REVIEWS Archives - Page 376 of 429

18Aug

By Gemma PrinceNo Comments

London

Wild Waxflower – Camden Fringe

Part of this year’s Camden Fringe Festival and the debut play of No Salad Productions, Wild Waxflower explores the trials and tribulations of a young woman’s first night working at an adult entertainment club. Written and starring Siane Faye, the digital performance follows her journey from the changing rooms to the stage, exploring themes of sexuality, identity and religion. Although a short one-woman piece, Faye certainly commands attention with her stellar performance as this young female character and her inner battle as she decides to step into the world of adult entertainment. There is a lack of dialogue, particularly in the first 10 minutes, yet Faye’s portrays the character’s emotional conflict with just her facial expressions extremely well. Set within a quiet alleyway in Lo...

18Aug

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

London

Bad Teacher – Etcetera Theatre

Not to be confused with the Cameron Diaz film in 2011, Bad Teacher offers a tongue in cheek look at the teaching profession and how this particular teacher manages to deal with the day-to-day frustrations of the job. As an introduction, the screen on the backdrop projects news articles about Government cuts to education, mental health and general unrest within the teaching profession because of pressure, leading to teachers quitting. Evie is a 26-year-old drama teacher who feels that she is underpaid and underappreciated. She has decided that as no-one has offered her a pay rise, that she must ask for it herself; you don’t ask you don’t get. Today she is feeling the power of BPE (big pussy energy), so she feels superhuman. Head of the arts department Nina is t...

Fairytale: 20/20 – Edinburgh Fringe Festival

18Aug

By Donna M DayNo Comments

Scotland

Fairytale: 20/20 – Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Fairytale: 20/20, devised and performed by choreographer, Sheenru Yong, and actor, Sara Lessmann, shows the creative process as two live performers try and transfer their skills into filmmaking. Opening with a typewriter sound effect and take 68 ¼, both Lee and Jung describe their usual roles in the creative process and what they bring when devising a piece of art. They are aiming to make a film called Happily Ever After, but before they can they need to agree what “happily ever after” actually means in order for them to capture it. It’s also important that whatever they produce isn’t pretentious as they want to avoid that. It quickly becomes clear that neither of them really know what they’re trying to achieve with the end product, so they go out to get input from others on what “happi...

18Aug

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

London

Meat Cute – Hen & Chickens Theatre

After a successful debut at the Chiswick Playhouse, ‘Meat Cute’ returns to the stage at the Camden Fringe Festival at the Hen & Chickens Theatre. The play is written and performed by Bibi Lucille and produced by Patch Plays. Patch Plays was formed in 2020 by Anastasia Bunce and Maria Majewska who are interested in exploring issues such as the environment, and animal ethics and how theatre can throw a spotlight onto these issues. Lena is on a quest to find her perfect tinder date and she’s on her 3rd guy this week. In her quest to find that special guy she searches through tinder and decides to go on a date with Chad. Her previous date had been vegan, and she had walked out on him, but would Chad fare any better? He has taken her for dinner, and he chose a vegan starte...

17Aug

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Mamma Mia! – Harewood House

This was my daughter’s fourth time seeing this perennial blockbuster, but it was certainly the most unusual with the audience sitting in a windy field near Leeds. This was the very first time the team behind the Mamma Mia! juggernaut have opted for an open-air production and given how protective they are of the brand they threw everything at it – live band, massive lighting rig, pin sharp sound plus the full set and cast. And to make extra sure it would work for a near capacity crowd, including Olympic champion Jonny Brownlee, they packed the cast with Mamma Mia veterans who were clearly enjoying the challenge of this new format. It would be easy for performers who know this show backwards to coast through it, but they were really trying to project their performances to the people at...

17Aug

By Tracey BellNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Hairspray – Sheffield Lyceum

Sheffield Lyceum’s opening night after 17 months of darkness - Hairspray is resoundingly resplendent, raucous and right on point. The show highlights many modern day issues that are particularly relevant today, that of Racism, Body Image and Sexism but never in a heavyweight way. It can be difficult to achieve this but, Hairspray packages these issues with a buoyant bouffant and plenty of toe tapping tunes. Set in Baltimore in the 1960’s we follow the trailblazer Tracy Turnblad as she stands up for equality and proves there is no place for the word ‘minorities' in the dawn of a new era. The staging on the UK tour remains traditional and is mainly made up of backdrops and two trucks which represent the Turnblad household on stage right and the Pingleton/ Motormouth Record Store on the l...

Eight Hundred Dollar Value – Etcetera Theatre

17Aug

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

London

Eight Hundred Dollar Value – Etcetera Theatre

Al Carretta is the man behind Nightpiece Media, who specialize in delivering movies made on a shoe-string budget. The mafia crime series began in August 2009 with ‘The Tears of a Clown’ at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and has since progressed. Eight Hundred Dollar Value is previewing at Camden Fringe Festival, moving to Edinburgh towards the end of the month, and will then be produced as a film in the Autumn. Michael Trudon (Al Carretta) had a good life with his foster parents, they gave him everything he could ever wish for, and everything was handed to him on a plate. ‘I didn’t have ambition; I didn’t need it!’. Following the death of his mother and then his father leaving home, he didn’t know much about his early years until his crazy grandmother from B...

17Aug

By Donna M DayNo Comments

Scotland

Candy – Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Reboot Theatre Company’s Candy is a tragic monologue about a man in love with his best friend’s drag alter ego. Written by Tim Fraser, and directed by Nico Pimparé, this unique piece of theatre gives a new slant to the star-crossed lovers story. The show opens with Will (Michael Waller) sneaking into the dressing room of an empty theatre. He gently caresses an abandoned blonde wig and microphone, before walking to the stage and attaching the mic. Beginning to speak, he is shocked by the high volume and wanders to one of the empty tables in the audience to tell his story. He says that he never believed in love at first sight before and when he first read Romeo and Juliet it struck him how impetuous they were to marry without having so much as a proper conversation about hobbies or any...

17Aug

By Gaurav SinghNo Comments

London

Fester – The Cockpit

Fester is a new devised physical theatre performance based on the story of Gretchen from Goethe's Faust. Produced by Halfpace Theatre, a new company dedicated to new work and devised theatre created by artists of underrepresented backgrounds, the show was performed at the Cockpit Theatre during the Camden Fringe. Devised by a majority migrant and marginalized gender team with Megan Brewer’s direction and Daria Vasko’s design, the show offers a playful and powerful reinterpretation of Goethe’s seminal work told through the lens of its titular female character, Gretchen. With strong performances by the ensemble and an intriguing design, this show leaves us with many reflections about the representation of marginalized individuals by drawing our attention towards the character of Gretchen and...

17Aug

By Nicky LambertNo Comments

Scotland

The Clones – Edinburgh Fringe Festival

“The Clones” are Lloydie James Lloyd and Liam Webber. They take an audience suggestion and weave a whole play around it, totally improvised and on the spot. With no set (except two chairs) and no idea of what the audience are going to suggest, this is the stuff of nightmares as far as I’m concerned, and I do think you must have to be some kind of masochist to want to perform improvised theatre. Tonight’s audience suggestion for the location was the International Space Station. I had assumed there would be other requested suggestions as to a vague storyline, characters etc but it was just the location. It took a little while to get going and there were a few long(ish) stretches of silence to start with, and I felt they struggled initially to get it off the ground. However, the pers...