Monday, April 27

Tag: Mark Arends

Small Island – Birmingham Rep
West Midlands

Small Island – Birmingham Rep

Andrea Levy’s 2004 novel set primarily in 1948 focussing on Jamaican immigrants travelling to post-war Britain and exploring themes of identity and race relations has already been adapted into a highly acclaimed BBC TV series. Here we have a stage adaptation by the very accomplished Helen Edmundson which first saw light at the National Theatre in 2019 garnering a slew of impressive reviews including Michael Billington’s claim for it to be ‘one of the most important plays of the year.” We follow our characters as they journey from the sun-scorned beaches of Jamaica to the cold, unwelcoming streets of London in the 40s’ encountering entitlement, abuse and the inevitable racism. This is the Windrush story told in just three short hours which fly by and the tale of Hortense, Gilbert, Queeni...
Moby Dick – Wilton’s Music Hall
London

Moby Dick – Wilton’s Music Hall

You know the story. Boy meets whale. Whale eats boy’s leg. Boy never gets over whale. The enduring power of the novel, Moby Dick is difficult to relate to in this modern day and age for audiences without a special interest in whale anatomy or sperm oil derivation methods. Some productions take on this difficulty by recontextualizing the story, playing up its tragic or romantic elements, and this production, by the theatre ensemble simple8 technically checks both of these boxes. Our narrator/protagonist Ishmael (Mark Arends) and his beloved bunkmate Queequeg (Tom Swale) have more than a hint of chemistry and jokingly allude to a sea marriage. The doomed Captain Ahab (Guy Rhys) and his gloomy mate Starbuck (Hannah Emanuel) both take their respective roles in spreading their component element...