Louise Penn, Author at North West End UK

Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story – Online

5Apr

By Louise PennNo Comments

REVIEWS

Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story – Online

Awkward Productions’ latest show streams across the world by popular (and very possibly, Royal) command following a successful run at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe and at the Pleasance in London. Linus Karp’s earlier work has been of the Jellicle kind, but here he brings another icon to the stage in the person of Diana, Princess of Wales. With the help of his trusty PowerPoint, and his partner Joseph Martin’s sound design, Diana comes to life to tell her tale. A cast of many is briskly performed, as are many costume changes. This show revels in its irreverence. This is Diana as you have never seen her, as we join her in heaven for her own, hilarious, autobiography. Karp looks the part with the downcast eyes and part-pout, and in bringing Diana’s ‘story’ to the stage, has pre-...

Nigel Osner: Still Ticking! – Etcetera Theatre

17Oct

By Louise PennNo Comments

London

Nigel Osner: Still Ticking! – Etcetera Theatre

Barrister turned cabaret performer Nigel Osner has had a busy life. In twenty-five years on the stage (“it sounds better than quarter of a century”) this lively septuagenarian has formed his new show following his near-death experience during heart surgery last year. Over the course of an hour Osner looks at the songs he has written, the places he has been to become “self-sufficient” and “comfortable” with his ageing self and performs a handful of character-driven monologues. He tells us of the musicals he wrote – Rock Heaven, with its posturing star and cyborgs, never got produced, but Magic in Ravenswood, a children’s fantasy based on Osner’s own book, did – and his earlier shows, notably Angel to Vampire! which won acclaim at the Buxton Fringe. In personality, Osner presents as...

28Mar

By Louise PennNo Comments

London

Dracula – Richmond Theatre

When actor James Gaddas received an offer to work on a television documentary exploring the origins of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it sent him into an obsessive investigation to discover the truth behind the myth. Such is the premise of this new adaptation, in which Gaddas is not only the writer but performer of fifteen different characters. Bringing Stoker’s novel to life is something many others have done from the days of the silent screen: if you haven’t read the book, you have surely seen one of the film, television or stage adaptations. But what if Stoker had really meant to write a work of non-fiction about vampiric activity, and what if an investigation into his real intentions is cursed? As Gaddas tells the story of his interaction with documentary evidence and a trail which takes...

Mimma: A musical of war and friendship – Cadogan Hall

2Mar

By Louise PennNo Comments

London

Mimma: A musical of war and friendship – Cadogan Hall

Playing for one-night only in a charity gala concert performance for the Prince’s Trust, Mimma is a story of personal sacrifice in war that seems glumly relevant in the current climate. Sadly, despite a 48-piece BBC Concert Orchestra and a starry cast led by Sir David Suchet, Celinde Schoenmaker, Louise Dearman, John Owen Jones, plus opera stars Ashley Riches and Elena Xanthoudakis, this show is uneven from the start and is neither musical, war drama, or opera. The opening scene set in July 1940 hints at conflict, but we then go back to 1938 and a Turin where the young Mimma (Schoenmaker, enigmatic) is at a family party. Her uncle and mother conspire to send her to safety in London, where Uncle Lorenzo (Jones, underused) has a café in Soho, as war fizzles on the horizon. Her uncle...

The Rubber Merchants – Old Red Lion Theatre

14Jan

By Louise PennNo Comments

London

The Rubber Merchants – Old Red Lion Theatre

A lengthy and absurdist look at commerce, love and sex, this revival of Hanoch Levin’s tragicomic play is brought to the stage by Gamayun Theatre and proves to be an uncomfortable and disquieting watch. The Rubber Merchants is about staying safe, with Asya Sosis’s production attempting to merge “the absurdist comedy of Israeli literature, Ukranian theatre tradition and British styles of performance”. With a floor strewn with packing peanuts, a throbbing disco beat, and a constant drooling objectification of women, this play somehow struggles to hit its mark. Yohanan Tsingerhai (sweaty, nervous, a borderline pervert around women, played by Tom Dayton), Bella Berlow (unpleasant and impenetrable, played by Hadas Kershaw), and Shmuel Sproll (a jaded would-be rock star, played by Joseph E...

Lady Chatterley’s Lover – stream.theatre

8Oct

By Louise PennNo Comments

REVIEWS

Lady Chatterley’s Lover – stream.theatre

A musical based on DH Lawrence's controversial last novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, sounds an interesting prospect. John Robinson – a former engineer and academic who turned composer late in life – has taken the romantic thread of the story, but jettisoned the sex, earthy language, and nudity to make a PG friendly show. Filmed during its two-night run at the Shaftesbury Theatre in June, Sasha Regan's production benefits from a clever two-tier set by Andrew Exeter highlighting the deeply rooted difference in class between Constance, Lady Chatterley (Georgia Lennon), and the rough gamekeeper (Michael Pickering) who had been an officer in the Great War. There is wood panelling and trappings of wealth above, and the rough bark of trees in the wood below. An early number underlines the pa...

3Sep

By Louise PennNo Comments

North West

Alexithymia – GM Fringe Online

Alexithymia is a term used in psychiatry as “the inability to recognise or describe one’s own emotions”. Although not a core feature of autism, it can affect as many as 50% diagnosed with it. In Madison Weinhoffer’s short theatre piece, which runs at less than twenty-five minutes, we are following the journey of “Friend”, who is a lost being needing assistance to find their way back to who they are. The production starts as more art installation than theatre. Projected images and music add to a general sense of confusion and disorder. The letters which spell the title of the show mix and disintegrate as watch. Friend and voices engage as abstract images are shown on a landscape we can only partly see, but not fully appreciate. Then the show becomes more of a traditional theatre pi...

23Jul

By Louise PennNo Comments

REVIEWS

Noir – Vertigo Theatre Company

Veronica Smart is as smart as her name. Ambitious, alluring, avaricious. Everything a femme fatale should be. In Vertigo Theatre Company’s 150-minute thriller, filmed largely in black and white with one colour – red – highlighting moments of action or arousal, Mrs Smart plots a dark and sordid revenge when she finds her husband Cliff in flagrante with his secretary. This tawdry tale is introduced by Detective Sal Pelletier, a gravel-voiced man with a permanent cigarette in his hand. As he recounts scene by scene, he watches as we do as the story unfolds. Writer/director Craig Hepworth and producer Karl Burge man the cameras (which are mobile phones) and brought their nine strong cast together in a versatile location – the Great Northern Warehouse in Manchester. Without any experie...

My Son’s a Queer … but what can you do? – Turbine Theatre

25Jun

By Louise PennNo Comments

London

My Son’s a Queer … but what can you do? – Turbine Theatre

Rob Madge is putting on a Disney parade. In this heart-warming show we meet the young Robert through old videos of the productions staged in their living room. An intelligent and confident child, Madge graced the West End stage in Mary Poppins, Matilda, and Les Misérables. It is clear from the obsessive attention placed on these family shows (programmes, rehearsal schedules, that they were destined to head in front of the footlights. To pinhole this show in a particular genre would be an injustice. It is a play about expression and tolerance. It is a musical, with songs which reach out to queer children anywhere, as step by step their lyrics comment on the actor’s childhood. It is a memoir, with the grown Rob looking back on their younger self, sometimes lip-synching words, always...

Short But Sweet: Zoom Edition Liverpool Network Theatre Group

15May

By Louise PennNo Comments

REVIEWS

Short But Sweet: Zoom Edition Liverpool Network Theatre Group

Liverpool Network Theatre, a company of non-professional local creatives, share five short plays in their first Zoom live-stream. In Private Number, written by Steve Bird, William (PJ Murray) and Judy (Liana Jane Bourne) have an awkward first date, but events conspire against them. Although the ending was weak and the premise a little unconvincing, the plot twist was interesting and there could be room for expansion of this piece to find out what happened next. First-time director Gillian Paterson Fox does a respectable job. The Interview, by John Jones, has moments of comic mania as it progresses. You can tell it was written for a couple of male characters, but Katarina Dobrovodska gives a lot of expression to her keen candidate with tall tales, and Karolina Gorska’s reactions are a...