Old Red Lion Theatre Archives - Page 2 of 2

2Oct

By Zoё MeeresNo Comments

London

Snowflakes – Old Red Lion Theatre

A man awakes in a hotel room, unsure of how he arrived there. He is agitated, struggling to make sense of his situation when two strangers arrive with a deadly mission. The hotel door is locked, and it will stay locked until the job is done. In Snowflakes, writer Robert Boulton presents a thought-provoking piece of theatre, exploring a number of issues that have been tackled in recent popular fiction, including programmes like Black Mirror and the Saw films. In a society where so many feel unjustly treated, where is the line between right and wrong, judgement and punishment and criminality? Who is the real ‘bad guy’, and how far will people go to see that justice is done? If it’s not an entirely unique plot – I found the ending satisfying if not a little predictable – what really sto...

Saving Britney: Prologue – Old Red Lion Theatre

Hot on the heels of the recent television documentary Framing Britney Spears, this collaboration from Fake Escape and the Old Red Lion Theatre is a prologue for a live show opening in the Islington space in mid-May. It opens with a shadow puppet introduction which made me think back to the Barbie dolls which populated the film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1988), although the words were borrowing heavily from Romeo and Juliet. This tells, very quickly, the story of the rise of Britney Spears from a child artist to a woman who is denied her financial and professional independence. As a one-woman show, Saving Britney: Prologue focuses on Shereen Roushbaiani as Jean, a moderator on a Britney Fan Group. She is around thirty-years old, seems to populate a room full of Britney memo...

December – Old Red Lion Theatre

Bag of Beard Collective in conjunction with ORL Theatre serves up this quirky, sometimes sinister but ultimately highly enjoyable show written and directed by ORL artistic director Alexander Knott. The play is basically another take on the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol but instead of Scrooge taking centre stage, Knott cleverly focuses on the ever put upon and downtrodden Bob Cratchit (Ryan Hutton). Knott imagines him taking a journey to possible futures ahead, through encounters with vagabonds, spirits and ghosts. For fans of the Dicken’s characters there is definitely some fun to be had in this inventive adaptation and even though it has its very dark and sometimes quite surreal moments (think disco sparkle flairs, Bowies Fashion and Cuban heels) you cannot deny the sheer energy...