REVIEWS Archives - Page 389 of 415

12Feb

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Romeo & Juliet Online

With the national lockdown still upon us and theatres remaining closed, Metcalfe Gordon Productions has found a way around the restrictions with their virtual adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragic love story, Romeo and Juliet. Directed by Nick Evans, the show is set in the aftermath of the pandemic, in a world where the population has taken refuge in empty theatres. With current restrictions, CGI was used to create the virtual theatre setting, with the scenes taking place in all aspects of the venue, from the stalls to backstage, it certainly took some getting used to. After being away from a theatre for so long, I enjoyed being reacquainted with the place I’ve missed. The clever CGI set by Jamie Osbourne effectively gave the illusion of the characters interacting with each other whi...

Good Grief – Platform Presents and Finite Films

12Feb

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Good Grief – Platform Presents and Finite Films

Written by Lorien Haynes and Directed by Natalie Abrahami, Good Grief is a romantic comedy which takes us on a journey of loss, hurt, love and memories. Filmed on location at Coptic Street Studios, London, the one act piece follows Adam (Nikesh Patel) and Cat (Sian Clifford) after the loss of someone close to them over a 10-month period, taking us through different scenarios and many different emotions. The piece takes place in one room which is dressed between ‘scenes’ to create different places, from a living room to a car park and even a hotel room. The set is extremely basic, using chairs and cardboard boxes to build different looks and situations. At first this comes across as quite bland and uninspiring but as I went with the piece, I started to feel the lack of scenery reflect...

9Feb

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Take Care – The Living Record Festival

Take Care is an online adaptation of a stage play by the verbatim theatre company Ecoute Theatre based in Bristol and London. Crafted from interviews with carers over six years, the show first premiered in 2014 with a sold out run at Edinburgh Fringe Festival. This filmed version, produced for the Living Record Festival, has four actors of the company take you into the real lives, homes and stories of 20 such carers and the people they care for. Full of heart-wrenching, messy, hilarious and poignant moments captured through the actual words of carers without any ‘edits’, this show makes you introspect deeply about the formal (and informal) care industry in the UK. The show is directed by Zoë Templeman-Young who also doubles up on the screenplay with Sam McLaughlin, accompanied by Matt K...

Heads or Tails by Skye Hallam – The Living Record Festival

8Feb

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REVIEWS

Heads or Tails by Skye Hallam – The Living Record Festival

Heads or Tails is a solo play written and performed by Skye Hallam for The Living Record Festival that asks us to deliberate the afterlife, our hang-ups about life (or those around our imminent death), and the decisions we make our in present ways of living. Presented as a 40-minute filmed performance that uses the free/shaky camera technique and has Skye speaking directly to the viewer, this piece makes you giggle, listen and reflect by exploring the life (and afterlife) of Steph, an actress gone in her prime who has now returned to the mortal world for one last show. By sharing candid experiences about the final years leading up to her untimely death and her encounters in heaven, particularly with God herself (please note the pronoun), Steph intends on sharing practical tips, suggesti...

This Little World – The Living Record Festival

7Feb

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REVIEWS

This Little World – The Living Record Festival

This Little World is a solo adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry II, adapted by Owen Corey and Matthew Windham. Performed by Corey and directed by Windham, the piece utilises original body puppetry under the direction of Essie Windham to tell this story of isolation, desperation and the absolute loss of everything someone holds dear, whether that’s friends and family or the throne of England itself. Opening with Corey, playing Richard II, huddled up in his bare and dusty cell, wearing a torn tracksuit, we see him firstly engaging in desperate attempts to escape before scrawling desperately into a notebook. He pulls the camera towards him, a subtle push against the fourth wall, as he begins his first soliloquy. Using Shakespeare’s original text, Corey essentially tells the story to the a...

Ain’t No Female Romeo – The Living Record Festival

7Feb

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REVIEWS

Ain’t No Female Romeo – The Living Record Festival

Ain’t No Female Romeo, created and performed by Lita Doolan, is a surreal and disconcerting story of social media, the relationships they create and how reliant people can become on both posting and consuming content on it, and, more importantly, receiving responses, particularly “likes”. Combining snippets of poetry, selfie videos, images, quotes and hashtags, the piece exposes social technology, as Doolan travels the world looking for Peter, someone she knows through Instagram, but how well is never made clear. It’s possible that she and Peter have exchanged messages and comments, but the more disturbing possibility is that their only interaction has been liking each other’s posts. The images, quotes and hashtags which flash up on screen from time to time are often very quick, crea...

7Feb

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Shook by Samuel Bailey – Papatango

Samuel Bailey’s Shook, directed by George Turvey in collaboration with James Bobin, tells the story of three young new or soon to be fathers, who are all in prison. The play won the 2019 Papatango New Writing Prize and shows the characters proceed through a series of parenting classes. The set shows a bleak, simply furnished room, with obviously faded paintwork and fold-up furniture. The play opens with Jonjo (Josef Davies) sitting on one of the fold-up chairs, with his head down as he tries to avoid Cain (Josh Finan), a loud Scouser who knows everything about everyone else and goes to great pains to maintain his own reputation. The play makes good use of the online format by including snippets of black and white CCTV recordings, emphasising the prison environment and giving the piece a...

Always on my Mind – The Living Record Festival

4Feb

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REVIEWS

Always on my Mind – The Living Record Festival

Always on my Mind is a short snapshot of life in lockdown written by Liam Alexandru and directed by Theodore Gray. Based on Alexandru’s 2016 play of the same name, this impressively compact piece captures the spirit of today’s world while telling the story of two very real and complex characters. Stacey (Lucy Syed) and Curtis (Charles Lomas) have been apart for six months and Stacey has reluctantly agreed to a video call. Their breakup was messy and both of them are still upset about it, particularly Stacey. The video call is of course awkward as the characters exchange mundane pleasantries about life in quarantine. We hear the characters’ thoughts through inner monologues presented by the same actors in the background, and old feelings are quickly aggravated as tensions rise leading...

Alright, Girl? by Maria Ferguson – The Living Record Festival

3Feb

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REVIEWS

Alright, Girl? by Maria Ferguson – The Living Record Festival

Alright, Girl? is a soundscaped binaural recording of a poetry collection by the same name written by Maria Ferguson and published by Burning Eye Books. The writings are a reflection of the author’s working class heritage whilst growing up in vastly changing urban landscape of the United Kingdom. The text, originally published in August 2019, is performed by Maria in an hour-long listening experience for The Living Record Festival. With sound design by Chris Drohan, who combines Maria’s intimate spoken word rendition of her writing with a subtle score that adds warmth and tactility to the words, this piece takes the audience through Maria’s lived experiences with class, gender and belonging. The text itself is deeply enjoyable to read; I often found myself hitting the rewind butt...

31Jan

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Behind The Beyond – Online@The Space UK

At a time when a night at the theatre means sitting in front of our TV, laptop or phone, Edinburgh venue ‘The Space UK’ have stepped up to the plate for the second time to give us Season 2 of their online fringe theatre festival. Created by BMV Theatre Productions and adapted by Brian Cano during a 2020 lockdown, ‘Beyond The Beyond’ has been filmed for Zoom by the actors in their own home, and then edited to create a piece of theatre which exams the 19th Century ‘problem play’. ‘Behind The Beyond’ the play, delves into Stephen Leacock’s book ‘Behind the Beyond: And Other Contributions To Human Knowledge’ written in 1913, to give a satirical glance at this genre of play. The problem plays of the 19th Century gave playwrights the ammunition to use the stage to exam social issu...