Paul Clarke, Author at North West End UK

10Apr

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Shirley Valentine – Leeds Playhouse

If King Lear remains the biggest challenge for actors of a certain vintage, then the 15000 word solo monologue that is Shirley Valentine represents a similar mountain to climb for an actress. Unlike playing the mad king this is one woman setting off on a two hour monologue, whilst also being asked to cook eggs and chips from scratch in front of a live audience. Playing frustrated housewife Shirley who finally breaks free of her shackles requires strong technique and iron nerve as there is nobody to pull you out of the mire if it goes wrong, and thankfully Mina Anwar has both. Willy Russell’s greatest creation is a lonely eighties and frustrated Liverpool housewife who is reduced to having a running conversation with her kitchen wall before she bins her dim sexist husband. She heads o...

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – Leeds Grand

28Mar

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Yorkshire & Humber

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – Leeds Grand

As a critic if you keep going long enough then yet another touring production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat will come along. It would be easy to be snooty about Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s debut collaboration, but this family friendly musical is still a lot of fun - if a little dated - and critically has some great tunes. Unlike some of Lloyd Webber’s later bombastic scores this is more pop rock, that was of its time like other seventies hits Godspell or Hair, with the added spice of Rice’s always witty words. It's a short for a musical reworking of Joseph’s story in the Bible where he is sold into slavery by his 11 jealous brothers, before hooking up with the Egyptian Pharaoh to work out what the ruler's dreams meant thus saving his nation from disaster. ...

17Mar

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Animal Farm – Leeds Playhouse

People can be beasts so what better way to explore the mysteries of the human psyche than through a bunch of animals who rise up to take over a farm. George Orwell’s Animal Farm was on one level an allegory as anthropomorphic animals banish their brutal human masters to create their own society, but underneath the metaphors it remains a pin sharp examination of human nature. The novella was inspired by Orwell’s experiences in the Spanish Civil War when Stalinist zealots undermined the leftist Popular Front letting Franco’s Fascists take power and serves as a salient reminder that it takes only one monster to smash democracy. Animal Farm is celebrating its 8oth anniversary just as populism rears its ugly head across the world, so there has rarely been a more important time for it to b...

9Mar

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Yorkshire & Humber

The Intrusion – Leeds Playhouse

Famously it’s said that cockroaches will be the only living things to survive a nuclear holocaust. So, it makes sense for theatre makers Bric a Brac and Told by an Idiot to use our six legged insect friends acting as a metaphor for how the seemingly more advanced human race are determined to destroy our planet. The Intrusion is set below a devastated earth’s surface as the cockroach’s scheme to take control until they discover the sole female survivor of our species, throwing the world domination plans of Queen of the Insects Cecille into disarray. The really clever conceit of this often amusing, if slightly depressing, piece is that the cockroaches seem as obsessed with pointless hierarchies and destructive power dynamics as are our own billionaires and oligarchs. Along th...

5Mar

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Yorkshire & Humber

Calamity Jane – Leeds Grand Theatre

All musicals need at least two showstoppers, and Calamity Jane exceeds that bar with songs to spare. Show opener The Deadwood Stage (Whip-Crack-Away) would be enough on its own for any self-respecting posse of musical theatre fans, but when you throw in the Oscar winning Secret Love, plus an utterly bonkers ahistorical plot, then it’s time to saddle up for a fun night out in Dakota’s Wild West. Calamity Jane is a stagecoach driver in Deadwood where her sparring partner gunslinger Wild Bill Hickok helps keep the peace, and when a local saloon singer is unmasked as a drag act she hightails it to Chicago to persuade famed performer Adelaide Adams to come back to Deadwood. But the brash and excitable Calamity - who as the folk of Deadwood sing is Careless With The Truth - is aptly ...

2Mar

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Yorkshire & Humber

The House Party – Leeds Playhouse

Miss Julie is one of the great totems of naturalistic writing and that gives Laura Lomas full licence to update August Stringberg’s text from a Swedish mansion to an upscale London apartment as a raucous house party goes off the rails Lomas also makes the main protagonists mismatched eighteen-year-olds as hidden passions and enmities between the trio are slowly exposed over an intense 90 minutes told straight through. Despite the update Lomas does keep to the key principles of naturalism by making the whole scenarios realistic, the characters are most definitely flesh and blood with all the flaws that brings, and they are informed by their heredity and environment. Our Julie is an entitled, but damaged, posh kid who is throwing a boozy eighteen birthday party to spite her absent rich...

Only Fools and Horses: The Hit Musical – Leeds Grand

26Feb

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Yorkshire & Humber

Only Fools and Horses: The Hit Musical – Leeds Grand

Once upon a time before catch up TV millions of people used to sit around in their millions on Christmas Day to watch hit shows with Only Fools and Horses being an annual festive ratings buster. So, it was obvious it would become a stage show, but what was more surprising that the antics of dodgy Peckham street trader Derek ‘Del Boy’ Trotter and his gormless bruv Rodney would end up as the sort of musical Cockney knees up you might have dahn the boozer. Thankfully the producers have gone for early Fools and Horses before the show really jumped the shark when the Trotters actually became millionaires, so Granddad is their sidekick rather than that unfunny buffoon Uncle Albert. The TV series was created by legendary comedy writer John Sullivan, and his son Jim, working with comedy grea...

The Merchant of Venice 1936 – Leeds Playhouse

21Feb

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Yorkshire & Humber

The Merchant of Venice 1936 – Leeds Playhouse

There’s always a feeling of trepidation when creatives shift The Bard’s words into a more contemporary setting, but this production of an always controversial play completely resonates with the troubled times we live in This adaptation by former Eastender Tracy-Ann Oberman and director Brigid Larmour is set in 1936 around the Battle of Cable Street in London’s East End as working class Jews and their allies stood together to kick Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists off their streets. Here the characters are on both sides of this bitter political battle. Sound familiar? Oberman is the first female Shylock becoming an East End money lender living off Cable Street who strikes a deal with Fascist noble Antonio, which has disastrous consequences for the single mum. This is a l...

19Feb

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Yorkshire & Humber

All Blood Runs Red – Leeds Playhouse

An intimating the dog show is always a meta challenge, so you knew there was a need to pay attention as they rigorously stress tested Jean Luc Godard’s idea that ‘a story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order’. This company has always played with form and narrative structure as Mancunian actor Morgan Bailey tells the mainly forgotten story of adventurer Eugene Bullard, as he interweaves his own experiences in France playing a black GI in his first feature film. To add another layer he tells the story of wanting to pitch a movie of Bullard’s life after he fled the attempted lynching of his father in the deep south in the early twentieth century. Bailey also wrote this piece with the company’s Co-Artistic Director Andrew Quick, who was also fas...

8Feb

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Yorkshire & Humber

Shellshocked – Leeds Playhouse

When a shellshocked army veteran walks into an artist’s studio it starts a dark game of cat and mouse that ends with a really neat twist. Wesley has survived the horrors of World War II and desperate for work as he recovers from his PTSD he seeks a job with local artist Mr Lupine, who seems determined to humiliate his wannabe apprentice at every turn. But just much abuse can damaged hero Wesley take? Philip Stokes directs his own words, setting his compelling two hander that has echoes of Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth in his native Leeds. Over a tense 70 minutes he offers a mediation on the nature of war, loss, honour and what it takes to be a great artist rather than a mediocrity like Lupine. Lee Bainbridge takes a break from his day job as the Playhouse’s Building Manager to pl...