Zoё Meeres, Author at North West End UK

13Aug

By Zoё MeeresNo Comments

London

When It Happens To You – Park Theatre

Firstly, a trigger warning - When It Happens To You deals with issues of sexual assault and violence from the outset and throughout, and there’s nowhere to hide from it in this gutturally raw and confronting 90 minute performance. But Tawni O’Dell’s tale of a family dealing with the aftermath of tragedy is a tale of compassion, of surviving, and ultimately of love. Told through a series of monologues interspersed with conversation, Amanda Abbingdon is our focal point as a mother struggling to support her daughter and her family in the wake of a terrible assault. The action unfolds from Abbingdon’s point of view, with her heartfelt performance moving the narrative from the night of the attack. Abbingdon is arresting - she has the audience hanging on her every word as she wrestles with he...

12Jun

By Zoё MeeresNo Comments

London

Miss Julie – Park Theatre

August Strindberg’s Miss Julie formed part of my GCSE drama syllabus, so I approached yesterday’s performance with a warm, hazy nostalgic feeling. A classic love/lust between the classes scandal, set in the midst of wild and carefree Midsummer celebrations – maybe this production would compensate for the current lack of summer and merriment London currently seems to be experiencing and I’d be able to lose myself in high drama and raw passion for a short while. Kit Hinchcliffe’s traditional set is detailed for the relatively small space, with the action so close that you can see and sometimes even smell everything that’s happening in front of you. Servants (and partners) Jean (Freddie Wild) and Christine (Adeline Waby) are setting about their evening when the Count’s daughter, Miss Julie...

Remembrance Monday – Seven Dials Playhouse

29Apr

By Zoё MeeresNo Comments

London

Remembrance Monday – Seven Dials Playhouse

Watching Remembrance Monday, I was reminded of a description I’ve always liked of memories that I read in an interview. The interviewee (it may have been Florence Welch but don’t quote me on that), talked about memories being like photocopies of photocopies, blurring gradually over time as you get further and further away from the original. And so it is with Julius (Nick Hayes), as his recollections of what initially appears to be a regular Monday night with husband Connor (Matthew Stathers) quickly take a much darker turn. In Remembrance Monday, playwright Michael Batten weaves seeds of doubt and confusion very early on, presenting questions about the reliability of Julius’s narration. I’ll keep this a spoiler free zone, but I will say that the twists and unfolding of the plot are perf...

17Mar

By Zoё MeeresNo Comments

London

Hide and Seek – Park Theatre

Touching on issues like identity, peer pressure, friendship and the negative impact social media culture is having on young people, Hide and Seek doesn’t feel like entirely untrodden territory. Written by Italian playwright Tobia Rossi and translated and directed here by Carlotta Brentan, Hide and Seek charts the course of an unlikely friendship formed by two boys, Gio (Louis Scarpa) and Mirko (Nico Cetrulo) under quite bizarre circumstances. Bullied and belittled by his classmates, Gio retreats to a cave to escape after leaving a final mark on social media. Mirko finds him, and the two bond over their shared role in sensationalising Gio’s disappearance to feed the ensuing media circus, resorting to some fairly drastic measures to twist the story and stay relevant. As their friendship b...

Cruel Intentions: The ‘90s Musical – The Other Palace

20Jan

By Zoё MeeresNo Comments

London

Cruel Intentions: The ‘90s Musical – The Other Palace

I will tell anyone who will listen that the ‘90s was a golden age for music. I don’t know if everyone feels that way about the music of their coming-of-age decade, but let us also remember that the ‘90s gave us The Spice Girls, No Doubt, Britney Spears… So, taking a cult ‘90s film and turning into a musical featuring classic tunes from the same era was always going to peak my interest. I’d not been to The Other Palace - just around the corner from some of Victoria’s better known theatres - before, and I really wish I’d discovered it sooner. It’s a great space with comfy seats and a fancy gin bar - what’s not to like? So far, so good… The piece opens with a stellar full cast performance - you can spot Kathryn (Rhianne-Louise McCaulsley) with her cold confidence and Daniel Barvo’s Seba...

13Dec

By Zoё MeeresNo Comments

London

21 Round for Christmas – Park Theatre

21 Round for Christmas gets off to a promising start. Into a realistically lived in Christmas kitchen set glides Tracey (Cathy Conneff), adorned in a tinsel boa and belting out a gutsy performance of Santa Baby. Tracey is frazzled – dealing with the various dietary demands of family members, including a vegan tart, a ham and a turkey and concerned about the gravy which usually falls to her friend Jackie. Conneff’s Tracey is chatty and familiar, if not entirely relatable; it’s an interesting cross between feeling like you’re gossiping with a friend and having that person at work talk at you about people from their life that you’ll never meet and frankly don’t care about. It’s all pretty safe territory, though – amusing gripes about picky family members, her irritating mother-in-law and char...

A Night with Me, Myself and Bipolar Brenda – Etcetera Theatre

14Oct

By Zoё MeeresNo Comments

London

A Night with Me, Myself and Bipolar Brenda – Etcetera Theatre

I’ve struggled with writing this review, as I have in the past when I've felt that the line between entertaining and educating are blurred in a production. In creating “A Night with Me, Myself and Bipolar Brenda”, actress and writer Natasha Rae has used her own experiences with bipolar disorder and anxiety to paint a brutally honest picture of how she experiences life and motherhood under the cloud of mental illness. Rae is passionate and engaging, her manic energy on stage mirroring the periods of mania she has experienced as part of her illness over the years. She reflects on the impact bipolar has had on her loved ones, covers her coping mechanisms as well as her darker times which felt refreshing, and washes the show through with a thorough dose of self-deprecating humour. That ...

Sorry We Didn’t Die at Sea – Park Theatre

20Sep

By Zoё MeeresNo Comments

London

Sorry We Didn’t Die at Sea – Park Theatre

The snug space of Park 90 at Park Theatre is perfect for Emanuele Aldrovandi’s Sorry We Didn’t Die at Sea, translated for a British audience here by Marco Young. Directed by Daniel Emery, who with Young is co-director of Riva Theatre, the intimate setting allows the audience to see every flinch of fear, every brief touch of tenderness and every wince of discomfort in this tense yet darkly comedic piece. The play focuses on three characters attempting to illegally escape the UK for a new life of opportunity across the sea, a thoughtful twist on the current migration situation. The characters, made a foursome by the sinister shipping container owner, never earn names and as their stories gradually unfold through a series of lies, half-truths and stark honesty, each of the ensemble gives a...

15Jul

By Zoё MeeresNo Comments

London

Disruption – Park Theatre

Artificial Intelligence is having a moment. From ChatGPT and now a Google rival, ‘Bard’, to journalists calmly asking robots with near-human faces if they’re planning a rebellion against us, Andrew Stein’s cautionary tale about AI feels perfectly timed. The stage is set for a reunion dinner. Tech entrepreneur Nick is in town, buoyant from his latest business sale and has arranged to meet up with some old friends; three thirty-something couples who are grappling with the kind of first world problems that plague the middle classes like private school fees, whether to buy a bigger house, which exotic destination would be preferable for a holiday and so on. Enter Nick’s mysterious (unblinking) partner, Raven – together, they have a proposition that could solve all of Nick’s friends’ ...

30Jun

By Zoё MeeresNo Comments

London

One Way Mirror – The Pleasance

One Way Mirror bills itself as a new interactive story about the art of people watching. It is based on the true experience of writer and performer, theatre maker Jonathan Oldfield, one half of PillowTalk Theatre, and the time he spent living in a property with a one way mirror facing out onto the street. From this vantage point, Oldfield can observe people going about their business, a voyeur of sorts who can see you even though you can’t see him. And the show is largely as billed - it does indeed focus on Oldfield’s experience of people watching and it is interactive in as much as it relies on a degree of audience participation. It’s risky but respectfully and gently done - no one is forced onto the stage to pretend to be a cat or a chicken and the excellent willing participants were giv...