Latest Articles - Page 12 of 641

29Oct

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

Play Dead – The Horse Hospital

As the trend for celebrity performers and popular stories continues to dominate the West End, it becomes increasingly important to support and highlight new writing and underground talent. Last week, Nadine Rennie, co-chair of the Casting Directors Guild warned that this commercially driven, fever for the famous is like, “feeding a child too much sugar.” As the trend towards box office safe bets shows no sign of retreating, it was a bracing thrill to experience Play Dead by Bailey Edwards at The Horse Hospital. This wasn’t a spoonful of crowd-pleasing sugar. It more like a judicious jab of crystal meth, followed by a slap. Play Dead is a unique, queer, grimly comic modern myth about obsession, addiction, co-dependence and the fragile nature of sanity. It features the author, Edwards ...

1884, an anti colonial game-theatre show at the Wellcome Collection

28Oct

By Alice RoseNo Comments

London

1884, an anti colonial game-theatre show at the Wellcome Collection

Without any previous research, I chose to enter this piece blind in which I am immensely glad I did. Created by Rhianna Llube, we wait patiently at the doors. We are told this is as immersive as you chose it to be, you can simply observe or be as active as you desire. Once inside you have a choice of 5 tables to sit at, you are encouraged to start as strangers and so as a solo traveller that is what I did. In front of you, you have a home, a letter holder, and a few counters with pieces of furniture on them. The actors begin their welcoming speeches, inviting us to a new society in which we are all separate families building their homes. The set and costume is beautifully designed, almost 50’s American style with pale blues, pinks and browns to express solidarity and neutrality. We begi...

Northern Lights and German Resonance – Liverpool Philharmonic Hall

28Oct

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

North West

Northern Lights and German Resonance – Liverpool Philharmonic Hall

There was nothing Fawlty about the RLPO in last night’s performance—a real Touch of Class, you might say. In that BBC comedy classic, Sybil famously complained about her henpecked husband “listening to that racket”—prompting Basil’s comic rejoinder that it was Brahms’s Third racket. Perhaps she would have preferred his Fourth Symphony, one of the great Romantic masterpieces, brought vividly to life at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall by debutant Estonian conductor Kristiina Poska. The programme opened with little-known Swedish composer Ida Moberg’s evocation of dawn, traversed Sibelius’s elemental drama, and closed with Brahms at his most romantic and architecturally grandiose. All of it under the guidance of a left-handed baton—a rare sight, even in Liverpool, the city of famous left-hand...

27Oct

By Dylan MooneyNo Comments

Scotland

So Young – Traverse Theatre

Off the back of its Edinburgh Fringe run, Douglas Maxwell’s So Young returns to the Traverse Theatre, directed by Artistic Director, Gareth Nicholls. Milo (Robert Jack) is in his forties and has recently lost his wife, Helen. Struck down with grief, he invites his friends, married couple Liane (Lucianne McEvoy) and Davie (Andy Clark) for an evening of food, drinks and reminiscing. However, he also invited his new partner, Greta (Yana Harris), who is 20 years younger than him. It isn’t long before tensions rise, and feelings are made known between these life-long friends. So, Young explores the different ways in which grief affects people as well as the struggles of getting older. Maxwell approaches his themes with his notorious wit, providing the audience with many laughs throughout ...

27Oct

By Zain RussellNo Comments

London

The Monkey’s Paw – The Hope Theatre

The Monkey’s Paw, currently haunting the intimate Hope Theatre, is a stage adaptation of the classic supernatural tale of the same name. This version narrows its focus onto a young married couple wrestling with real-world struggles, mounting bills and the deep emotional fallout of a recent miscarriage. The show opens with a beautifully staged movement sequence tracing their relationship from first sparks of romance to marriage, pregnancy, and heartbreak. It’s wordless but full of emotional detail, giving the audience a sense of the life they’ve built, and what they’ve lost, before the supernatural intervenes. When a mysterious talisman, the titular monkey’s paw, enters their lives, it allows them to grant their desperate wish: a child of their own. But as with all good cautionary tal...

27Oct

By Jenn McKeanNo Comments

North West

The Signalman – Floral Pavilion

As someone who spends a lot of their life on trains, I’ve always wondered what happened in the old signal boxes along the routes… not so much anymore! The Signalman has been adapted for the stage from the short story by Charles Dickens, by Francis Evelyn. With the book only being 30 pages, Evelyn managed to create a 2-act play from it, while still keeping the Dickens essence in it. It tells the story of a signalman in the 1880s, who is rigorous in his routines, being visited by a traveller and them sharing their stories. The signalman is adamant that he is visited by a Spirit, that foretells of a dangerous event occurring – train crashes, women falling to their deaths from trains and so on… It is comprised of a small cast of actors and relies on clever tricks, to convey the presence of ...

The Constant Cold – Baron’s Court Theatre

27Oct

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

The Constant Cold – Baron’s Court Theatre

With a runtime of just 30 minutes, The Constant Cold by Zoë Cooper delivers a tight package of thrills and jump-scares while attempting to explore wider themes of misogyny, gaslighting, sexual assault, and the silencing of women’s voices. The plot follows three flatmates, one of whom – Megan – comes home frightened after a terrifying experience while walking home at night. As more and more frightening and unexplained things happen, the three are forced to face the existence of the supernatural as well as confronting difficult truths about one another as past events resurface. The script is engaging and creepy at times, but falters during the more intimate, character-focused moments. The characters aren’t well-developed, including the protagonist Megan (Zoë Cooper). Most of what we le...

Charlie and The Chocolate Factory – Altrincham Garrick Playhouse

24Oct

By Angela KellyNo Comments

North West

Charlie and The Chocolate Factory – Altrincham Garrick Playhouse

Arguably the most well-known of all Roald Dahls novels, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is being performed at Altrincham Garrick Playhouse this week. Directed by Joseph Meighan, it is also a story with very popular film versions and so is a brave undertaking for any theatre to perform.For those few who have never heard of the story it is essentially about young Charlie Bucket and a winning golden ticket that entitles the holder to a rare entry into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Wonka, the eccentric and largely unseen owner of the factory, meets Charlie and the rest of the winners and the story ensues with much surrealism, a lot of sugar and some strange 'umpa lumpa' people along the way!Charlie Bucket is performed by Rui Yang Lau. He performs as Dahl described Charlie in his novels. W...

24Oct

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Batshit – Traverse Theatre

There’s a certain audacity to a one-person show. One performer, one story, one mind in charge of the entire evening. Batshit, created and performed by Leah Shelton, turns that control into both its subject and its triumph. In a world quick to label women “mad”, Shelton calmly, stylishly, and with extraordinary precision, takes charge of her own narrative, and everyone else’s for that matter, for sixty taut minutes.When you enter the tight Traverse 2, the first thing that hits you is the bank of LED strips looming above the stage like a silent judge. It’s no decorative flourish: throughout the show, that strip becomes an emotional metronome, pulsing and flickering in unnervingly close rhythm with the sound design. The coordination of light and sound, operated, I assume, from a pre-programme...

The Wolf of Poyais – Golden Goose Theatre

24Oct

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

The Wolf of Poyais – Golden Goose Theatre

The Wolf of Poyais is a new one-man historical satire play from BlueBar productions, written by Sam Went and starring Joz Norris. It tells the fascinating true story of con man Gregor MacGregor, who – in the early 1800s – swindled hundreds of people out of hundreds of thousands of pounds with an outrageous, fraudulent scheme. Sam Went’s script is both well-researched and very entertaining. The story itself is absolutely fascinating in itself, but Went’s script injects it with even more humour and poignancy. The script is darkly funny; it revels in the absurdity of MacGregor’s scheme, while still treating the devastating impact it had on people’s lives with gravitas. Many plays based on true stories fall into the trap of simply depicting one historical event after another, w...