Kira Daniels, Author at North West End UK

3Aug

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

I Love You, Now What? – Park Theatre

First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes anticipatory grief? Written by actor and comedian Sophie Craig, I Love You, Now What? is a play that weaves its way through the chronology of courtship just as it plows headlong through each of the stages of grief. Craig plays Ava, a young musician who idolizes her father (Ian Puleston-Davies) both musically and personally. When he is diagnosed with a terminal illness Ava tries to blow off steam with a young actor named Theo (Andy Umerah) and instead finds herself completely fogged up in love. As their romance blooms and her father’s health fades, the intermingling of joy and grief becomes too potent a force for one woman to bear and Ava begins to lose her grip on all the things she loves most. Director and dramaturg Toby Clarke a...

25Jul

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Bangers – Arcola Theatre

“A lyrical love letter to UK garage,” Bangers is a mixed bag mix tape of bright futures and crushed dreams. Under the neon glow of Laura Howard’s chilled/chilly lighting design, the Arcola Theatre is transformed into a concert venue. DJ Tanya-Loretta Dee cues up tracks under an industrial scaffold as audiences file into the space, meander across the stage’s set of club speakers, and make their way to their assigned seats. There’s a strange uneasiness to the arrangement of the space which places a playing stage not above its audience but in the arena pit of the small Hackney theatre. Very much a North London storytelling theatre, and despite its ushering staff’s best efforts the atmosphere cultivated in the room is not that of bouncer patrolled nightclub where the music is booming and th...

24Jul

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

The Hot Wing King – National Theatre

Directed by Roy Alexander Weise, Katori Hall’s Pulitzer Prize winning comedy makes its London debut in the relatively modest Dorfman Theatre. Set in Memphis, Tennessee and playing out in the interior of a particularly well-endowed suburban home expertly designed for the stage by Rajha Shakiry, this is no minimalistic kitchen sink drama. With running water coming from the taps, steam rising from the pots, and marinade dripping from big wooden stirring spoons, this is a theatrical experience with all the trimmings. Head chef and hopeful hot wing competition champion, Cordell (Kadiff Kirwan), plates up scrumptious chicken and sizzling drama in his boyfriend Dwayne’s (Simon-Anthony Rhoden) illustriously decorated middle-class kitchen. Circumnavigating the colossal counter island where Co...

17Jul

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Conversion – Lion & Unicorn Theatre

Precarious Theatre is taking its shot at proselytizing without any precarity to it. In both the writing and staging of its new play, Conversion, there are shockingly few risks taken and very little grit for audiences to sink their teeth into. As promised in its advertising, the play, written by Precarious Theatre founders Liam Grogan and Marc Biasioli covers an excerpt from the life and times of St. Augustine of Canterbury (David Allen). Beginning with his dispensation from sunny Rome and following his journey to the strange and savage land of Britain, this play is not shy of including multitudes of characters in its opening scenes. With more the aura of a school pageant than a fringe theatre production its cast galumphs and galivants across the stage in mock pagan revelry before...

12Jul

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Dressing Gown – Theatre at the Tabard

Have you been bed rotting? Are you in your dressing gown? Is it mostly clean? Are you itching to get out and get dressed, or get dressed and get out? It’s amazing how the trappings of coziness can feel so oppressively snug when certain conditions of comfort are not met. The intimacy of the the Tabard Theatre for instance shifts into something else entirely under the influence of Andrew Cartmel’s new bedroom farce, aptly if unimaginatively titled Dressing Gown so called after its leading man’s essential predicament and sole comfort. Jamie Hutchins stars as Ash, a theatre director whose morning recumbence is interrupted by a series of visitors who each come bearing a unique challenge to his efforts to finally clothe himself. Much like the play’s title, its characters and plot are p...

11Jul

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Interview with the Vamp – Soho Theatre

A love letter to the lost and found art of vamping, this rambunctious queer song-cycle has it all. We get logos in a well-reasoned critique of the sinister ascendance hyper realistic cakes, ethos in the unimpeachable credentials provided by Dr Adam Perchard’s perfect hair, and just almost surfeiting pathos in ten top notch cabaret songs each braver, funnier, and filthier than the last. Perchard’s uneasy chemistry with composer and pianist Richard Thomas juxtaposes well with their easy command of the eager audience instantly won over by their unique mixture of sheepish charm and operatic bravado all bundled up in a scintillating gold trained over gown that can’t help but sparkle. Composed of a lot of singing and a little talking, Interview with the Vamp comprises about an hour’s w...

11Jul

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Bindweed – Arcola Theatre

What can you do about domestic abuse? Martha Loader’s whopper of a one act, Bindweed, begs the question. Directed by Jennifer Tang, the play follows Jen (Laura Hanna), a group counsellor for men who have committed acts of domestic abuse. Although the bulk of the play’s plot comes apart in these facilitated sessions with the men she is attempting to rehabilitate, Loader does not confine her heroine exclusively to the therapeutic setting. We see her on a date with disappointing romantic prospect, Peter (Shailan Gohil), having drinks with married friends Nina (Josie Brightwell) and Ed (Simon Darwen) and in check-ins with her supervisor Alistair (Sean Kingsley) each played by an actor who also takes on a role in the world of the sessions themselves. This double casting and its both troublin...

Your Lie In April – Harold Pinter Theatre

8Jul

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Your Lie In April – Harold Pinter Theatre

A musical about musicians and for everyone, the play is based on the manga by Naoshi Arakawa and operates with a clear respect for the conventions of its source material and culture of origin. With a new English book by Rinne B. Groff, music by Frank Wildhorn, and lyrics by Carly Robin Green and Tracy Miller, the story is told concisely and movingly. Jason Howland’s music arrangement and orchestration is tremendous, and the work is as much a pleasure to listen to as any musical that so highly prizes musicianship. Directed and choreographed by Nick Winston, this production has a surreal gracefulness to it as transitions between scenes and musical numbers coalesce seamlessly and lend a magical quality to every encounter between character and audience. The venue is pushed to its full ph...

6Jul

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Sparks – Jack Studio Theatre

Sisterhood is complicated. Sparks, a ninety-minute play by Simon Longman does not make it any simpler. Directed by Julia Stubbs for the Upper Hand Theatre whose co-founders also star in this production, Sparks stages the reunion of two sisters separated by twelve years without contact and a lifetime of disparate experience. Lisa Minichiello plays Sarah, a young woman without any friends who lives in an apartment without a sofa, works in an office without any purpose, and goes through the first twenty minutes of the play without any lines. Emma Riches dominates the stage as Jess, Sarah’s chaotic older sister who materializes on her doorstep one night with a goldfish and a back bar. The contrast between them is extreme almost to the point of unreality and their distinguishing features ...

25Jun

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

The Beckett Trilogy – Coronet Theatre

How much Beckett is too much Beckett? For performer and producer Conor Lovett it seems the limit may not exist. His prodigious memory and inexhaustible articulation are well displayed in this production of three plays from the novels Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable all written by Samuel Beckett. Alone on stage but very much confederate with a captive audience eager to absorb what they can from his nearly three-hour monologue, Lovett is tremendously impressive and knows it too. Directed and designed by Judy Hegarty Lovett, his conspirator in Gare St Lazare Ireland, a touring production company specializing in “presentations” of Beckett’s various works. The style of this production is extremely presentational and clearly preoccupied with faithful interpretation of the great ...