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Friends! The Musical Parody – Buxton Opera House

11Feb

By Brian MaddenNo Comments

North West

Friends! The Musical Parody – Buxton Opera House

After successful runs in New York and Las Vegas, Friends! The Musical Parody has landed in the UK with a tour stop at Buxton's Opera House. Promising a musical celebration of the hugely popular sitcom, the production attempts to compress ten seasons of television into a two-hour stage show — an ambitious idea that ultimately struggles to translate into a consistently entertaining evening. Photo: Pamela Raith Structured as a rapid-fire sequence of references, the show relies heavily on audience familiarity with the original series. Rather than building a coherent narrative, it jumps abruptly between famous storylines and catchphrases, often without enough context to make them land effectively. While devoted fans may appreciate the recognisable moments, the lack of breathing room me...

Animated Scottish Shorts – Edinburgh Filmhouse

11Feb

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Animated Scottish Shorts – Edinburgh Filmhouse

The richness and creativity of Scottish animation is showcased in this selection of ten short films, shown as part of the Manipulate Festival. Here are some of my favourites: The stop-motion world of Distance to the Moon, by Sacha Kyle and Victoria Watson, is full of texture and graceful movement, as its determined protagonist embarks on an epic journey. There’s peril, beauty and friendship, and plenty of surprises. Fairground Fever, by Linda Hughes, is colourful and nostalgic. A young woman visits a fairground with her friends. She enters a visually thrilling, swirling world of wonder and excitement. Painted in acrylics, the animation delights with movement and joy. Creche and Burn, by Frank O’Neil, is told from the perspective of a child. Zombies are on the rampage, and hero...

11Feb

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Auntie Empire – Summerhall Edinburgh

At Summerhall, as part of the Manipulate Festival, Julia Taudevin’s Auntie Empire is a show that improves as it decays. Performed solo by Taudevin, who also conceived the work, the production opens in a register of playful provocation, leaning heavily on audience participation. Under the guidance of performance director Tim Licata, these early sections clearly aim to implicate the room, drawing the audience into complicity before pulling the rug, but the results are mixed. Some exchanges feel laboured, stretching jokes past their natural lifespan and slightly blunting the edge of the satire. At times, the structure seems more interested in keeping the audience busy than in advancing the analysis. Once the show pivots away from participation and into its more overtly theatrical langua...

It’s Such a Beautiful Day + ME – Edinburgh Filmhouse

11Feb

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

It’s Such a Beautiful Day + ME – Edinburgh Filmhouse

Don Hertzveldt’s animated film, It’s Such a Beautiful Day, uses simple line drawings, stream of consciousness narration, and inventive cinematography as brushstrokes to build the story of Bill, a man with a neurological disorder. In Hertzveldt’s narration, the mundane and the fantastical are woven together: “Bill sat down and put on a big sweater, but it only made him sleepy”. “The guy next to him at the bus stop had the head of a cow, but Bill pretended not to notice.” As reality slips and slides around him, Bill does his best to make his world make sense. Bill recalls his childhood, his happy and his strange memories. Has his condition distorted his recollection? He attends medical appointments. His ex-girlfriend, and his mother, take care of him, but he is isolated from the people...

11Feb

By Peter KinnockNo Comments

West Midlands

Fawlty Towers – Wolverhampton Grand

Of course I don’t need to remind you of the high esteem in which Fawlty Towers is held not only by the international comedy loving public but also by comedic contemporaries and comedians of today. It is the one. The first and the best. Bar none. End of. Its first script was once described by an early producer as “a collection of cliches and stock characters which I can’t see being anything but a disaster.” Unlike John Cleese, Prunella Scales, Andrew Sachs and Connie Booth that producer’s name has been consigned to history. We watch the show over and over, without tiring, in abject horror and disbelief as Basil commits the same acts of frustrated stupidity taking his indignation to dizzying heights transcending taboo after taboo. It’s a glorious fusion of British stiff-upper-lipped suppr...

11Feb

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

Miles – Southwark Playhouse

The Southwark Playhouse (Borough) was heaving and giddy for the Monday press night of Miles, which swaggers into London after dazzling Edinburgh Fringe last year. Two young women were sat next to me. We chatted before the show started. They are both actors, blessed with good looks, quick wit and youthful enthusiasm. They were amused to hear I’m reviewing the show. Why? One of them turned out to be to be Amelia Bright, Assistant Director on this production. Written and directed by Oliver Kaderbhai, the concept of this show was crafted by globally renowned jazz trumpet whizz, Jay Phelps. He also happens play one of two characters in Miles. Phelps plays a thinly veiled version of himself. His co-star, Benjamin Akintuyosi, plays Miles Davis. Phelps isn’t messing about. The man with the trum...

9Feb

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

The Virgins – Soho Theatre

Oh my god, twist! And shout. Come on and work it on out. For these virgins, that’s pretty much the entire night’s agenda. Best friends Chloe (Anushka Chakravarti) and Jess (Ella Bruccoleri) are headed out for the night to “pull” for the very first time but find their plans needlessly complicated by the simple fact they have no idea what they actually want. Aided and abetted by the persistently peripheral Phoebe (Molly Hewitt-Richards), cool girl/experienced slut Anya (Zoë Armer), a bottle of Absolut vodka, and two liters of lemonade, they’re ready for anything, in theory. In practice, practice is about all they’re up for. Writer Miriam Battye’s playtext is clever and cringe in equal measure, and Jaz Woodcock-Stewart’s direction is funky and fresh, with particular flavour peppered...

9Feb

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

The Rite of Spring – Traverse Theatre

At the Traverse Theatre, as part of the Manipulate Festival, Dewey Dell’s The Rite of Spring announces itself as a work that expects, and repays, sustained attention. Running a concentrated fifty minutes, this is not a production that courts easy admiration or quick interpretation. It is slow, deliberate, and insistently moody, drawing the audience into a sealed weird world that unfolds according to its own internal logic.The original scandal of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring lay in its pagan brutality, Nijinsky and the Ballets Russes presenting sacrifice as the necessary price of renewal. In Dewey Dell’s reimagining, conceived and directed by Agata Castellucci, Teodora Castellucci, and Vito Matera, that focus subtly shifts. As a monumental red flower opens to reveal a prot...

Don Quixote (Is A Very Big Book) – Traverse Theatre

9Feb

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Don Quixote (Is A Very Big Book) – Traverse Theatre

There’s a moment early on in Don Quixote (is a Very Big Book) where the performer suggests the entire show sprang from a serendipitous eBay purchase, a suit of unlikely, clown-footed, articulated armour. It’s a charming idea, but frankly, it’s nonsense. The armour is far too central, too embedded, too perfectly calibrated to the rhythms of the piece for this to be anything other than myth-making. And that’s no bad thing. Don Quixote, after all, is built on glorious delusion. What matters is that this is an almost perfect one-man show, and that’s a bold claim, but a justified one. One-handers often get tantalisingly close to perfection because of the sheer control involved, one body, one voice, one mind shaping the entire theatrical universe. What’s remarkable here is that this sh...

9Feb

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

Digging Up Appearances – Old Red Lion

Inspired by the 90s British sitcom Keeping Up Appearances, this creative horror-comedy play will delight you with macabre hilarity whether or not you’re familiar with the source material. Decades after the sitcom is set, Sheridan is going through a heartbreaking divorce and, through the powers of a magical amulet, accidentally resurrects his dead mother, Hyacinth. Seeing her son’s life isn’t as wonderful as she hoped or expected it would be, Hyacinth takes it upon herself to guide Sheridan and get his life back on track. She also has an insatiable appetite for human flesh. Hilarious horror-comedy antics ensue. I have never seen a single episode of Keeping Up Appearances but knew just enough from cultural osmosis to not be completely lost while watching this play. Some jokes went over...