London Archives - Page 117 of 149

6May

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

Uncle Vanya – Old Red Lion

Uncle Vanya is a challenging text for any production company. The audience is thrust immediately into a dysfunctional rural Russian family, whose monotonous and laborious life is disrupted by the arrival of the Professor and his glamorous wife from the city. It is a play which relies on the interaction of complex characters rather than action. Producers Agatha Ezzedine and Clémentine Pinet are therefore to be congratulated for reviving it as a fringe production. Director Kieran Bourne has made a sterling effort to breathe life into the text for a new generation audience. The production was lively and there was an unexpected amount of humour, but the production was marred by some idiosyncratic performances and poor production choices. The characters in this play are worn down with wea...

5May

By Alice RoseNo Comments

London

House of Ife – Bush Theatre

House of Ife follows a family repairing from the tragedy of losing a son, as the house reduces from 4 children to 3 the wounds that are desperate to heal remain open from the secrets buried around Ife’s death and the reason for his devastating path. Closing in around them are 4 walls, opened for view with bright saturated colours and a small amount of possessions. Books fill a small shelf although the only book referenced is the Bible, as the children reminisce on growing up with their dad who now lives in Ethiopia with his second wife and second family. We begin at the funeral, decorating the house as three children are set with the task to make it appropriate. Immediately we cut through the tragedy with the lightness and humour of grieving someone they knew would have wanted light and...

4May

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

Orlando – Jermyn Street Theatre

One can’t help but wonder what Virginia Woolf would make of the Kardashians, porn ogling MPs, and rising transphobia. She’d surely be a lively wag on Twitter, but likely view TikTok as ghastly and common. Her most popular work, Orlando, is the poetic Magna Carta of subversive queerness, wry feminism and trans magic. On Brexit island in 2022, Empire is celebrated with dim blindness, but in 1928, Woolf used her most joyful literary turn to skewer British imperialism with withering disdain. Due to its fantastical spirit, people often overlook the book’s political satire. Orlando is a transgressive free spirit, but the English patriarchy proves a persistent prison, regardless of epoch, and despite wealth, beauty and mystical eternal youth. After Orlando’s male-to-fem...

Much Ado About Nothing – The Globe Theatre

30Apr

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

Much Ado About Nothing – The Globe Theatre

Shakespeare's Globe has started their summer 2022 season with a cracking production of the ever popular Much Ado About Nothing. Lucy Bailey's production maintains Shakespeare's traditional Italian villa setting but updates it to 1945. The production is fast moving, very funny and extremely comprehensible while retaining all the essential elements of the original text. Joanna Parker' s design conjures the exterior of an Italian villa with grassy banks and ivy-covered walls. The updating to 1945 provides the opportunity for some gorgeous period costumes supervised by Caroline Hughes and contemporary music played beautifully by an ensemble of five accordion players who moved around the stage accompanying the action. Director Lucy Bailey makes extremely good use of the ...

Five Characters in Search of a Good Night’s Sleep – Southwark Playhouse

30Apr

By Riana HowarthNo Comments

London

Five Characters in Search of a Good Night’s Sleep – Southwark Playhouse

Five characters reveal their subconscious minds as they grapple with their day-time angst and woes. They sit in chairs, each in their individual homes but sharing a temporal space in a dream-like lilac and blue clouded set designed by Agnes Treplin. Devised by Mike Alfreds, Sonja Linden and ViSiBLE, it has the feel of verbatim as the stories are inspired by the actors’ own lives. All of the cast fully inhabit their characters so that from their first few lines, you immediately get a strong sense of their personalities. The triviality of their problems and their unextravagant, ordinary lives are endearing and poetic in their realism. This and the truthfulness with which these stories are told make it easy to become invested in and hang on their words. Sally Knyvette’s Helen ...

Witness for the Prosecution – County Hall

29Apr

By Zoё MeeresNo Comments

London

Witness for the Prosecution – County Hall

A handsome husband; a beautiful, mysterious, foreign wife; a wealthy older woman, now dead; a disgruntled housekeeper. Absolutely classic ingredients for an enjoyable whodunnit, and last night’s performance was up there with the best. From the opening minutes, which were some of the most dramatic I’ve seen in a long time, you know that this production is something special. The lighting, the choreography, the pounding background music and cries of anguish – everything about this production delivers punchy blows to the senses, taking your breath away and pulling you to the edge of your seat. Even the scene changes are slick and stylised, pure poetry in motion with not a beat missed. The Chamber at London County Hall provides the perfect setting for this Agatha Christie masterpiece,...

23Apr

By Zoё MeeresNo Comments

London

Qrumpet – Camden People’s Theatre

Theatre can elicit many emotions in an audience – fear, sadness, joy, anger, to name but a few. Last night, I felt an emotion that I don’t think has ever been awoken in me through the arts – an absolute, raging frustration. The show’s description is quirky and intriguing – basically, quantum tunnelling, but with a crumpet. What if you could throw a crumpet through a wall? SPOILER ALERT. You cannot. And I know this, because last night I spent an hour watching crumpets being buttered and thrown at a wall. Not just crumpets, either; a shoe, a free newspaper, an unsuspecting Lindt bunny. None of the above can be thrown through a wall, and I’m sorry to say that I didn’t find the process of finding that out remotely entertaining. The stage is set with the world’s worst Pelaton bike ...

22Apr

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

Saving Britney – The Other Palace

Britney Spears was a titanic pop phenomenon. That’s a concrete fact, if you were a fan or a puzzled observer. Whether it was shrugging off the Lolita vibes of the ‘Baby One More Time’ video or sniggering when she shaved her head in a psychotic episode, we were all complicit in the making and breaking of Britney. In 2007, Chris Cocker went viral with a YouTube plea to ‘Leave Britney Alone’. In many ways, the appeal was a canary down the mine for the media intrusion that ensued. Incidentally, Cocker evolved into a very able gay porn star, and then after a stab at cinema and pop stardom, transitioned, and is now known as Cara Cunningham. As Britney would say, ‘Work Bitch’. The Free Britney movement grew from a semi-jokey meme in 2009, to a full-blown, bona fide campaign juggernau...

22Apr

By Riana HowarthNo Comments

London

The Burnt City – Woolwich Works

Punchdrunk’s new piece directed by Felix Barrett and Maxine Doyle is an exhilarating immersive experience which has the epic feel of Greek tragedy fused with a modern electricity. Based on Agamemnon and Hecuba, the story follows the characters as the mythical world comes to life. Audience members enter an exhibition which suddenly lurches into this realm, where space and time feels suspended. We are free to follow whatever takes our interest as a multitude of scenes occur simultaneously across the different spaces. There isn’t a huge amount of audience interaction, but it is visually and mentally engaging throughout as you endeavour to piece together the plot and choose where to go. For a venue with a plethora of different spaces, the set designed by Barrett, Livi Vaughan and Beatrice M...

Sidney Fox’s Crime – Above The Stag Theatre

22Apr

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

Sidney Fox’s Crime – Above The Stag Theatre

Sidney Fox led an eventful, unconventional and disreputable life. The illegitimate fourth son of promiscuous Rosaline Fox, he took up pretty crime from an early age. Stealing and forgery were second nature to him, and he spent six spells in prison. His good looks made him attractive to both sexes and he had affairs with many in the highest echelons of 1920's society. In the years before his mother's death, the two of them lived in a succession of hotels, rarely paying the bills before moving on. On 23rd October 1929 in the Metropole hotel in Margate his mother died in mysterious circumstances. Sidney was arrested and tried for her murder. Glenn Chandler has written a fast moving, fascinating account of Fox's life and the events leading up to his mother's death and his ...