Dave Smith, Author at North West End UK

16Apr

By Dave SmithNo Comments

London

Single White Female – Richmond Theatre

Ostensibly based on the early 90s erotic thriller of the same name, Single White Female really only takes on the idea of a disturbed stalker moving in and disrupting lives. It updates the setting to take on social media, photoshop and school bullying. There isn’t really much to do with the original film, vast swatches of the plot removed, new pieces added and a dramatically different ending. Faced with a sudden drop in finances, Allie (Lisa Faulkner), and her 15-year-old daughter Bella (Amy Snudden) take in a lodger, Hedda (Kym Marsh) in their new apartment. As Hedda settles in, it becomes clear - she thinks of herself as more than a lodger and oversteps boundaries, first tentatively then increasingly inserting herself into every aspect of their world. The suggestion that He...

5Mar

By Dave SmithNo Comments

London

Our Town – Rose Theatre

Michael Sheen is the Artistic Director of Welsh National Theatre, and this is their inaugural production, co-produced by Rose Theatre themselves. Sheen has put his money where his mouth is, funding WNT himself. They begin with an American classic, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. While this may not sound innately Welsh - the tale of a quintessential American town - it is said that Dylan Thomas was familiar with both Wilder and his play when he wrote Under Milk Wood. So, we take ourselves to Grover’s Corners, a small town with a Welsh accent somewhere, well let’s just say somewhere. The Stage Manager guides the audience through the story, introduces us to a number of the inhabitants and we jump back and forward in time to follow their trials and tribulations. Sheen himself plays the Sta...

Evening All Afternoon – Donmar Warehouse

26Feb

By Dave SmithNo Comments

London

Evening All Afternoon – Donmar Warehouse

Jennifer (Anastasia Hille) is about to marry the never-seen John and become stepmother to Delilah (Erin Kellyman) in Anna Ziegler’s Evening All Afternoon. The play switches between extended addresses to the audience and scenes playing out between the two women grappling at being thrown together. Her father’s remarriage leaves Delilah consumed by grief over her mother’s death, leading to hallucination as she speaks with her dead mother. Delilah’s cheekiness pushing and testing Jennifer, feeling at liberty to really press on issues contrast strongly with Jennifer’s primness, never even untucking her blouse as disdainfully noted by Delilah. Delilah’s mother was younger than her father, Jennifer is a full decade older than John. Boomer and Gen Z and there is a gap there at once, with ...

24Feb

By Dave SmithNo Comments

London

Blink – King’s Head Theatre

Phil Porter’s Blink at King’s Head Theatre is a darkly funny and tender meditation on loneliness, voyeurism and the ways in which we connect in today's modern world. Sophie’s father has died, leaving her spiralling, falling back in on herself and showing all the signs of mental health issues. Jonah has run away from the religious commune he was raised in after finding a bag of thousands of pounds his mother left him after she died. Through a series of small coincidences, Jonah unknowingly rents the flat below Sophie. Not knowing Jonah at all, Sophie sends him a baby monitor, a screen hooked up to a camera in her flat and he starts to watch here in small doses and quickly moves to constant viewing. Despite their closeness, just a floor apart, their actual paths never cross. Jonah takes t...

12Dec

By Dave SmithNo Comments

London

Kenrex – The Other Palace

A true crime story of a still unsolved crime in small town America, KENREX blends genres, true crime, western, music into something far, far greater than the sum of its parts. What begins as an almost true crime podcast style reconstruction of a murder turns into a study of how a small community shapes its own mythology, and how fear, loyalty and silence can outlast the truth. After acclaimed runs in Sheffield and Southwark Playhouse, this transfer to The Other Palace just confirms how brilliant KENREX is. Ken Rex McElroy was a violent bully who terrorised the small town of Skidmore, Missouri, for years. With no sheriff and no police within an hour's drive, the law was never able to stop him. A snake-oil lawyer (with a brilliant introduction that almost adds musical as a genre to ...

A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Shakespeare’s Globe

30Nov

By Dave SmithNo Comments

London

A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Shakespeare’s Globe

You don’t necessarily expect a take on a A Midsummer Night’s Dream to have Pete Quince’s troupe cutting cocaine with credit cards but that’s far from the biggest change to this adaptation. Playing here now as more tragedy than comedy, Headlong adapted A Midsummer Night's Dream for its debut in the candlelight Wanamaker. Billed as a darker, more tragic version, there are still some laughs kept, perhaps some of them now more nervous laughs. There’s an undercurrent of sex and violence running throughout, sometimes uncomfortably combined. The lovers’ fallings-out in the woods, even when driven by Puck’s interference, move far away from the chaotic mischief and towards barely disguised emotional and physical abuse, playing with a hard edge to them. Sergo Vares’ Puck carries an air of male...

A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Golden Goose Theatre

29Sep

By Dave SmithNo Comments

London

A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Golden Goose Theatre

For the Lambeth Fringe, The New Rep Theatre tears through Richard Pepper’s adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in just 90 minutes. Focusing on the four lovers as they get twisted up by the fairies in the forest, while also bringing in the mechanicals, the actors in a play within a play - rehearsing in the forest and caught up in the fairies playing around. There’s a lot of fourth wall breaking, asides to the audience and some very modern moments, New Rep have certainly gone all out for the comedy to - mostly - success but a few moments land awkwardly and feel tacked on, pulling us out of the world rather than deeper into it. A sharper edit or simply more restraint would have helped here. Jack Gogarty’s Bottom works well but has a naive earnestness despite his se...

24Sep

By Dave SmithNo Comments

London

The Weir – Harold Pinter Theatre

Outside, it's gusting, the wind has picked up and outside isn’t the most welcoming. Inside the pub, it’s warm and welcoming, a proper locals pub where you can serve yourself and just put your money in the till. Not much happens, a few locals drink and chat. That’s The Weir, that’s Conor McPherson’s play. It is a slow-burn, more about mood than plot, and it's the beauty of the writing and the skill of the cast which envelops us, brings us along to the bar as we sit and share the evening. In this case, to welcome newcomer Valerie, a blow-in to the small village. As the drinks flow, the men swap local history, leading into ghost stories which get darker and darker. Valerie reveals her own story, moving the mood from mostly light banter to raw confession. The evening becomes less about the ...

14Jun

By Dave SmithNo Comments

London

…Earnest? – Richmond Theatre

Celebrating 130 years of Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest, Say It Again, Sorry? offer up their own chaotic twist - part homage, part catastrophe. Oscar Wilde meets The Play That Goes Wrong - a heady blend of farce, improv, and gentle audience manipulation. ...Earnest? begins as normal: a servant considers it rude to listen to the piano, then cucumber sandwiches - but then the doorbell rings and Earnest is loudly announced… Yet now, the door stays closed and no one arrives. A quick interruption from the director fills some time while the cast of the play-within-a-play try to figure out how the show will keep going. The answer is simple: an audience member will join them on stage to stand in for the missing actor. When funny, ...Earnest? is hilariously funny. ...

20May

By Dave SmithNo Comments

London

The Fifth Step – @sohoplace

David Ireland’s Edinburgh Fringe hit The Fifth Step transfers to London, making its debut at @sohoplace in a new version with substantial changes. Staying from its Edinburgh run is Jack Lowden with Martin Freeman joining to complete the two-hander. The title refers to the fifth step of the 12-step programme; writing down everything which brings guilt and shame so you can tell them to a trusted friend in order to reduce the chance that these will drive you to drink. There is the usual David Ireland wit and black humour as he explores themes of addiction, masculinity, and in particular, religious faith. Photo: Johan Persson The set is minimal - a blank stage with just a few chairs and a coffee point. Director Finn den Hertog has chosen to strip away all the staging from the E...