Kira Daniels, Author at North West End UK

The Comedy of Errors – Eastbury Manor House

31May

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

The Comedy of Errors – Eastbury Manor House

Double twins and twin doubles! This quartet of Three Inch Fools bring it all to the stage in their rambunctious rendition of “Shakespeare’s shortest comedy” trimmed of all its fat and implanted with several eye catching new musical interludes. Billed as “a musical take on Shakespeare” the Fools’ performance methodology is a tried-and-true formula. There are trap doors, nametagged doublets, ad libs, and prat falls -gimmicks galore. The play is both pure frivolity and ruthless efficiency as the company works overtime to squeeze every gag and galivant into the hours before darkness claims their almost obnoxiously charming outdoor playing space. Detailing (and on many occasions instead summarizing) the exploits of long-lost and reluctantly-reunited identical twins Antipholus and Anti...

The Secret Diary of Henry VIII – Eastbury Manor

27May

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

The Secret Diary of Henry VIII – Eastbury Manor

Come rain or shine. Bring a chair, a picnic blanket, or a picnic for that matter. There’s merry fooling to be had, mellifluous music to be heard, and a manicured lawn to lounge on. This relaxed staging of theatrical farce is anything but languorous. With frenetic pacing to match the attention span of even the most distractible of children and a host of characters frenzied enough to drive parents to distraction, Three Inch Fools’ The Secret Diary of Henry VIII pulls off a difficult balancing act of consistently holding audience’s attention without ever demanding or begging it. Gently cradled in the charming back garden of the only moderately grandiose Eastbury Manor House, audiences are engaged without ostentation and entertained without overwhelming. The rapport between performer and au...

23May

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Lady Dealer – Bush Theatre

Business is booming. Bass is thumping. Charly’s heart is beating a little too fast, the world is spinning a little too quickly, and someone might be getting sick on the carpet any second now. In this production of Lady Dealer by Martha Watson Allpress, the explosive Alexa Davies plays Charly, the “Lady Dealer” breaking the greenhouse ceiling on feminist drug dealing. A whip smart and poetically eloquent but socially stunted and economically frustrated young woman cusping millennial and gen z identities, Charly is a dynamo in bed rot. Jasmine Araujo’s costume design is convincingly sloppy and effectively evocative of an era of isolation all too familiar to us all. The “Lady Dealer” is not a covid avoidant recluse, but her lifestyle will be comprehensible to anyone who at one point...

Much Ado About Nothing – Shakespeare’s Globe

20May

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Much Ado About Nothing – Shakespeare’s Globe

Shakespeare’s enduringly delightful tale of wit-crossed lovers enlivens The Globe Theatre this summer, pouring Mediterranean sun into every darkened crevice of that wooden “O”. Directed by Associate Artistic Director Sean Holmes and composed of an energetic cast of young actors, this production is both brash and bashful. The convivial environment of the open-air theatre is well suited to these frolicsome festivities and each of its performers seem intent upon maximizing the audiences delight in their collective spectacle. From the processional marches of the visiting Don Pedro and his crew of lovesick soldiers to the courting dances of Leonato and his bevy of irreverential young maidens, every opportunity for mirth is here seized. Led in their revelry by the ever-at-war and never-in-lov...

The Nine Day Queen – Barons Court Theatre

20May

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

The Nine Day Queen – Barons Court Theatre

It’s said that birds of a feather flock together- until the cat comes. When danger looms does solidarity dissipate? Can you really save yourself if no one else is safe? How can women do right by each other when the world seems so determined to do us wrong? The fledgling Itchy Feet Theatre Company asks these questions and more in their new staging of The Nine Day Queen both written and directed by Jen Tucker. A youthful and bright-eyed company of four delicate but determined looking girls is anchored in this performance by Maddie White as Rita, a fifteen-year-old, whose best friend Lena (Moya Matthews) has suffered a brutal attack and is hospitalized and comatose. While Rita awaits Lena’s eventual reawakening or untimely passing, she dwells in memories of their friendship, buries herself...

20May

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Sniff – Park Theatre

Pissing on stage has never been more popular. From Travis Alabanza’s Overflow to Sam Grabiner’s Boys on the Verge of Tears plays set in bathrooms proliferate. It seems all the best new writing owes its inspiration to some form of cubicle poetry. Poetry this play is. Lewd, brash, and at times nauseating poetry it may be but it is poetry and a very powerful sort at that. With spectacular writing and performances by Gabriel Fogarty-Graveson & Felix Grainger under Ben Purkiss’s deft direction the chemistry between Liam (Fogarty-Graveson) and Alex (Grainger), two men who meet in a pub toilet, genuinely sizzles. Fogarty Graveson is especially undeniable as Liam, a character so intensely charming and menacing that he is somehow impossible not to root for even as he gets up to nothing but b...

20May

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Cold Water – Park Theatre

Cold Water is fantastic writing by Philippa Lawford who also directs this both uproariously and understatedly funny small-scale, world-premiere production. The play is exceptionally well cast, a necessity in a two-character, full length play of any scale. Whereas some two-handers will focus on generating unbearable tension or palpable chemistry, Cold Water is the rare theatrical experience in which connection does not come at the cost of comfort. Both actors are thoroughly convincing in their characters both together and alone on stage. Under wondrously ambient lighting design by Ed Saunders even dim transitions between scenes feel captivating and revelatory. This is a play it is impossible to tear your eyes away from, not because it keeps you on the edge of the seat or fearmongers an e...

Twelfth Night – Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre

14May

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Twelfth Night – Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre

Twelfth Night or What You Will is a little wishy-washy. Is it a girl or a boy? A grief comedy? A musical or a straight play? It is what you will make of it. The building blocks are all there. The humour, the grief, the ribaldry, and the bleeding heart, all come out to play. Owen Horsley’s new production lives its life to the fullest, making great use of the Open Air Theatre environment, breathing vitality into the too oft neglected queer imagery of the text, and taking full advantage of the Regent’s Park audience’s willingness to be delighted, transported, and even occasionally challenged. This is a production is a rarity among contemporary stagings of Shakespeare’s work in that treats its historical material with full reverence without taking anything in it for granted. Audiences overly f...

The Government Inspector – Marylebone Theatre

10May

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

The Government Inspector – Marylebone Theatre

Government inspector? I hardly know ‘er! Those familiar with Gogol’s work via other translations or adaptations will be surprised to find this story transplanted from Imperial Russia into a farcical and fanciful imagining of Victorian England. Top hats tip, feathers flail, and breeches bust as the rambunctious set populating this unspecified vaguely historical small provincial town bob and blunder all over each other. There is no gag this cast is likely to sneer at with steady, practical stage violence, direct comic address to spectators, and even the launching of a cabbage into the melee all being paraded under the audience’s nose. The cynical heart of the play, although invoked in a couple of jarring directorial choices, never quite manages to fight its way to the surface of the burbling...

7May

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Draft 23 – Old Red Lion Theatre

Somewhere between Waiting for Godot and waiting in a mile long bathroom line behind the two most annoying people at your college while they slowly figure out they don’t actually even like each other, Draft 23 is set in a shifting landscape of tottering piles of laundry, watches, belts, and ashtrays. This play follows the slow and inevitable demise of a fictionalized relationship that cannot maintain itself without the structure of a functional script. The stakes are low and the characters themselves are lower, alternating between various tableaus of languidity as they mope about the playing space without any vestige of playfulness in them. Self-important but unable to self-articulate, the text is under-rehearsed and both actors’ performances are pervaded by a self-consciousness that underc...