Scot Cunningham, Author at North West End UK

14Oct

By Scot CunninghamNo Comments

North West

Death Drop – The Lowry

Crooked guests, a cold-blooded killer and…Crispy Pancakes? Still hot from a West End run, Death Drop sashays into The Lowry for an evening of murder and mystery with a delightfully chaotic drag twist. The eccentric Lady von Fistenburg (Vinegar Strokes/Daniel Jacob) has invited several equally-madcap guests to a dinner honouring the tenth anniversary of Princess Diana and Prince Charles on Tuck Island. Before these strangers can work out exactly why their presence has been requested, though, they begin to meet grisly fates- one by one. Holly Stars’ killer script is stuffed with kitchen sink comedy and laugh-out-loud Northern humour that guarantees a trolley full of laughs: from Lambrini to Club biscuits, the jokes are punchy, contemporary and regularly redelivered to even further comi...

7Sep

By Scot CunninghamNo Comments

North West

Three Way – Empty Space

Midlands-based theatre company Split Infinitive have rightly identified that the ‘B’ of LGBTQ+ is an oft-overlooked if not snubbed sexuality within the community. Their endeavour to address this comes in the form of Three Way, a trio of monologues centred around the love lives of three conflicted men. Though a focus on the experiences of bisexual males is deliberate, omitting a female narrative is certainly a missed opportunity since it would have offered a wider perspective on the prejudices faced by all those who are bi. The intention of this piece is sincere, but it often fans the flames of the stereotypes associated with bisexuality, rather than challenging them: arguably, one of the characters is not even bisexual, instead falling into the ‘bi now, gay later’ box that Three Ways...

The Cancellation of Crispin Cox – crispincox.com

1Aug

By Scot CunninghamNo Comments

REVIEWS

The Cancellation of Crispin Cox – crispincox.com

One hour before press night of one-man musical ‘Les Liasions Dangereuses’, we take a look inside the dressing room of Crispin Cox, who has stepped in at the last minute. The original star has been ‘cancelled’ which is why Cox has so kindly taken his place. This fifty-minute performance is actively annoying. It is a series of half telephone conversations in between which Cox puts on enough powder to cake the whole cast of Les Mis twice over. In between calls, the viewer is given a bit of background about the person on the other end of the phone, each time featuring irritatingly repetitive jokes that consistently fall flat. This then leads into a yarn- likely about something that happened ‘a hundred years ago’- before he goes back to rehearsing the same song’s opening bars again, again an...

6May

By Scot CunninghamNo Comments

REVIEWS

A Killer Party – stream.theatre

The whodunnit musical Curtains meets everybody’s favourite video conferencing software Zoom in this nine-part murder mystery by Rachel Axler and Kait Kerrigan. Having been created and developed in America last year, it is now premiering in the UK with an array of stage stars-turned-suspects. When jaded traffic warden Justine Case (Emma Salvo) is inexplicably asked to investigate a killing, she eagerly dons her deerstalker and heads to the crime scene. There, a gaggle of outlandish guests of West End producer Varthur McArthur (Jason Manford) nervously, bitterly and/or hungrily await questioning. Annoyingly, the reason Justine is asked to step up is never addressed and, as the main character, her aversion to theatre is unfortunate. Salvo nevertheless pumps the new mystery-solver with m...

28Apr

By Scot CunninghamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Cells – Metta Theatre

Produced entirely during lockdown, Metta Theatre brings seven-part episodic musical Cells to the small screen, with all donations supporting the recovery of the Royal & Derngate Northampton, Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch and Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. The piece follows the reserved chemistry fresher JoJo (Lem Knights) and outgoing university lab technician Neil (Clive Rowe), two strangers contemplating the next chapters in their lives as their paths look set to cross. P Burton-Morgan’s script lacks originality and only provides a surface-level insight into the pair’s social struggles in the thirty-minute run time. Some of the narrative’s happenings are contrived to the point of being completely unrealistic: the function of a soiled napkin sends the plot spinning into rid...

Soft Sessions Live In Concert – stream.theatre

23Apr

By Scot CunninghamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Soft Sessions Live In Concert – stream.theatre

Together at Woolwich Warehouse, a line-up of West End regulars swap their usual, familiar stages for a more intimate venue where they perform a series of gentle acoustic covers. The six singers all lend their idyllic voices to the songs, and they blend wondrously in the duets. Grace Mouat and Courtney Stapleton harmonise with each other particularly well, soothing any listening ear in their rendition of ‘Teach You’. Eloise Davies and Martha Kirby’s mellifluous collaboration on ‘Don’t Make It Harder on Me’ is another highlight, and it looks like the pair are having genuine fun as they simultaneously hit their notes. Similarly, Danielle Flamanya and Jake Halsey-Jones have great vocal chemistry in ‘Never Too Much’, and their animated performances show them both getting caught up in the ...