For the latest installment in The Madness Season, the ensemble turns to the violent writings of Martin McDonagh with his tale of smashing skulls and swilling poitin set in the rural wilderness of Ireland's Galway. Living in the small, insular community is Mick, a widower who has the unenviable job of digging up skeletons from the local graveyard and disposing of the skulls as he sees fit. For seven years he has been fighting off rumours that rather than accidentally kill his wife in a drink driving incident, he, in fact, murdered her in cold blood and as her grave is unearthed to reveal no skeleton, suspicions are raised once again.

Dan Mullane is excellent as the dark, brooding Mick, dividing opinions and making it impossible to tell whether he is a wife butcherer or merely the victim of harmful gossip. His troubled face is deeply intriguing as it appears to hide many secrets and can transform from a light smile into a tormented grimace within a matter of seconds. Playing a side-kick of sorts is Jack Bence as Mairtin. Bence first enters the stage with an accent more reminiscent of Father Ted's Mrs Doyle than a genuine Galway boy and a facial expression all too similar to David Platt when he was going through the terrible teens. But as the play progresses, you really warm to his portrayal of the young tearaway. Bence manages to aptly convey the dark humour of McDonagh's text playing with both the comic and morbid sections - massaging skulls as if they were breasts is not for the fainthearted. He's clearly better suited to the comic timing than the more serious pieces making up the remainder of the repertoire.

Mick and Mairtin are joined by local busybody Maryjohnny, Lucia McAnespie, whose obsession with bingo is seen right down to the marks of highlighter pen decorating her hands. Once again McAnespie takes on her role with true eloquence, as she plays the doddery old woman without a hint of a caricature. Likewise, Iarla McGowan's useless village policeman Thomas is both hilarious and menacing as he tries to prove Mick's guilt, but ends up appearing more like PC Plum than Columbo. With perfect comic timing, McGowan is sublime right down to his asthma pump.

With a detailed, clear and concise direction from Catriona Craig - with the exception of a couple of long-winded and rather over-complicated scene changes - A Skull in Connemara is a gripping, entertaining and deeply macabre production.

Phil Burt

A Skull in Connemara runs in rep until 26th July

Sunday 14 June 2009

PERFORMANCE OVERVIEW: The Bridge Project

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A Winter's Tale & The Cherry Orchard - The Bridge Project
The Old Vic, Waterloo

“O, call back yesterday, bid time return” is the quotation which lines the safety curtain of The Bridge Project’s premiere year’s offerings. This rather apt quotation from Richard III alludes to central themes in both plays: the passing of time and regret. Choosing to direct an Anglo-American cast in a production of William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, is an impressive undertaking for director Sam Mendes, and certainly promises to be something special.

Combining Shakespearean and Chekhovian repertoires has long been a favoured challenge to theatre directors, for, despite living and writing centuries apart, on opposite sides of Europe in different languages and even alphabets, a number of parallels can be drawn between the playwrights’ works. Indeed, the broadness of the scope is indicative of The Bridge Project’s overarching aim to create a transatlantic partnership which transcends the boundaries of theatre and enriches the stage with the best of what UK and US acting has to offer.

Simon Russell Beale heads the all-star line-up, playing Lophakin in The Cherry Orchard and King Leontes in The Winter’s Tale. As Lopakhin, Russell Beale exudes a suitable sense of exasperation as he watches Ranevskaya and her clan fail to save their estate from soon passing into other hands. As a descendant of the peasantry and serfs, the tables are turned when Lopakhin himself buys the estate, both usurping the wealthy landowners’ status and depriving them of their most prized possession: the bountiful cherry orchard. Russell Beale draws out Lopakhin’s vengeance in a cathartic scene where he storms around the stage flinging chairs left, right and centre, as Ranevskaya, superbly played by Sinéad Cusack, looks on in dismay.

Yet it is as the brooding Leontes that I feel Russell Beale’s vitriol is well and truly unleashed. Consumed by jealousy, he believes his wife Hermione, played expertly here by Rebecca Hall, is having an affair with his childhood friend Polixenes, played by Josh Hamilton. Leontes banishes Polixenes, throws Hermione into prison and orders his menservants to dispose of the baby daughter who he believes is Polixenes’ child, not his own. In contrast to the resigned and somewhat powerless Varya in The Cherry Orchard, Hall’s beguiling Hermione shows strength as she stands up to her husband. The trial scene, which sees Russell Beale and Hall confront one another from opposite ends of a long wooden table, is at once powerful and visually effective. Both actors gauge the level of visceral emotion perfectly, holding it back to make every line uttered retain the necessary resonance Shakespeare originally intended. As Varya, Hall’s quiet exasperation is equally entrancing and the audience feels her frustration at the almost absurd nature of Lopakhin’s amorous indecisiveness─ a man of business, when it comes to love he is almost as hopeless as the ungainly Yepikhodov played by Tobias Segal.

For although this may not be the most popular of Chekhov-Shakespeare pairings, the comic and tragic elements of both plays are drawn out and certainly neither play falls into a single genre: both have elements of intense tragedy, inane comedy and even farce. Sir Tom Stoppard’s commissioned translation of The Cherry Orchard is based on a literal translation by Helen Rappaport. Without doubt, Stoppard’s version draws out the satire of Chekhov’s work, illustrating that these characters’ concerns are not so far removed from our own in the twenty-first century. Indeed, as Mendes’ interpretations of both these plays capably illustrate, the issues of economic uncertainty, bereavement, jealousy, regret, love and desire are emotions of everyday life very much in the here and now. Moreover, as both Paul Jesson, as Ranevskaya’s loquacious brother Gaev, and Richard Easton's bumbling old serf Firs, skilfully highlight, what Stoppard and Mendes´ collaboration definitively succeeds is in revealing the characters’ myopic view of the world and how none of the characters listen to anyone but themselves. It is only a shame that Morven Christie’s Anya lacked the necessary emotional intensity and vigour originally conceived by Chekhov.

Wary of being too critical about the blend of accents in this multi-national cast, it will suffice to say that occasionally the American accent, and at times regional UK accents, seem somewhat out of place. However, any jarring detected does not detrimentally detract from the overall effectiveness or fluidity of the performance. Taking Dakin Matthew - Simeonov in Chekhov's play - as a prime example, there was no attempt to hide his American accent, but in a strange way the prevalence of the accent itself succeeded in accentuating the almost caricature-like figure of this old brazen fool. Overall, Stoppard’s translation works for this production but occasional references, such as when the hopeless Yepikhodov is nicknamed “catastrophe corner”, seem rather misplaced and perhaps not the most judicious of translation decisions.

The Winter’s Tale also presents some problems, particularly in Act Four when the pastoral scene disintegrates into a farcically anachronistic affair involving erotic dancing with balloons. However, a certain measure of modernisation also works well: Ethan Hawke’s Autolycus comes across as a mix between Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean and Dickens’ Fagin and he certainly gets his fair share of laughs. Also playing Chekhov’s perpetual student Trofimov, Hawke is perhaps in one sense one of the most prevalent examples of how this project proves to be an exercise in which actors can show off their range and rise to different challenges. Sinéad Cusack also deserves particular mention for her utterly captivating performances: proving to be a compelling Paulina in The Winter´s Tale, she really shines in reflecting all the forlorn sadness of the grieving and emotionally unstable Ranevskaya whose dwelling on the past prevents her from coming to terms with the present.

This exciting venture, although not without its faults, certainly lives up to expectations and the combination of the calibre acting, creative stage design and judicious direction creates two very fine productions. Although logistically challenging, with a 50:50 split between cast and a production team spanning the British Isles and the USA, perhaps it is innovative ventures like this which are exactly what will keep the theatre industry afloat during these difficult times.

A Winter's Tale and The Cherry Orchard run in rep until 15th August

Ruth Collins