Kira Daniels, Author at North West End UK

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...

13Mar

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Macbeth (an undoing) – The Rose Theatre

She didn’t know what she was headed for, and when she found out what she was headed for, it was too late. Macbeths come undone. Playwright and director Zinnie Harris’s new and old work, Macbeth (an undoing) sets out to prove that what is done can in fact be undone rather than merely redone. Shakespeare’s Macbeth is arguably overdone, especially at the moment. From Ralph Fiennes to David Tennant, powerful male actors can’t take their grubby hands off it. Audiences too never seem to tire of it. It’s an enduring story, full of sound and fury, and rife with juicy monologues for actors to sink their fangs into. The juiciness of the plot even translates well into foreign adaptations and lubricates applications to very specific historical metaphors. However much of its adaptive appeal rests on wh...

6Mar

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Rika’s Rooms – The Playground Theatre

The world premiere of Gail Louw’s Rika’s Rooms is adapted from the playwright’s novel of the same name and based on the real-life experiences of her late mother’s childhood flight from Nazi Germany, uneasy teenage settlement in Israel, marriage and immigration to apartheid South Africa, and eventual deterioration and disintegration living with dementia in England. Despite the weighty nature both of the story itself and the delivery method of its storytelling, this harrowing one woman show is suffused with love and light. Emma Wilkinson Wright is a revelation as Rika, where many a singular actor might seem overburdened and stoop under the heft of so dense a series of monologues, she acts with a potent naturalism, ruthlessly efficient in both vocal and physical transformation to the point...

25Feb

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

A Family Business – Omnibus Theatre

A show about how not to blow up the planet, a show about friendship, a show about diplomacy, and a show about what we all owe to each other as individuals and as nations, A Family Business is a genuinely thrilling and intensely educational experience. Written, performed, and introduced by the affable and erudite Chris Thorpe, watching this play feels like making a new friend. Clearly something Thorpe takes quite seriously, friendship is the foundation of this work, and his efforts to befriend experts and ignorant audiences alike are well worth their while. With a severe urgency befitting the play’s subject matter, director Claire O’Reilly weaves audiences confidently through Thorpe’s dense syllabus with more than a little hand holding. Photo: Andreas J. Etter With much the same ef...

23Feb

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Hir – Park Theatre

Vomiting all over the kitchen-sink dramedy, Taylor Mac’s black comedy shakes a cynical showmanship and irreverent discursiveness into an acidic concoction that’s a good deal easier to swallow than it is to digest. Hir (pronounced ‘here’) is a tough watch. Content warnings for “strong profanity throughout, along with discussions of sex, sexuality, and descriptions and visual evidence of domestic violence, rape and drug abuse” can be found by hunting through the production’s online listing and should be heeded. As bashful as its humour is bleak, the play’s darkest scenes are also its most illuminating. Depicting a vision of the American family life metaphorically and literally set in Malvina Reynolds’ “little boxes” it is a claustrophobic environment with a set not quite big enough for its b...

17Feb

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Deathtrap – The Mill at Sonning

What would you do for a great play? In Deathtrap by Ira Levin the answer turns out to be nothing good. With all the aesthetic drippings of a juicy whodunnit and a cast of characters each less winsome than the last, this play is powered by plot twists but never gathers quite enough steam to even fog up a window. Written in 1978 and set in the then not too distant future of 1979 Westport, Connecticut, Deathtrap does little to induce nostalgia in viewers even as it convincingly harkens back to the era of rotary phones, carbon copies, and illicit homosexuality. Fans of the play or film adaptation of Rope will find a dynamic worth exploring here that is ultimately left tantalizingly under investigated by the severely dated script and frustratingly conventional staging. Director Tam Willia...

The Addams Family Live in Concert – London Palladium

14Feb

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

The Addams Family Live in Concert – London Palladium

Act normal. Wear a black dress or pinstripe suit. Paint your face and snap along. At the London Palladium it’s Halloween in February. Copious amounts of fog billow forth from the palatial stage and the theatre is bathed in purple light as audiences amble in, many dressed for the special occasion and already buzzing with excitement. The orchestra, unlike the assembled spirits of the dead, remains unseen but makes its presence known in a vigorous overture playing jauntily under conductor Andrew Hilton, and is energetically reinforced by a skilled ensemble dancing in choreography by Alistair David. Consistently visually interesting even as the plot stretches itself thin and tired jokes leave audiences groaning, this rendition of a mid-tier musical is nonetheless entertaining and well perfo...

When You Pass Over My Tomb – Arcola Theatre

14Feb

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

When You Pass Over My Tomb – Arcola Theatre

Finger-licking, or rather phalanx licking, good, When You Pass Over My Tomb by Sergio Blanco and adapted and directed by Daniel Goldman, is laden with content warnings (for assisted suicide, mentions of necrophilia, mental health, and blasphemous language) but where it might be expected to sink under the weight of its unwieldy themes, instead sails through increasingly murky waters with ease. Photo: Alex Brenner Neither linearly nor exclusively following the story of playwright Sergio Blanco himself as his fictionalized counterpart prepares to undergo assisted suicide and engages in flirtation with the convicted necrophiliac he plans to donate the majority of his body to, this three-hand play dips its toes into many different stories and traditions, including funerals, children’s gam...