Olivia Cox, Author at North West End UK

26Mar

By Olivia CoxNo Comments

London

Priscilla the Party! – Here at Outernet

Immersive theatre is all the rage in 2024. From Guys and Dolls to Mamma Mia! plenty of stories are returning to the stage with an up-close-and-personal twist. At London’s HERE at Outernet, it’s Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’s turn to get in on the immersive fun with Priscilla The Party! Until the end of September, Priscilla The Party! is transforming HERE at Outernet into the sparkling, disco ball-covered Cockatoo Club, where audiences are brought right into the iconic story of acceptance and self-empowerment. Seated tickets are available, but those who have a standing ticket (like I did) watch the show from the dancefloor, where parts of the stage move, and actors sometimes weave through the crowd. The party starts before the show even begins, with a series of cabaret perform...

23Mar

By Olivia CoxNo Comments

London

Red Pitch – Soho Place

For Tyrell Williams’s Red Pitch, making its West End debut at Soho Place after two sold-out runs at the Bush Theatre, it’s not a case of ‘third time’s the charm’, but rather ‘third time’s an even bigger charm’. A story about the friendship between London-based, football-obsessed teenagers Bilal (Kedar Williams-Stirling), Joey (Emeka Sesay), and Omz (Francis Lovehall), Tyrell Williams was inspired to write Red Pitch after passing by his childhood football pitch to find it had been demolished and replaced with unoccupied housing. All the action is set at the titular ‘red pitch’, where the three friends play football together and dream of professional superstardom. But the pitch plays a much bigger role for the trio than simply providing a space to indulge in their favourite hobby. T...

20Mar

By Olivia CoxNo Comments

London

Karen – The Other Palace

Break-ups are always hard, but Karen’s Protagonist (Sarah Cameron-West, also the writer and producer) has just had a particularly rough one: it’s her 30th birthday, she’s at Alton Towers eating a Calippo, and she’s just been unceremoniously dumped by her long-term boyfriend, Joe. And if things couldn’t get any worse for our Protagonist, it turns out Joe has also been having an affair with her office nemesis, Karen. This very unfortunate event kicks off Karen, a laugh-a-minute, utterly shameless exploration of the messiest parts of heartbreak and self-discovery. For the next 60 minutes, Karen immerses the audience in the internal and external worlds of Protagonist, who often breaks the fourth wall to talk to the audience as if they’re the other characters she’s interacting with. ...

A Most Pressing Issue – New Wimbledon Theatre

14Mar

By Olivia CoxNo Comments

London

A Most Pressing Issue – New Wimbledon Theatre

If you imagine a prison, it probably doesn’t strike you as a place teeming with comic potential. Add in the fact that the prison is on fire, and you’re probably visualising a very dark segment on the News at Ten rather than a comedy. But somehow, Tim Harris manages to turn this rather bleak scenario into a very funny 60-minute show in A Most Pressing Issue, playing this week at Studio at New Wimbledon Theatre. At the centre of this caper is Penton (Harris), the prison’s arrogant and sleazy warden who is desperately on the pull, and his nice-but-dim assistant Orly (Matt Williams, who also collaborated on the script). As the pair plan out how they can woo women — while also dealing with the minor inconvenience of the prison somehow catching fire — the two actors show off their brill...

8Mar

By Olivia CoxNo Comments

London

Oedipus Electronica – Brixton House

Of all the iconic Greek myths that have firmly held their place in our collective consciousness, the story of Oedipus is one of the most infamous. So, what do you get if you take this tragic tale and add a 21st century London setting, strobe lighting, and live electronic music? You get Pecho Mama’s Oedipus Electronica, currently playing at Brixton House until 9th March. Flipping the notorious story of Oedipus, the plot centres around Jocasta (Mella Faye), a writer struggling to complete a script ahead of a rapidly approaching deadline. But when she discovers she’s pregnant with her husband Laius (Kwame Bentil), she feels an almost supernatural compulsion to write about the son she had taken away from her when she was young. Propelled by a force greater than herself, she unknowingly star...

22Feb

By Olivia CoxNo Comments

London

Hadestown – Lyric Theatre

In recent years, the West End has welcomed musicals based on films, books, and even historical events. But Greek mythology was yet to receive the big-budget musical treatment — that is, until Hadestown came stomping into the Lyric Theatre, where it is currently running until December 2024. Created by singer-songwriter Anäis Mitchell as a folk-opera back in 2006, Hadestown has been on a shapeshifting journey — including a sold-out run at the National Theatre in 2018 — which culminated in the Tony Award-winning production that took Broadway by storm in 2019. As soon as its West End transfer was announced last year, directed by Rachel Chavkin, musical theatre fans were bubbling with anticipation to discover whether this new production would live up to its Herculean hype. A story fundame...