Wednesday, June 3

Tag: Dick Straker

Baby Mash-Up: What on Earth Are You Doing? – Traverse Theatre
Scotland

Baby Mash-Up: What on Earth Are You Doing? – Traverse Theatre

Sally Hobson’s Baby Mash-Up, What On Earth Are You Doing? Is a bold, strange and undeniably ambitious new work that often resists easy interpretation even as it reaches towards moments of startling emotional beauty. Presented by stillpoint at the Traverse Theatre and directed with restless invention by Nicholas Bone, the production unfolds across a collage-like structure of some twenty-five scenes, veering wildly between absurdist comedy, philosophical speculation, domestic intimacy and moments of piercing lyrical reflection. At first, the play feels almost deliberately destabilising. The audience is bounced from one surreal encounter to another, unsure whether to laugh, think, analyse or simply surrender to the flow of ideas washing over them. Yet gradually, beneath the theatri...
Steve – Seven Dials Playhouse
London

Steve – Seven Dials Playhouse

The newly refurbished Tristan Bates Theatre (now renamed Seven Dials Playhouse) is the perfect setting for this play in which the first scene takes place in a Joe Allen restaurant, and the New York bar setting of the theatre compliments this perfectly. The writer Mark Gerrard has (rather annoyingly) called three of the characters similar names, Stephen (Joe Aaron Reid), Steven (David Ames), and their son Stevie, who we do not see, but who is talked about extensively.  The annoying aspect is that it does take some time to understand who is who at the outset, so some of the nuances of the first scene may be lost as you figure out which Steven/Stephen/Stevie, they are talking about.  Five old friends meet at Joe Allen’s to celebrate Steven’s birthday, Carrie (Jenna Russell...