Kira Daniels, Author at North West End UK

5May

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Captain Amazing – Southwark Playhouse

Good for a laugh and great for a cathartic sob, Alistair McDowall’s Captain Amazing takes only a few minutes (65 give or take) of bedtime storytelling to spin back time and create a whole new universe. The world of Captain Amazing is a sparse one. He goes to work at a store and tells people not to buy things they don’t need, brings chain vouchers on his dates, and lives in an apartment with one chair (and another upstairs if you want him to go and get it). He’s not one to take a stand or cause a fuss but he’ll do his darndest to save an innocent life. Directed by Clive Judd and produced by Matthew Schmolle Productions in partnership with charities working on male mental health and support for single parents, this production is extraordinary. Mark Weinman’s chimerical performance as Capt...

29Apr

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Moby Dick – Wilton’s Music Hall

You know the story. Boy meets whale. Whale eats boy’s leg. Boy never gets over whale. The enduring power of the novel, Moby Dick is difficult to relate to in this modern day and age for audiences without a special interest in whale anatomy or sperm oil derivation methods. Some productions take on this difficulty by recontextualizing the story, playing up its tragic or romantic elements, and this production, by the theatre ensemble simple8 technically checks both of these boxes. Our narrator/protagonist Ishmael (Mark Arends) and his beloved bunkmate Queequeg (Tom Swale) have more than a hint of chemistry and jokingly allude to a sea marriage. The doomed Captain Ahab (Guy Rhys) and his gloomy mate Starbuck (Hannah Emanuel) both take their respective roles in spreading their component element...

20Apr

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

1884 – Shoreditch Town Hall

What makes a house a home? What makes a hall a theatre and what makes a game play? Conceived by theatre-maker Rhianna Ilube and brought to life by immersive game-theatre makers Coney, 1884, is a hoot and a half. Split into two parts, the first running around two hours that go by in a flash and the second making less of a second full act than a stunningly complex coda, this experience doesn’t waste a minute of the time it takes from you. Intriguingly complex, Jacob Wu’s set design is as functional as it is whimsical and establishes the playfulness of the environment being curated right from the get-go. Audience members self-select seatings of seven to begin the game and from these small pods communities are born. Each activity is thoughtful, engaging, and accessible. Sound designer, Mwen, a...

20Apr

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

The Glass Menagerie – Rose Theatre

Directed by Atri Banerjee and designed by Rosanna Vize, this stylized performance of Tennessee Williams’ iconic family drama both juices up and strips down the physical environs of a timeless story, but its enduring appeal is undulled by theatrical innovation. A restaging both faithful to its formidable script and imbued with a magic of its own, this production is truly enchanting. Geraldine Somerville scintillates as the reluctant matriarch Amanda Wingfield whose erstwhile husband “fell in love with long distances” and hasn’t appeared in more than a decade save in his grinning portrait on the family’s mantle. This production’s rendering of the Wingfield family home places this mantle on the invisible fourth wall which is neither broken nor ever explicitly mended in this staging but rat...

Pansexual Pregnant Piracy – Soho Theatre

1Apr

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Pansexual Pregnant Piracy – Soho Theatre

Get on board, baby. It’s Pansexual Pregnant Piracy at the Soho Theatre. Creators Eleanor Colville, Ro Suppa, and Robbie Taylor Hunt also make up three quarters of the four-person cast singing and dancing their way through the totally possibly true and occasionally even accurate life story of real-life eighteenth-century pirate Anne Bonny. Played with great aplomb and shimmering gravitas by Suppa, Anne is a solid lead audiences root for as easily as she uproots gender conventions. Colville’s panachefull presentation as Calico Jack is delicious and the joy of creative performance shines out of every porthole. Elizabeth Chu rounds out the cast in a practically perfect performance as “hot wet babe” Mary Read, and an even more transfixing interlude as an even wetter fish. Creator, perform...

23Mar

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Mary’s Daughters – The Space Theatre

Why do we tell ghost stories? To titillate? To frighten? To inspire? To warn? To grieve? To honour? Mary’s Daughters, written by Kaya Bucholc and Will Wallace and directed for The Space Theatre by Kay Brattan, attempts all of these feats. A haunting triplet performance by Megan Carter as Mary Wollstonecraft, Rachael Reshma as Mary Shelley, and Kaya Bucholc as Shelley’s forgotten half-sister and Wollstonecraft’s “unfortunate girl,” Fanny Imlay, sets out to right the wrongs of history and restore a legacy to three women who despite their brilliance did not get the option to control their own historical narratives. Many of the salacious details of the three women’s lives long known in fun fact format and prized as illuminating context by scholars of their works are here fleshed out, rep...

20Mar

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Indigo Giant – Soho Poly

“I will plant Indigo in your head.” Both threat and promise, this is the doom of a story’s characters and the hope of its audience in this touring production of Indigo Giant. Written by Ben Musgrave, directed by Gavin Joseph, and with production, dramaturgy & lyrics by Leesa Gazi, this moving play has been travelling between venues and currently finds itself nestled in the basement room of the Soho Poly, a somewhat cramped venue still in the midst of its renovation but steadily working its way toward re-emerging as a cultural and theatrical hub. Telling the story of the Bengali Indigo Rebellion, the plot begins shortly after the wedding of raiyat Sadhu (Diljohn Singh) and Kshetromani (Amy Tara), a young woman whose father was ruined by British planters exploiting both labour and lan...

18Mar

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Cold, Dark Matters – The Hope Theatre

It is said that curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back. It is also said that you shouldn’t go sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, and that good advice is almost certain to be ignored. Cold, Dark Matters is a very curious play, and every aspect of its production at the Hope Theatre is morbidly satisfying. Altogether more thought provoking than it has any right to be, this fun, dark tale is neither cynical nor vapid, instead approaching its murky subject matter with a refreshingly forthright earnestness, much the way one might attempt to earn the respect of a particularly wilful horse, or an intimidatingly intimate crowd. Writer and performer Jack Brownridge Kelly doesn’t bother with charming the audience, he simply gets straight to work, and wins them over by be...

17Mar

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

The Good Father – Riverside Studios

What are you doing for sex tonight? When was the last time you felt comfortable singing in front of someone? Who do you belong with, really? The Good Father poses all these questions and leaves plenty of empty space in its performance for you to spend the whole night coming up with your own personal answers. Directed by Mark Fitzgerald and written by Christian O’Reilly, this play is somewhat lacking in theatricality and sitting in the audience you get the sense that it’s only being performed live in front of you because there wasn’t enough budget to turn it into a proper film. Both actors’ performances are serviceable and occasionally attention-grabbing, but they have a lot of empty space to fill, and it is an intimate enough story that audiences feel more like interlopers than particip...

14Mar

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Harry Clarke – Ambassadors Theatre

A rose by any other name… still has its thorns. It’s what we love about our favourite conmen, Anna Delvey, Elizabeth Holmes, Remington Steele… They’re beautiful but also terribly cringe inducing. We love to hate them but can’t quite bring ourselves to look down on them, so powerful is their allure. Maybe it’s the accent, each one unique and bizarrely captivating, all the more for its inauthenticity. Harry Clarke’s is immaculate, as is Philip Brugglestein’s. In fact, all of the characters Billy Crudup speaks on behalf of over Harry Clarke’s 80-minute runtime are perfectly articulated, under the supervision of vocal coach, Deborah Lapidus. The stage cousin of Matt Damon’s Talented Mr. Ripley, Crudup’s Philip Brugglestein / Harry Clarke is no less charming for being 30 years his film fellow’s...