London Archives - Page 3 of 158

13Mar

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Iron Fantasy – Soho Theatre

Do you feel strong? Harder? Better? Faster? Stronger? She Goat’s Iron Fantasy is putting in the work to achieve all of the above. Shamira Turner and Eugénie Pastor are a formidable two-woman operation dolled up and scrubbed in to peel back every layer of each other’s armour both literal and metaphorical. A seventy-five-minute romp through song, dance, farmer carrying, tire slinging and fight choreographing, Iron Fantasy is fun and funny. The performers have a beautiful chemistry and obvious ease with each other that enables them to connect with the audience as well but despite the inherent vulnerability of staging the show’s autobiographical themes their bond insulates them from much of the audience’s scrutiny. A testament to the power of female friendship and the strength gained...

11Mar

By Alan Stuart MalinNo Comments

London

Sugar Daddy – Underbelly Boulevard Soho

Some comedy shows aim simply to entertain. ‘Sugar Daddy’, written and solo-performed by comedian Sam Morrison, does something far rarer, it makes an audience laugh until their cheeks ache, and then quietly reminds them how fragile and beautiful love and life can be, it delivers a comedy punchline and at the same time, leaves an emotional wound. Performed at Underbelly Boulevard Soho, Morrison’s one-man show begins with the easy rhythm of stand-up. He has high energy levels, bounds around the stage with a burst of nervous enthusiasm, the kind that feels wonderfully unpolished and instantly human. You can tell early on that he is deeply connected to his story and wants to tell it. That slightly anxious energy becomes part of the charm of this piece. Morrison does not hide behind the safet...

11Mar

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Salt – Riverside Studios

A bitter song for a bloody story, Contemporary Ritual Theatre brings a strange and slippery offering to Riverside Studios, weaving dance, song, and dialogue in a summoning circle of rope and sweat that ensnares its audience and holds them in a merciless grip well beyond the threshold of pleasure. The play’s brutal stranglehold on its audience is a testament to its enigmatic and often energetic performing corps comprised of veteran actor Emily Outred as the Widow Pruttock, Contemporary Ritual Theatre regular Mylo McDonald as her son Man Billy, and relative newcomer Bess Roche as Sheldis, the strangely seductive interloper in their squalid little life whose lascivious ways threaten to upend the little order they are able to impose in their chaotic sea ruled community. Composer and mus...

It Walks Around the House at Night– Southwark Playhouse Borough

10Mar

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

It Walks Around the House at Night– Southwark Playhouse Borough

When struggling working-class actor Joe (George Naylor) accepts a seductively well-paid job offer from an alluring and wealthy man, he is thrust into an increasingly nightmarish situation that has him questioning his sanity. It Walks Around the House at Night blends elements of psychological thriller, Gothic horror, and dark comedy into an atmospheric and entertaining thrill ride. Naylor gives a fantastic performance as Joe, supported by a very strong script from playwright Tim Foley. With a sardonic yet affable charm, Joe immediately wins the audience over, and as a result they are invested and gripped when he is placed into peril. Sometimes Joe’s characterisation is a little inconsistent – one moment he is naïve and credulous, the next he has near-psychic levels of insight – but...

Dead Poets Live: Emily Dickinson – Coronet Theatre

8Mar

By Louise PennNo Comments

London

Dead Poets Live: Emily Dickinson – Coronet Theatre

Dead Poets Live aims to bring poetry to the stage, “creating theatre out of poems and poets”. Over the last ten years, poets from the past from Yeats and Byron to Robert Frost and Stevie Smith have been resurrected in the person of actors such as Rupert Everett, Glenda Jackson, Denise Gough and Monica Dolan. Patsy Ferran is centre stage tonight as one of America’s greatest poets, Emily Dickinson, a 19th century writer who flirted with modernism before it had a name and engaged fully with the world while remaining reclusive and withdrawn physically from it. Her poems are noted for their odd metre and punctuation – chiefly dashes – while offering playful and perceptive views of melancholia, religion and nature. Although other stagings of Dead Poets Live have been presented in full ...

8Mar

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

tell me straight / aggy – Park Theatre

Despite an avoidance of capital letters, ‘tell me straight’ follows sold-out runs at The King’s Head and Chiswick Playhouse. Paul Bradshaw’s play explores sexuality and dating in a semi- autobiographical coming of age drama. Writer and co-producer Paul Bradshaw stars as the character known only as ‘Him’. Flashing back to childhood and progressing to the present day, it’s a comedic journey of sexual adventures, but mostly charts a chaotic fetish for straight men. Fresh from playing Alexander the Great in a Netflix historical drama, Buck Braithwaite abandons smouldering soldier homoerotica and plays a roll call of men who have little idea what to do with their sword, never mind their helmet. He pulls it off with considerable skill. In fact, the nuances of sexual confusion that Braithwaite...

5Mar

By Dave SmithNo Comments

London

Our Town – Rose Theatre

Michael Sheen is the Artistic Director of Welsh National Theatre, and this is their inaugural production, co-produced by Rose Theatre themselves. Sheen has put his money where his mouth is, funding WNT himself. They begin with an American classic, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. While this may not sound innately Welsh - the tale of a quintessential American town - it is said that Dylan Thomas was familiar with both Wilder and his play when he wrote Under Milk Wood. So, we take ourselves to Grover’s Corners, a small town with a Welsh accent somewhere, well let’s just say somewhere. The Stage Manager guides the audience through the story, introduces us to a number of the inhabitants and we jump back and forward in time to follow their trials and tribulations. Sheen himself plays the Sta...

5Mar

By Zain RussellNo Comments

London

Double Indemnity – Richmond Theatre

Double Indemnity is a thrilling stage adaptation that dives deep into the darker side of human nature, exploring how lust, greed, and temptation can drive even the most ordinary people toward murder. The play captures the essence of classic noir storytelling, asking the audience to consider just how far someone might go when love and money become intertwined. The story follows insurance broker Walter Huff, played by Ciarán Owens, whose seemingly routine job takes a dangerous turn when he meets Phyllis Nirdlinger, the wife of one of his clients. Phyllis, portrayed by the wonderful Mischa Barton, quickly draws Walter into an illicit affair. What begins as flirtation soon escalates into something far more sinister, as the two begin plotting the murder of Phyllis’s husband in order to claim...

5Mar

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

Broken Glass – Young Vic

Unlike Arthur Miller’s heralded classics, Broken Glass is not a play that turns up on the syllabus or tests the skills of the nation’s amateur dramatic societies. As one of Miller’s later plays (1994), it’s not the best example of his genius. It’s a complex oddity that mixes history, symbolism and the challenges of identity into an itchy and overly ambitious psychodrama. The play was first performed in Connecticut in June 1994 and had its UK premiere in August of the same year at the Lyttelton Theatre. It bagged the 1995 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and was nominated for a 1994 Tony. The play has an undeniable history of mixed reviews, but this particular production drew curious anticipation thanks to the presence of director Jordan Fein. Young Vic scored a coup by getting F...

Jeffery Bernard is Unwell – Coach & Horses

4Mar

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

Jeffery Bernard is Unwell – Coach & Horses

The tempting novelty inherent to this production of Jeffery Bernard is Unwell by Keith Waterhouse, is the fact it’s staged in Soho’s Coach & Horses pub on Dean St. This iconic boozer was once a magnet for bohemian artists, day drinkers and creative ‘characters’ such as the journalist Jeffery Bernard who worked for The Spectator. Bernard’s column, popular throughout the 1970s, was titled Low Life and described by Jonathan Meades as a “suicide note in weekly instalments.” Bernard was still alive when this play first hit the West End in 1989, and the production proved a hugely successful vehicle for Peter O’Toole in the leading role. The show returned a year later to the Old Vic, where it enjoyed a sell-out run and was filmed in front of a live audience. It’s hard to imagine a theatre ...