London Archives - Page 2 of 167

12Jul

By Carole GordonNo Comments

London

Shanay Holmes in Concert – Cadogan Hall

Shanay Holmes' first solo concert proved to be a considerable success, her powerful voice presenting a repertoire of well-known musical theatre classics and the songs that have formed part of her own theatrical story. From Oliver! which garnered her the Best Female Lead award in a Musical at the Black British Theatre Awards, to Rent, Annie, The Sound of Music, West Side Story, Miss Saigon and Sweeney Todd, Holmes' clear soprano created an entertaining evening. She hasn't appeared in all these shows, but has chosen songs which she loves and been moved by, as well as those she's performed. And mostly these are great choices which perfectly match her impressive range. Initially slightly nervous, she quickly settled into the roles and the emotional characters in the songs, interspe...

9Jul

By Saloni SanwalkaNo Comments

London

Operation Blank – Etcetera Theatre

Just off Camden High Street and up the stairs of the wonderfully cosy (and air-conditioned) Oxford Arms is Etcetera Theatre which, for the next two days, is home to Operation Blank, a 50-minute thought experiment about what happens when hopeless British bureaucracy meets nuclear crisis. The result is a rambunctious disaster which paints a grim albeit accurate picture of the collective “screw it” we all seem to have said in response to the world’s current state of affairs. At its core however Operation Blank is The George Grant Show and therein lies the audience’s true reward. When speaking with Grant (writer and lead performer) after the show, I learned that Operation Blank was born from a 10-page drunken rant after a night out. And— I mean this in the best possible way—it fee...

9Jul

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

Richard III: The Cockpit Theatre

This is an extraordinary production. Directed and starring Nicolas Perez Costa it was per formed to great acclaim at Madrid’s Teatro Infanto Isabel. It is in English but with a largely Spanish speaking cast it is a highly physical, visceral and arresting interpretation of Shakespeare’s classic play about power, ambition and evil. The cast paint their faces white with heavy black make up, along the lines of the Joker in the famous Batman films, and are dressed in dysfunctional costumes of black, translucent tops and heavy ragged cloaks. Something like a cross between grunge and steam punk. The set consists of nothing more than six oil drums and two wooden ladders. These the cast move into the positions required for each scene often standing atop them. The most amazi...

9Jul

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

Romeo and Juliet – Greenwich Theatre

Greenwich Theatre’s current production of Shakespeare’s much loved play has some interesting and innovative features. Romeo is cast as a woman, apparently as a tribute to the Pride movement, and it makes extensive use of music played and sung by the six performers who are all talented musicians. Whilst I was initially unsure about the same sex leading couple it worked well and appeared natural. The music was very pleasant although somewhat idiosyncratic, including at, one time, one of Simon and Garfunkel’s numbers, the relevance of which to the plot was not clear. An impressive backdrop had been constructed with a large steel balcony which was used, obviously, for the famous balcony scene but when it was used for dialogue between other characters, for example, in Lord Capule...

Sestercentennial – The Bread & Roses Theatre

4Jul

By Savitha VenugopalNo Comments

London

Sestercentennial – The Bread & Roses Theatre

The United States of America is celebrating its 250th birthday and Hamza Beshara, a Bangladeshi American, is throwing a party for his closest friends. They have been mates since their school days and Hamza thinks of himself as one of the boys, but do they think the same? Hamza has never questioned it, until now. Written, directed, and performed by Arif Silverman, the play observes USA’s sestercentennial by questioning its current politics. In particular, the situation of immigrants and non-white communities. “I was born here, I am American,” Hamza stresses. But he also sees that life is different for him as compared to his white friends. His parents had moved West in search of a better life, and Hamza knows he would struggle if he had to live in Bangladesh. To him, it is bu...

4Jul

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

-320° F – Sadler’s Wells Theatre

This is not a show I am going to be able to fully describe here. Across almost two and a half hours, Hideki Noda’s show was a mad, brilliant and strange whirlwind of ideas and images. Roughly, the story begins in the present day with a search for angel bones, which may hold the key to human desires. The main scientist Professor Kyuri thinks they will unlock humanity's secrets, the warring pharmaceutical sponsors, a brother and sister pair, are interested in their market value. The fight over finding and exploiting them centres around the character ‘Help’, because he happens to have an angel bone in his right arm, which allows him to detect other angel bones and use them to unlock the full power of his brain, connecting himself to past memories. As I said, this is not a straightforward p...

2Jul

By Alan Stuart MalinNo Comments

London

Malory Towers – Richmond Theatre

Adapting a beloved children's classic for the stage is never an easy task, particularly when generations of audiences arrive with fond memories of Enid Blyton's ‘Malory Towers’. Emma Rice's adaptation does not attempt to reinvent the theatrical landscape, nor does it aspire to compete with the spectacle of the West End's biggest productions. Instead, it embraces the warmth, imagination and youthful optimism at the heart of the original stories, delivering an engaging and thoroughly enjoyable production that knows exactly who its audience is: young girls discovering the story for the first time, alongside the mothers and grandmothers who grew up with these much-loved books. From the moment the pupils arrive at the famous Cornish boarding school, the production captures the excitement...

Hot Mess: A New Musical – The Other Palace Theatre

2Jul

By Carole GordonNo Comments

London

Hot Mess: A New Musical – The Other Palace Theatre

Young, blue-green and beautiful Earth is desperately looking for her one true love. The newly evolved single-celled organisms don't do anything for her and T-Rex meets an untimely end before the relationship can even take off. It's a few billion years of waiting impatiently, then Humanity turns up and sweeps her off her feet. Their relationship starts sweet before becoming passionate, fiery and chaotic. Humanity is ambitious, sees potential in what Earth has to offer him and throws himself into discovering fire, inventing the wheel, and then finding Earth's deepest treasures to exploit. Earth warns him of the dangers of exploiting her resources, but the downwards spiral into a hot mess of a break-up is inevitable. Will Earth and Humanity endure, either together or separately or are they he...

2Jul

By Zain RussellNo Comments

London

Arcadia – Duke of York’s Theatre

Arcadia is a time-shifting play set across two centuries, where we see teenage prodigy Thomasina Coverly living in the early nineteenth century, rapidly thinking beyond her time as she explores mathematics and the natural world. In contrast, the present-day storyline follows Hannah Jarvis as she investigates the life of Lord Byron while staying in the same country house, Sidley Park. The play is highly thought-provoking, raising complex questions about knowledge, history, and certainty. At times, it can be puzzling to follow how the two timelines interlink, but this is also what makes it engaging, as the audience is encouraged to actively piece together meaning across centuries. One of the central ideas is the contrast between the two approaches to history and knowledge. Bernard Nigh...

2Jul

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

Grindr the Opera – Union Theatre

Perhaps there are people out there who don’t know that Grindr is a gay ‘dating’ app and are blithely unaware of the culture which has spawned from this smartphone phenomenon. This production is not aimed at that naïve demographic, but serves as a satire, cautionary tale and a timely mirror for the app’s 15m users across the globe. Last year Grindr released stats in which the UK emerged as the global leader for self-identified ‘fem tops’ while Ireland recorded the highest proportion of users listing themselves as ‘bears’. The most searched tag globally was ‘hung’. Madonna recently used the app to launch her new album, and it’s reported that cities experienced a 4% spike in usage when Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball came to town. The app may be re-shaping our neural pathways and it’s definitely ...