Finborough Theatre Archives - North West End UK

27Jan

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

Darkie Armo Girl – Finborough Theatre

Darkie Armo Girl is a dizzying one woman show that, despite being filled with incredible details, fails to translate the writer’s experiences into a compelling show. The play is a piece of confessional theatre. Writer and performer Karine Bedrossian takes us through her life experiences which are chaotic and many. We hear of numerous difficult childhood experiences and unsettling summer holidays. She takes us through careers as a receptionist, a singer, a dancer, a model, a bartender and a stripper. There are tales of drug abuse, sexual assault, rehab, and Jerry Springer. Told to you by a friend at the pub, any one of these vignettes would be an incredible story. Put together on a stage, they become a morass. There is far too much here and the result is that the stories bleed int...

19May

By Holly SewellNo Comments

London

Diagnosis – Finborough Theatre

Athena Stevens commands the stage in the world premiere of her new play, Diagnosis, playing at the Finborough Theatre. In a dystopian London police station, a woman with a disability, S/he (Athena Stevens), is questioned about an alleged assault against a stranger. In accordance with new procedural law around ‘vulnerable individuals’, she is taped, watched by an audience through a one-way mirror, and forced to be taken seriously - or that’s the idea. In reality, the endless red tape acts less as a support system than as a distraction from the truth of her story. The set is immediately eerie. There is one window, blinds drawn, through which an ominous red glow seeps into Juliette Demoulin’s dark interrogation room. A camera on a tripod records and projects onstage the entire questioni...

23Mar

By Michelle KnightNo Comments

London

Men’s Business – Finborough Theatre

Men’s Business by Tony and Olivier Award winning playwright Simon Stephens has its world premiere this season. This 1972 version of Mannersache by Franz Xaier Kroetz, Simon Stephen’s translation is a love story set in a butcher’s shop with a cast of two and a dog and is the London debut for the acclaimed new production company Glass House Theatre from Dublin. From the opening scene, the backroom of a butcher’s shop Charlie and Rex appear in their work attire to the loud sounds of punk rock music, blasting, flashes of red as they assume their positions into what quickly transpires to be the only place the audience will see throughout this play. A small intimate theatre of benches which the audience can truly see, feel and touch the actors on set. Rex Ryan plays Victor the ‘boyfriend’ ...

11Jan

By Zak RosenNo Comments

London

Belly Of The Beast – Finborough Theatre

Any kind of societal ill is, like society, gigantic. A hyperobject. Something that expands beyond what the human mind can easily grasp. Often, theatre that tries to engage with such phenomena can feel some combination of lost, scattered, bloodlessly instructional. This is not the case with The Belly of the Beast at Finborough Theatre. We begin in a small black box theatre, arranged tennis-court style, with two simple spaces dispersed across time – an office and a classroom – that, thanks to the set-lighting-sound work of Delyth Evans, Arnim Friess and Max Pappenheim, provides an excellent environment for the action of the play, dynamic and real without distracting from what happens next. Things really come to life, however, through the performances: Sam Bampoe-Parry and Shiloh Coke,...

7Sep

By Carole GordonNo Comments

London

The Silver Cord – Finborough Theatre

"A boy is never a grown man to his mother." A mother's love - from the self-sacrificing kind to the utterly toxic - has been the subject of many plays, books and films. Sidney Howard's 1926 comedy-drama explores the latter type, his tale of maternal desperation a hit in the West End and on Broadway. The Finborough have now revived the play for its first London production since 1927. And it's a zinger. Set in a middle-class New England suburb in 1926, Mrs Phelps is a morass of emotional manipulation and gaslighting who wants her two grown-up sons to remain with her forever and to be the only important woman in their lives. She has crafted detailed plans for their futures and expects to have complete control over everything, including who they marry. David and Robert have o...

20Apr

By Klervi GavetNo Comments

London

Banging Denmark – Finborough Theatre

A fun, modern take on a romcom classic with a sociologist twist… Management consultant Jake Newhouse (Tom Kay) enrols super-duper feminist Ishtar Madigan (Rebecca Blackstone) to help him seduce the gorgeous, Danish, and totally unreceptive librarian of his dreams (Maja Simonsen). Now here’s the rub. Newhouse also goes by the name of Guy DeWitt, a powerful, misogynistic dating coach, pickup artist and deep voiced podcaster who recently sued Madigan for defamation. Unable to prove DeWitt sent his bros-before-hoes trolls out to destroy her reputation, her mental health and her mailbox, Madigan was forced to sell everything she owns to pay the settlement agreement. She now sleeps in the copy room of her university, a shadow of her glorious self - an alcoholic, paranoiac, horny PhD sch...

25Feb

By Carole GordonNo Comments

London

JAB – Finborough Theatre

Married for 29 years, Anne and Don think they know each other well. They dance to their favourite music, share too many bottles of wine, muddle along in their empty-nest lives. Anne is an administrator with the NHS, Don runs a niche vintage shop that makes little money, leaving Anne as the main breadwinner. It works for them - until the pandemic hits and the country goes into lockdown. As Covid ravages the world, it also shows up the cracks in the marriage. Anne continues to work long hours from home while Don has to close his shop and lazes around reading the Daily Mail and soaking up far-right conspiracy theories. It's just the flu, he insists. It will go away in a month, he says, parroting what he's read in the tabloids. Irritated by his increasing dependence on Anne, Don's sexism...

8Sep

By Dave SmithNo Comments

London

Birthright – Finborough Theatre

Continuing their re-discovery season, Finborough Theatre presents Birthright by T. C. Murray. Written in 1910 and staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin that same year, it was a huge success. Set around the same time in rural Ireland, a farming family comes to conflict over the different ways the two sons are being drawn in their own lives. Shane, the second son, has an innate talent for farm work, often finding solutions to farm challenges more swiftly than his father, Bat. Yet, despite this, the farm and its birthright were never destined to be his. He has arranged to emigrate to America. On this particular evening, we find ourselves at the family table, where a freshly delivered trunk rests, symbolising the second son's future far away – a "spare," borrowing a phrase from recent UK te...

The Return of Benjamin Lay – Finborough Theatre

16Jun

By Gonzalo SentanaNo Comments

London

The Return of Benjamin Lay – Finborough Theatre

Can one make a statement and beg to be brought back to the fold, renouncing all principles? Can one's desire to be accepted be stronger than one's principles? The Return of Benjamin Lay, written in collaboration between Naomi Wallace and Marcus Rediker, under the direction of Ron Daniels, and with acting by Mark Povinelli as Benjamin Lay, is a striking piece about a very interesting historical character. The treatment Povinelli gives the character is on its own, remarkable, and hits all the right nerves. The stage of the Finborough Theatre is made almost bare, with the windows letting in the noise and images of the cars from outside, and from the place where this reviewer was sitting, the sun was hitting in the faces of the audience. The set design, by Riccardo Hernandez and Isobel N...

A Brief List of Everyone Who Died – Finborough Theatre

20May

By Riana HowarthNo Comments

London

A Brief List of Everyone Who Died – Finborough Theatre

“There is no me in me without the way I love you”. A light, convivial family atmosphere transitions into a dark comedy as Graciela’s (Vivia Font) parents figure out how to tell her that their dog has died. Denial and questioning turns into blame and Graciela develops some sort of fear of her loved ones dying. Members of the cast take it in turns delineating the time passing as Gracie ages. Jacob Marx Rice’s script is mischievously witty and exuberant one moment before revealing undercurrents of disquiet and grief. Throughout the play, people in Gracie’s life die, and she struggles to deal with each one, until it eventually becomes her turn. What I loved about this play was its earnestness and the acute portrayal of grappling with something beyond your control. Font was emotiona...