London Archives - Page 78 of 110

9May

By Aditi DalalNo Comments

London

JV2 2022 – Sadler’s Wells

JV2 2022 is a triple bill of poetry in motion, performed by 16 international dancers from Jasmin Vardimon Company’s Professional Development Diploma. The show presents the fantastic talent of the young performers who use physical language to show the complexities of human lives and societies. ‘Can you hear me now?’ by Mafalda Deville, co-created with the performers, starts off the show with a strong political dance theatre presentation. With terms such as ‘freedom’ and ‘power’ written across their bodies in different languages, the dancers move to the moans and sighs of their own voices. The live vocal sounds merge into recorded echoes, creating an eerie soundscape that draws the audience in. The struggle for freedom, especially freedom of speech, is embodied in the strong and energetic...

Illicit Signals Bletchley – Crypt, St Peter’s Church

7May

By Riana HowarthNo Comments

London

Illicit Signals Bletchley – Crypt, St Peter’s Church

Transported to London in 1941, we find ourselves signing up to join Bletchley Park’s codebreaking team. As is the case with immersive shows, each audience member can have a different experience. Mine began in Dilly Knox’ office, where amidst waffling and mumbling through his pipe, Dilly and Mavis taught us the basics of enciphering and deciphering. The bustling, buzzing feel was immediately established by their rushing and enthusiasm. The atmosphere soon changes when an inspector arrives and begins interrogating the staff. The characters were fleshed out and engaging as they were based on real people and material was devised and improvised by the cast. The 1940’s idioms and accents were particularly impressive in their consistency and the rapport between the cast members created a...

7May

By Alice RoseNo Comments

London

24, 23, 22 – Omnibus Theatre

24, 23, 22 presented by Chronic Insanity is a clash of characters, one travelling in reverse whilst the other chronological. Two strangers introduce themselves through abstract writing that occasionally rhymes with an underlying consistent beat from the DJ who stands in the middle narrating the two different lives with different theme music. Previously performed on zoom, the live version was underwhelming and confusing as to what the message of the piece was. From what I believe, we are made to question how often we check up on people with reference to mental health and feeling invisible to the crowds around us. However, once learning that he had seriously injured his ex-girlfriend’s father and attempted to rob the woman next to him I had a lack of sympathy for the choices he was making...

7May

By Zoё MeeresNo Comments

London

Juniper and Jules – Soho Theatre

Last night I experienced the rare treat of thinking I knew the basic outline of a story, and being pretty happy about it, but then watching something that was so much richer and more poignant that I felt annoyed with myself for making any assumptions at the beginning at all. Juniper and Jules meet at a club. They flirt, they leave together, they have sex. But then – shock – we learn that Jules has never had sex with a woman before, in fact has a boyfriend, and is really quite surprised at the revelation that sex with a woman is an option for her. Aha, thought I, slightly cynically. That’s it. That’s the story. Woman discovers woman and grapples with identity. But that’s not the story. Or it is, partly, but it’s so much more than that. Juniper and Jules is a story about identity, about r...

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,...