Ralph Jeffreys, Author at North West End UK

A Small Enclosed Room with Alfie Murphy – Soho Theatre

15May

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

A Small Enclosed Room with Alfie Murphy – Soho Theatre

A Small Enclosed Room With Alfie Murphy is a unique and funny show that sometimes struggles to deliver on its strong themes and ideas. We begin as a one-man style show. Alfie confides in us about his life, telling us about his band ‘The Camden Stoners’ and the struggles he has with his more sociable, but rather shallow bandmate Jai. From the moment our other performer, Anna Constable, puts her head through the curtain (as Alfie’s ghostwriter dressed as a ghost), the show moves at lightning speed. Alfie falls out hard with Jai, travels to India to lose become a guru, and suddenly finds himself thrown into a particularly aggressive talk show interview before the fourth wall comes crashing down as Constable begins to object to all the costumes and roles, she is forced to put on in order to...

17Apr

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

Ghosts – Lyric Hammersmith

Ibsen’s Ghosts is a serious challenge for anyone to update and adapt. This production falls unfortunately short of meeting that challenge, despite some bright moments. We follow a rich family of mother, Helena, and her difficult son, Oz, as they prepare for the grand opening of a children’s hospital using the money of Carl, Helena’s recently deceased husband. All this is complicated by the presence of Andersen, a lawyer helping to launch the hospital and an old flame of Helena, and Reggie and Jacob, who have worked for Helena and her family for a long time. Soon, all of the buried skeletons come out of the closet, and there is manipulation, suicide threats, and incest. Sadly, where Ibsen’s original is a masterpiece of writing, Gary Owen’s update is not of the same ilk. His adaptation...

15Apr

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

Heisenberg – Arcola Theatre

A brilliant production, Heisenberg is a reimagining of Simon Stephen’s excellent play about relationships and their inherent uncertainty. Portrayed for the first time as a relationship between two women, we follow seventy-five-year-old Alex and the much younger Georgie in a story of an unlikely relationship that all begins when Georgie unexpectedly plants a kiss on Alex’s neck in the middle of a train station. The quality of Simon Stephen’s writing is superb. His characterisation is full of knotty complexity and his dialogue is expert at pulling out all of the tensions between Alex and Georgie. For example, Stephens plays with the form of the characters’ conversations to show us who is in control, who is driving, who is comfortable, and who is not. Thus, it is Georgie who does most of t...

The Play’s The Thing – Wilton’s Music Hall

9Apr

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

The Play’s The Thing – Wilton’s Music Hall

Mark Lockyer’s The Play's The Thing is a completely exhilarating performance, and an incredibly impactful version of Shakespeare’s classic. A one-person Hamlet is a serious challenge to any actor and has become something of a byword for something you should probably give a miss. Do not miss this one. Mark Lockyer is a truly singular actor, and probably one of the few whose inventiveness, energy, and total command of the language allows for this incredible feat to come off so perfectly. Taking us through director Fiona Laird’s very cleverly abridged version of the play, Locker utilises deft characterisation to bring the cast of characters to us. There are subtle changes in voice, and neat, repeated gestures and mannerisms that make the complex task of following an actor switching ...

4Apr

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

RELIC – Coronet Theatre

RELIC suggests in its blurb that it is about “what survives from the past. A thing left behind, be it a memory, an object, a language or being”. On stage, we are treated to a barrage of images, sequences, and absurdist stand up and cabaret style performances from a strange figure: initially in just heels and a kind of bloated, amorphous body suit, this grotesque mannequin transforms and mutates throughout the performance, taking on several forms that are barely, but not entirely un-human. It's a strange show. At the heart of the piece is Euripides Laskaridis’ incredible performance which is itself a serious feat. Purely on a physical level, it demands a great deal of endurance and an incredible physical awareness of the body on stage. But considering he is also the director and set desi...

A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God Whoever Reads It First – Soho Theatre

22Mar

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God Whoever Reads It First – Soho Theatre

A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson is a brilliant piece of physical storytelling, at times funny, thought-provoking, and touching. It follows two boys, Ace (Natasha Roland) and Grasshopper (Xhloe Rice), who are scouts at the time of the Vietnam War. Through child-like inventions we see the world through their eyes, with the lines between playing soldiers at home and being soldiers at war are blurred. Photo: Morgan McDowell The strength of this show comes through its roots in physical theatre and clowning. Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland, performers and co-creators, use this to evoke the child-like world of their characters. The extent of the ‘set’ is one large, black rubber tyre, but through clowning the two are able to produce so much from this one item: a piece of cover under enemy fire, t...

12Mar

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

The Glass Menagerie – The Yard Theatre

When the audience walked into the theatre, an actor was spray painting the wall of the stage, and smoke was being pumped into the air, a fitting start for an exceptional and anarchic evening of theatre. Tennessee Williams' classic play focuses on the Wingfields. Abandoned long ago by their father, the family are waiting on the promise of change, symbolised by the 'gentlemen caller' a figure who might come into the family's life and marry the daughter, Laura (Eva Morgan), giving her 'security', allaying her mother's (Sharon Small) fears, and allowing the son, Tom (Tom Varey), to be free of his obligations to them. What follows is a tender exploration of repressed desire. Photo: Manuel Harlan Jay Miller's direction is teeming with creative energy and takes an anarchic approach to sp...

14Feb

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

More Life – The Royal Court

More Life is an exceptional and bold production, taking an ambitious and complex story and realising it expertly on stage. The play takes us inside the research lab of Edius, who are trying to upload the consciousness of dead people back into new, robotic bodies. After many failed attempts, Bridget is uploaded, and the promising signs she displays lead Victor (Marc Elliott) into a spiralling obsession with making her ‘work’, no matter her suffering and despite the objections of his lab assistant, Mike (Lewis Mackinnon). This torment leads Bridget (Alison Halstead) to break free of her captivity, running to the only place she can, the house of her former husband, Harry (Tim McMullan), and his wife Davina (Helen Schlesinger). Through this, the play explores the ethics of this search for ‘...

5Feb

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

Vanya Is Alive – Omnibus Theatre

Vanya is alive is a unique play, telling the story of political censorship and the realities of war in Russia today. In its current form, it is calling out for a more complete staging, with moments of excellence not translating into a production that fully explores its own potential. The play focuses on Alya, whose son Vanya is captured and killed in the war, and her journey of political awakening that follows this. This tragedy is explored through a central conceit, namely that in Alya's society, the sentence that began this paragraph is not permissible, indeed it doesn't even exist. Instead, Aliya is told that her son is "absolutely free". In this way characters speak and emote through antonyms. It is an interesting idea, and at times can be incredibly moving. We are told how Alya ...

18Jan

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

A Good House – Royal Court

Following the struggle of new residents Sihle and Bonolo to adjust to their new neighborhood of Stillwater, A Good House is a brilliantly tense and funny examination of race and community politics. The sudden appearance of a makeshift shack is what drives the action of the play, as Stillwater’s white residents try to get Bonolo and Sihle to become the faces of the plan to evict the squatters. This is a truly masterful piece of writing. Amy Jephta’s script is intricate and layered, and where the most obvious tension is between Stillwater’s black and white residents, this never becomes reductive. For example, Jephta layers in class politics between Sihle and Bonolo - in Sihle’s words Bonolo has always been “bougie as fuck’. These and many other layers prevent an argument heavy script from...