REVIEWS Archives - Page 336 of 341

8Jul

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Rush – BBC iPlayer

Writer, Willi Richards’s first play, Rush was to have opened in June at Trafalgar Studios 2 following a successful two week run in 2018 at London’s King’s Head Theatre. Although COVID-19 has, for the moment, denied Rush its West End run it is now streaming on BBC iPlayer as part of their Culture In Quarantine series in the form of an online script reading. The play explores the dynamics of a gay love triangle involving Man (Rupert Everett), Lad (Daniel Boyd) and Boy (Omari Douglas). Lad is in a relationship with Boy but at the same time engaged in an affair with the older Man who is himself one half of a civil partnership. Lad, as the link between the two other men, brings them together. It ends with Lad revealing to camera the reasoning behind the decision as to which of them he decid...

Doing The Pub Quiz – Northern Comedy Theatre Zoom Live

7Jul

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Doing The Pub Quiz – Northern Comedy Theatre Zoom Live

Following on from their live Zoom show ‘Doing Shakespeare’, the new addition to the Northern Comedy Theatre’s repertoire is ‘Doing the Pub Quiz’. Once again, The Felching Players are together, but this time they are using their free time to enter a pub quiz. Teaming up with writer David Spicer who wrote their previous Zoom Live ‘Doing Shakespeare’, The Felching Players are taking on other pub teams in a bid to be victorious. Tom (Robert Stuart-Hudson) set up the team (apparently to get off the booze after his wife left him) and likes to be in the driving seat, organising everyone. The imaginatively named ‘We are Smarticus’ pub team have got through the qualifying round and are now battling against 31 teams to be top dog of the pub quiz league; they just need to ...

Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads: The Outside Dog – BBC iPlayer

7Jul

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads: The Outside Dog – BBC iPlayer

One of the strong suites Alan Bennett has always had is his ability to write convincingly for women. The sort of women a boy from a respectable middle-class Leeds family would have known growing up. When he put these women into his writing they attracted the great and good of acting to portray them. Dames Julie, Thora and Patricia are the ones which spring immediately to mind. They are synonymous with the piece. It is therefore interesting to revisit the work with new faces in the frame. I have seen some of his “Talking Heads” presented with new faces on stage, but we are currently being treated with television presentations, so comparisons are inevitable. It is a testament to the skill of Rochenda Sandall that thoughts of Julie Walters (the original Marjory) are thrown out of the wind...

No Milk for the Foxes – Beats & Elements

6Jul

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REVIEWS

No Milk for the Foxes – Beats & Elements

Working class culture rarely gets a look in anywhere in theatreland and when it does it's all too often patronising twaddle with some pathetic redemptive narrative thrown in to salve middle class guilt. Thankfully this funny and often bleak 2015 work from Beats & Elements avoids that as co-founders Conrad Murray and Paul Cree based this tale of two security guards surviving on the margins of society on their own experiences, and that of their mates Murray’s Spaxx is a half Indian geezer from Mitcham who is whiling away the hours with Cree’s more considered white, working class Marx on a zero-hour contract night shift in the office of a rundown factory. Between chats about life living from one crap payday to the next, their dreams and. insecurities they throw in some top-cl...

Stiles & Drewe: Best New Song Prize 2020

6Jul

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REVIEWS

Stiles & Drewe: Best New Song Prize 2020

In a week when the British theatre industry was despairing at the lack of support for its workers and venues, and when sectors of the country were reopening for business and the performing arts still had no light at the end of the tunnel, George Stiles and Anthony Drewe shone the spotlight on the future of musical theatre, showcasing 15 songs from new works. Stiles & Drewe, themselves known for writing Mary Poppins, Honk! and Soho Cinders among many other hits, have been hosting this competition since 2008; a competition that seeks to promote new musical theatre writing, and perhaps more importantly, encourage new writers in a landscape that must usually seem challenging, and at the moment must be pretty terrifying. Supported by five guest judges: Dan Gilespie Sells (writer of E...

6Jul

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

West Midlands

Birmingham Opera Company: The Ice Break

Birmingham Opera’s Artistic Director Graham Vick takes a brave leap in transforming this opera by Michael Tippett the first interpretation since 1977 in Covent Garden. An unused warehouse is cleverly transformed into a strange airport terminal where the audience stands and is ushered around to the dramatic action by the chorus; a lot whom are from the local community. Opera can have many connotations, high brow, difficult to understand and perhaps for an old fashioned elite; Vick throws all this on its head with an utterly gripping show where everything is energised for a fascinating heady performance that is contemporary and relevant. It is indeed even more relevant with the Black Lives Movement that has been a regular feature of the last few months. The themes focus on race, ri...

Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads: The Hand of God – BBC iPlayer

5Jul

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REVIEWS

Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads: The Hand of God – BBC iPlayer

Television has taken over many walks of life and given them back to us all neatly packaged. Cookery, Sport, Antiques. Indeed, the latter seems to be ever present on our screens fronted by David Dickinson, Paul Martin and that funny Scottish woman with the bob hair style. I guess those who have always made a living out of these professions have to grin and bear it and hope that one day the producers of Antiques Roadshow will come knocking and ask them to join the exalted realms of telly expert. All except Celia the talking head in this Alan Bennett look at life. She is proud of the fact that she doesn’t have a television set. Costly decision that. As always, Alan Bennett, the master of making the mundane interesting, litters his observational writing with small red herrings as...

Much Ado About Nothing – Royal Shakespeare Company

5Jul

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

West Midlands

Much Ado About Nothing – Royal Shakespeare Company

Showing as part of the BBC’S Culture in Quarantine series, this Royal Shakespeare Company 2014 production, often wondered to be the missing Love’s Labour’s Won, was originally the latter half of a comic double bill – the first half being Love’s Labour’s Lost – devised by director Christopher Luscombe and designer Simon Higlett, and was live screened to cinema in 2015. In a clever re-staging, the action is set in December 2018 at the country house of Leonato (David Horovitch), and which has been converted to serve as a hospital, with daughter Hero (Flora Spencer-Longhurst) and cousin Beatrice (Michelle Terry) replete in nurses uniforms. Prince Don Pedro (John Hodgkinson) leads the returning soldiers which include his illegitimate brother Don John (Sam Alexander), Claudio (Tunji Kasim...

5Jul

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Staged – BBC iPlayer

As lockdown measures begin to ease and businesses reopen their doors, there has been a lot of focus on the effect of quarantine on theatres and whether or not the industry will survive. The crisis has created a lot of negativity for theatres, as it has for many things in our society, but Staged, written and directed by Simon Evans, may be one of the few good things that has come out of this. The series focuses on exaggerated versions of David Tennant and Michael Sheen, who are rehearsing for a production of Six Characters in Search of an Author, also directed by Evans, over Zoom. The beginning very much has the feel of The Trip as Tennant and Sheen show off their abilities to do accents, but quickly comes into its own originality. As well as the Zoom calls between the various charac...

Michael Flatley Celtic Tiger – The Shows Myst Go On

5Jul

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Michael Flatley Celtic Tiger – The Shows Myst Go On

Michael Flatley’s famous ‘Celtic Tiger’ show opened in July 2005. This was his third big venture following ‘Riverdance’ which famously aired during the intermission on the 1994 Eurovision song contest and then ‘Lord of the Dance’ which premiered in 1996. This production, which seeks to explore Irish heritage and world cultures, is available for viewing curtsey of ‘The show must go on’ series. What it quite apparent from the start is that unfortunately, Flatley’s production has not stood the test of time and entertainment has come a long way in the last 15 years. ‘Celtic Tiger’ feels more like a variety show than a collaborative piece of entertainment. There is a mixture of solo songs, dance sequels and instrumentals which I have no problems with if they all tied together and made...