Charles Pipe, Author at North West End UK

2Oct

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

FIASCO – Vaulty Towers

FIASCO by Cryptids Improvisational Theatre is a longform improv show based on the tabletop roleplaying game of the same name. In the tabletop roleplaying game, players roll dice and consult tables to come up with a collection of storytelling prompts, linking characters together through “relationships”, “needs”, “locations”, and “objects”. This provides the framework upon which the players collaboratively tell a story, usually of normal people finding themselves drawn into increasingly violent situations the likes of which you might find in a Coen Brothers movie. Cryptids Improvisational Theatre have adapted and streamlined the general structure to suit a live improvised performance. The audience first votes – by cheering and general verbal consensus – on which of three general genre...

30Sep

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

Girls on Fire– The Golden Goose Theatre

Girls on Fire tells the fascinating, terrifying, and inspiring true story of three extremely brave young women. Hannie Schaft, Freddie Oversteegen, and Truus Oversteegen were Dutch resistance fighters during WW2, who put their lives at risk as spies and assassins, killing Nazis and Nazi sympathisers. The cast of three each give solid performances. Emma Graveling plays Truus with a serious, fretful demeanour that occasionally gives way to touching warmth and humour. Ellie Grace’s Hannie is both playful and intelligent, with plenty of optimism and resolve. Lily Sitzia’s Freddie transforms from a naïve child to a cold, pragmatic killer. Each performance is distinct, and the interplay between the three actors is engaging. The script does a good job of selling the friendship between t...

30Sep

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

choke me – Hen & Chickens

choke me – written and performed by Alexandra Montalbano – is a new one-woman reinterpretation of Punishment without Revenge by Lope de Vega. The plot follows Cas as she navigates the bizarre love triangle that she finds herself in. Trapped in a loveless marriage with her older, boring, cheating husband, she starts having an affair of her own with her husband’s son – her stepson. The plot jumps around, as Cas – in relaying the story to the audience – forgets things and has to go back and explain past events in order to bring the audience up to speed. As such, there are plenty of twists and turns to keep the audience engaged, although moment to moment it can sometimes be hard to work out where a scene is leading and what it’s purpose in the plot is. The play leans more towards comedy...

The Silence of Snow: The Life of Patrick Hamilton – The White Bear

29Sep

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

The Silence of Snow: The Life of Patrick Hamilton – The White Bear

The Silence of Snow: The Life of Patrick Hamilton opens like a gothic horror: thunder and rain set a moody scene as a figure sits slumped over in a white hospital gown, before jolting to life and erupting into a crazed monologue complete with manic laughter. This play – like the novels and plays of the real-life Patrick Hamilton – boldly explores dark themes and incorporates spooky imagery. Life – the play seems to suggest – can be as terrifying as any fictional ghost or demon, but we can still smile and laugh. Above all, this play tells an interesting story about an interesting character and is masterfully performed. This one-man show (written and performed by Mark Farrelly) follows almost the entire life of Patrick Hamilton from his youth in the 1910s and ‘20s to his declining hea...

16Sep

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

Dagmarr’s Dimanche – Crazy Coqs

Hidden away beneath the streets of Picadilly, glitzy Art Deco venue Crazy Coqs provides the perfect venue for an anachronistic cabaret show performed by a vampire: Dagmarr’s Dimanche. Singer Hersh Dagmarr has absolute command of the stage. His voice is powerful and emotive, and he effortlessly draws the audience into the stories contained within the lyrics. With songs arranged by pianist Karen Newby, the eclectic setlist playfully jumps around from Édith Piaf to Kylie Minogue, via Cole Porter, Madonna, Sondheim, and the Pet Shop Boys. Dagmarr continually plays with the audience’s expectations, teasing one song and then performing another. A Kylie Minogue medley featuring riffs from ‘Willkommen’ and ‘Mack the Knife’ caught the audience especially off-guard, in the best possible way. My p...

Dr Freud Will See You Now, Mrs Hitler – Upstairs at the Gatehouse

11Sep

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

Dr Freud Will See You Now, Mrs Hitler – Upstairs at the Gatehouse

Dr Freud Will See You Now, Mrs Hitler is a dark comedy play by prestigious writing duo Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran. The story takes place in an alternate history, exploring what might have happened had a young Adolf Hitler met trailblazing psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. With her child suffering from bedwetting and nightmares, Klara Hitler (Nesba Crenshaw, who also plays Martha Freud) takes him to Vienna for a consultation with Dr Freud (Jonathan Tafler). Years later, in the early 1900s, Adolf Hitler (Sam Mac) is still plagued by nightmares and once again seeks out Dr Freud in Vienna. The two men develop a strange relationship, acting at once as patient/doctor, artist/patron, employee/employer, and – in typical Freudian fashion – son/father-figure. Owing to the lack of clearly de...

10Sep

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

How To Date – Jack Studio Theatre

How to Date follows the lives of two young women – roommates Clarissa and Emily - as they navigate tumultuous life in London. Emily (Stephanie McNeil) is the more naïve of the two. Having moved to London from Cheltenham, she is coasting by one her father’s money while pursuing a career as an actor. Clarissa (Helin Ekin) is more cynical, having come from a less privileged background and grown up in London itself. She tries to present as impassive and cool, but it’s clear that she’s not as stoic as she’d like to let on. Despite Emily and Clarissa’s differences, the actors’ strong performances and the sharp script (written by Stephanie McNeil) really sell the friendship between the two young women. The actors have great chemistry, the back-and-forth banter is funny and relatable, and i...

3Sep

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

Cascando – Jermyn Street Theatre

Cascando was written by Samuel Beckett as a radio play, originally in French. It was first broadcast in English in 1963. Now, it has been boldly reimagined by Pan Pan theatre company as a promenade piece. Listeners arrive at Jermyn Street Theatre where they dump their bags, before being issued with hooded black cloaks, iPods, and headphones. They are lined up single file, the audio track is begun, and they are led in procession around St James’s. With their hoods up tp conceal their headphones, they appear to onlookers like some kind of strange, anachronistic cult or monastic order. Should the weather turn foul, umbrellas are provided, but audience members should bring their own layers for if the weather is chilly, and of course wear comfortable footwear. If you’re a lover of Beckett...

SLUGS – Summerhall (Red Lecture Theatre)

20Aug

By Charles PipeNo Comments

Scotland

SLUGS – Summerhall (Red Lecture Theatre)

At its outset, SLUGS boldly claims to be a show about “NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING”. Inspired by garden slugs – seemingly formless, mindless, useless creatures – the characters set out to create a show that completely avoids touching on any serious or thought-provoking topics. The show should supposedly be pure escapism, akin to scrolling through cute videos of puppies on Instagram. However, serious topics inevitably creep in. The characters – fictionalised versions of the performer S.E. Grummett and Sam Kruger themselves – can’t help but bring up gun violence, transphobia, sexual harassment in the comedy industry, and so on. The result is an hour of nonstop, unhinged, manic, perfectly executed comedy, as the characters desperately attempt to avoid these topics. The show is b...

How Not to Fund a Honeymoon – Studio @ theSpaceTriplex

17Aug

By Charles PipeNo Comments

Scotland

How Not to Fund a Honeymoon – Studio @ theSpaceTriplex

In only 45 minutes, How Not to Fund a Honeymoon delivers on just about everything you could want or expect from the crime-comedy caper genre. Like a Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie movie, the plot unfolds non-linearly. Action skips back and forth between the aftermath of and the buildup to a failed heist, orchestrated by fiancés Gwen (Ausette Anderies) and Charlie (Claire Feuille). Their plan is to break into the house of Gwen’s wealthy aunt - Aunt Robyn (played by Stephanie Greenwood, who also wrote the play) - and steal her valuables in order to pay for their honeymoon to the Maldives. The plan does not work out well for Gwen and Charlie. Most of the comedy stems from the fact that Gwen and Charlie are a perfectly normal couple, who find themselves in abnormal circumstances. T...