London Archives - Page 69 of 94

9Feb

By Khushboo ShahNo Comments

London

SAMAADHI – Riverside Studios

SAMAADHI, performed by Mohit Mathur and Ivanity Novak at the Riverside Studios as part of the Bitesize Festival, depicts India’s most significant and lamentable colonial event, the Jallianwala Baug Massacre. The audience is welcomed into the auditorium by an ongoing audio news report on the heart-wrenching episode blended with Indian instrumental music. While the news report seems befitting, direct, and aptly contextual, the melodious music does little to set the stage for a rather dark, traumatic, and painful performance to follow. The ‘show in development’ opens to a desolate stage with Mathur dragging a suitcase packed with burnt papers, a winter coat, a piece of cloth, a bullet, and a long stick summing up the minimalistic prop list for the show. The duo uses physical theatre and s...

9Feb

By Khushboo ShahNo Comments

London

Sunday Morning – Riverside Studios

Mat, a successful, middle-aged photographer takes the audience on a heart-warming, epiphanic journey in the one-man show, Sunday Morning. Directed by Jenine Collocott and written by Nick Warren, it was performed by James Cuningham at the Riverside Studios as part of the Bitesize Festival. On learning that his girlfriend is pregnant, a stunned Mat goes for a jog in his neighbourhood to do some “thinking.” The stage with some grey blocks covered with Sunday newspaper collages turned into a neighbourhood in Johannesburg with vivid descriptions offered by Warren and skilfully articulated by Cuningham. The show was delightfully packed with Mat’s reflections on success, independence, and the uninvited role of becoming a father in his 40s. Without making Mat sound like a man-child, Warren’...

Faulty Towers Dining Experience – President Hotel, London

8Feb

By Samantha CollettNo Comments

London

Faulty Towers Dining Experience – President Hotel, London

It may surprise you to learn that Fawlty Towers, ranked first on a list of 100 Greatest British Television Programmes, had just two series of six episodes in 1975 and 1979. The power of the show, written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, was in its character creation. From the pomposity of Basil Fawlty to his bossy wife Sybil, to the hapless, linguistically challenged Spanish waiter Manuel, the trio cast a spell in their unforgettable ways. Which is why, decades later, I found myself sat in The President Hotel, Bloomsbury about to enjoy the Faulty Towers Dining Experience. The plot of the original TV series was the Fawlty’s attempts to run a hotel amidst farcical situations – and so the dining experience is much the same. This is a two-hour interactive production set in a restaurant whe...

Purple Snowflakes and Tittywanks – Royal Court

4Feb

By Alice RoseNo Comments

London

Purple Snowflakes and Tittywanks – Royal Court

This a revolutionary piece that follows a young woman from Ireland to London with the suffocating pressures of a nation devout to their beliefs and their religion. How this manifests is in the bodies of young people who cover their sexual frustrations, eating disorders, depression and anxieties. This slightly nonsensical piece is high energy, a thought a minute as she revisits her later years in school with the complication of discovery and in how unlocking knowledge can be just as limiting as you may have felt before. Photo: Luca Truffarelli Written and performed by Sarah Hanly, awarded with the 2019 Pinter Commission and one of Royal Court’s Long Form Writer’s Group- she has written a piece that speaks to a nation in recovery. It is powerful, funny and dark as we uncover the truth...

4Feb

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

Hamlet – Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

The first production of Hamlet in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in the Shakespeare's Globe was an event to look forward to. The intimate candle lit wooden interior of the playhouse provided the opportunity for a very different feel to what is probably the best play the Bard ever wrote. What a disappointment it turned out to be. It started well enough, the initial scene on the battlements with the ghost was in complete darkness and when the candles were lit for the subsequent scene the characters were dressed in more or less traditional Elizabethan costumes; the stage was bare apart from one or two chairs and a large circular well in the middle. There were a few inconsistencies: Horatio, sported a modern university type scarf and a single musician sat on stag...

30Jan

By Riana HowarthNo Comments

London

The Glow – Royal Court

“You go far back enough, and everything turns to myth” Alistair Mcdowall’s “The Glow” is written with a plethora of colours and flavours, bursting at the seams with ideas about time and the ephemerality of the past. Its central focus is on myth, with a defining character whose presence transcends the stage. Found in an asylum in 1863, a woman is assumed to be a perfect host for an ambitious necromancer but soon things turn awry as the woman’s magical powers come into their own. With an eclectic mix of characters and shifting timelines, it is a joy to watch the complete changes in mood from scene to scene. The plot is anchored by the pivotal character, the woman played by Ria Zmitrowicz, as her character slowly unfurls like she is learning how to exist. Zmitrowicz imbues the characte...

Leopoldstadt – Wyndham’s Theatre (NT Live Transmission)

28Jan

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

London, REVIEWS

Leopoldstadt – Wyndham’s Theatre (NT Live Transmission)

The NT Live transmission, in conjunction with Sonia Friedman Productions, from Wyndham’s Theatre of Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt, was somewhat timely coming as it did on International Holocaust Memorial Day, and more so when its depiction of the travails of a Jewish family resonates so strongly with the unveiling of portraits of the last survivors of the Holocaust. Centred around the extended Merz family in Vienna, we travel through four generations from the turn of the twentieth century to the creation of an independent Austrian republic in 1955, where amidst the all too familiar humdrum domestic scenes we explore what it means to learn and love; to live and die; to discover what identity really means within a family, society, race, and religion, and the extent to which any of us can e...

Freud’s Last Session – King’s Head Theatre

24Jan

By Riana HowarthNo Comments

London

Freud’s Last Session – King’s Head Theatre

Freud’s Last Session directed by Peter Darney is an Off-Broadway success combining philosophical thought with comedy. As its foreboding title suggests, the play imagines Sigmund Freud’s final psychoanalysis session. He invites C.S. Lewis to meet him, to help him make sense of something that disturbs him. A debate ensues between the two, as they grapple with an age-old question; the existence of God. The eagerness and receptivity of the characters carries the arguments through with an aliveness, keeping it engaging as well as educational. Séan Browne brings C.S. Lewis’ character to life, endowing him with an earnestness and a stark vocal resemblance to Lewis himself. He enters Freud’s room as a visitor, polite and reserved with a kind of reverence for Freud but as the play progres...

Moulin Rouge! The Musical – Piccadilly Theatre

21Jan

By Gemma PrinceNo Comments

London

Moulin Rouge! The Musical – Piccadilly Theatre

Based on Baz Luhrmann’s critically acclaimed 2001 film, the highly anticipated Moulin Rouge! has finally hit the West End following its hugely successful Broadway debut in 2019. Directed by Alex Timbers, the musical tells the story of Christian, a young writer who moves to Pairs’ Montmartre quarter to join the Bohemian movement and falls in love with Satine, the illustrious headline act at the Moulin Rouge cabaret club, and the villainous Duke of Monroth, who wants Satine for himself. Photo: Matt Crockett The Piccadilly Theatre has been completely transformed to bring Luhrmann’s dreamy world of glitz and glamour to life. From the neon signs shining outside to the red lights decorating the theatre and stage, Justine Townsend’s incredible lighting design truly transports you to th...

20Jan

By Alice RoseNo Comments

London

Conundrum – Young Vic

Conundrum, written and directed by Paul Anthony Morris is an intimate and confronting piece that follows a person discovering the hidden elements of their own trauma and the journey to forgive oneself for the cycle of abuse brought onto them from society. Portrayed through movement and text, we watch how the trauma manifests itself pushing from inside mind, to grow throughout the body and into the space around them. We watch a person very comfortably enter the stage with boxes in hand in order to sort out the mess in the room, to then crumble by the memories and collapse with the overwhelming pressure of things that quite simply didn’t exist for certain others around him. Words, written all over the stage floor, chalk in hand and a mind that is more intelligent than most, this characte...