Louise Penn, Author at North West End UK

Dead Poets Live: Emily Dickinson – Coronet Theatre

8Mar

By Louise PennNo Comments

London

Dead Poets Live: Emily Dickinson – Coronet Theatre

Dead Poets Live aims to bring poetry to the stage, “creating theatre out of poems and poets”. Over the last ten years, poets from the past from Yeats and Byron to Robert Frost and Stevie Smith have been resurrected in the person of actors such as Rupert Everett, Glenda Jackson, Denise Gough and Monica Dolan. Patsy Ferran is centre stage tonight as one of America’s greatest poets, Emily Dickinson, a 19th century writer who flirted with modernism before it had a name and engaged fully with the world while remaining reclusive and withdrawn physically from it. Her poems are noted for their odd metre and punctuation – chiefly dashes – while offering playful and perceptive views of melancholia, religion and nature. Although other stagings of Dead Poets Live have been presented in full ...

3Feb

By Louise PennNo Comments

London

Loyalties – Questors Theatre

John Galsworthy’s play of society norms and expectations is now over 100 years old, yet Loyalties retains a contemporary relevance. The Questors production is the first to reach the English stage for two decades, with its ensemble including company members both old and new. Charles Winsor (Ant Foran) is a country gentleman, with a house full of guests following race day at Newmarket. When Ferdinand de Levis (Euan Charles), a wealthy Jew, accuses a highly decorated former soldier, Ronald Dancy (Alex Perez), of stealing a sum of money from his room, ranks close and loyalties come into play. In Loyalties it is quickly clear that the question of justice and truth is secondary to the code of ‘esprit de corps’: in essence that those of a similar class and grouping stick together because being...

Rabbie Burns’ Bottom Drawers – Barons Court Theatre

30Jul

By Louise PennNo Comments

London

Rabbie Burns’ Bottom Drawers – Barons Court Theatre

Entering the space at Barons Court Theatre for this “hands on exploration” of the bawdy works of Robert Burns, we find Christine Weir and Jeremy Claydon already in character, welcoming us into this celebration. Framed as a chatty piece between Weir (vocals, keyboard) and Claydon (vocals, percussion), we open with “My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose”, that showcases the purity of the Sckts ballad. “Charlie Is My Darling” includes us in the chorus while allowing Weir and Claydon to prove their worth as musicians working seamlessly together. It also allows a bit of discussion about Burns’s reappropriation of material for nationalistic ends. It's a cautious step to the poems and songs of sexual explitiness, but when we get there, Weir’s outwardly staid Scots housekeeper runs with it w...

Alice in Wonderland – Marylebone Theatre

22Jul

By Louise PennNo Comments

London

Alice in Wonderland – Marylebone Theatre

This new adaptation of the classic novel by Lewis Carroll (and a couple of his other works) is described as an attempt to reimagine the story as “a vivid, immersive dreams cape bursting with colour, shape, and play.” Writer Penny Farrow and director/designer Nate Bertone have developed a charming and chaotic story that intrigues from the moment you see the set of playing cards, mushrooms, and unusual shapes. Alice (Charlotte Bradley) finds herself in a mad world populated by talking animals and a larger than life Queen of Hearts (Daniel Page with his best and most scary pout on). Her changing size is conveyed by the switch of ever-growing drink bottles, and her encounters with the familiar characters crackle with contemporary jokes and impersonations to amuse adults while entertainin...

13Dec

By Louise PennNo Comments

London

The Little Foxes – Young Vic

A rare revival for Lillian Hellman's play, set at the turn of the 20th century. With a title taken from the Bible's Song of Solomon, The Little Foxes is a family drama set in Alabama's cotton country. Regina, Ben and Oscar are siblings living closely together, a family who gained wealth and power when Oscar charmed and married Birdie, daughter of Southern aristocracy and rich plantation owners. They patronise their black servants and are driven by money. When Regina's husband Horace, sick and tired, fails o respond to a business deal, plans to gain the money with or without him. Lyndsey Turner’s production captures all the nastiness behind closed doors, particularly of the unsuccessful marriages at its heart. There are moments of both physical and emotional violence, and...

23Oct

By Louise PennNo Comments

London

Kidults the Musical – Bridewell Theatre

Are our schooldays really the best of our lives, or are they a kind of hell? And is ‘kidulthood’, that space between being a child and being an adult, all that easy to navigate? Mark Tunstall, who writes, directs, and stars as a kind of Fagin/circus master type of ‘Narrata’, started developing this project as a book of poems, a set of “cautionary tales for adults”. With the input of Lulu Chen and others, the poems became songs for this musical, which is now receiving its stage premiere at three venues across London. We are considering the age of thirteen, the start of the teenage years, in the group of children depicted. They are all played by adults, with Tunstall’s character as the only actual ‘grown-up’ on stage. Although there is a promise of a cohesive story, the songs really ar...

King Troll (The Fawn) – New Diorama Theatre

9Oct

By Louise PennNo Comments

London

King Troll (The Fawn) – New Diorama Theatre

A “dark and otherworldly thriller” by Sonali Bhattacharyya, King Troll was a finalist for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Playwriting, and now arrives on the London fringe in a production by Milli Bhatia. The topic is the experience of migrants within the UK, and the plot relies on a mystical, magic realism device, the fawn of the title. At first the story appears straightforward, as South Asian sisters Nikita (coolly efficient Zainab Hasan) and Riya (vulnerable Safiyya Ingar) deal with the latter’s application to stay in the country. Photo: Helen Murray When they decide to phone the friend of their late mother, a delightfully eccentric Shashi (Ayesha Dharker), a lifeline and possible sponsor appears to protect Riya, but at what cost? The bold physicality of Dominic Holmes’s Fawn adds ...

17Jul

By Louise PennNo Comments

London

Knives and Forks – Riverside Studios

In Danielle James's ambitious but uneven play, Iris and Thalia live in a flat share. Firm friends who share a life of carefree partying and fun. But Iris is hiding a catastrophic secret that will rip their world apart. Knives and Forks, directed by Annah Calascione, has a strong story at its heart, one of love and acceptance in the face of the ultimate ending. Where it becomes a little problematic is in the additional elements utilised to tell this story. Both Iris and Thalia have shadows, or 'psyches' who dress like them and express themselves through movement and words or art, added to a huge canvas backdrop. Now and again, it is a clever shorthand to highlight what is not being said. But as both an emotional device, and a practical one to tell us where we are in the non-linear...

28Feb

By Louise PennNo Comments

London

Nachtland – Young Vic

This play by Marius von Mayenberg presented in a translation by Maja Zade sells itself as “a jagged new satire” and is set in modern-day Germany. Siblings Nicola (Dorothea Myar-Bennett) and Philipp (a nervously downtrodden John Heffernan) are clearing out their late father's house. Curiously most of his goods are being cleared from the stage as the audience file in, leaving one item wrapped in brown paper, found in the attic. It’s a painting of a church, a simple piece, but the signature is of the most interest. Is it indeed a painting by Hitler, and if so how did it find its way here? There is plenty of mileage here for black humour or satire, but the pacing feels off and some segues are either head-scratching (Nicola’s husband Fabian (Gunnar Cauthery)’s behaviour takes ...

2Aug

By Louise PennNo Comments

Scotland

Gethsemane – Edinburgh Fringe Online

Gethsemane is a new musical by John Richmond which tells the story of Nadi and Chloe, who were contemporaries of Jesus. This piece in currently in development as a full show and so plays out as a visual album in its current 100-minute form, with songs and narration. Although the images are often simply complementary to the narration or songs, they are sometimes set out of their time - I can see why the parallels are being made (for example, with the homeless in a 21st century London). There are no actors and no on-screen performances. The leading characters are Nadi, a carpenter who works with Jesus in the workshop and based on the “naked disciple” referenced in the Gospel of Mark, and Chloe, the daughter of Joseph of Arimathea, a rich merchant. Must Nadi fight the Romans with his br...