Rowan Armitt-Brewster Archives

On Thursday evening, I sat for an hour at the Hull Truck Theatre, watching three performers who never uttered one word - and I laughed from start to finish. The three - writer, director and producer Rowan Armitt-Brewster as Thomas, Samuel Cunningham as Simon and Lennie Longworth as Daisy - mimed all the way through a production of A Brief Case of Crazy; I never knew miming could be so energetic. Their shenanigans took place in the theatre’s small Godber Studio amidst a stage setting featuring a large orange filing cabinet, orange seating on wheels, a static painting of colourful buildings on the right, plus a huge round light centre stage which I took to be a railway tunnel, as a lot of the action takes place in and around what could be the Tube (that’s how I saw it, anyway). Not for...

The history of nudity on stage is a rich, epic and often hilarious subject. It is also a bit tawdry and sporadically ugly. From the semi-nude stationary women in 1950s Soho clubs, posing in ‘Classical’ tableaux to handfuls of dirty old men, to the “theatrical Viagra” of a naked Nicole Kidman in the Donmar’s production of The Blue Room, bare titillation for cold cash remains a consistent hot potato. Bond hopeful and Happy Valley star, James Norton got naked in the harrowing stage adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara ’s A Little Life. Despite the play’s relentless themes of suicide, self-harm and paedophilia, audience members sneaked snaps of a nudey Norton and posted them on social media. Live nudity has potential to be fire. This is its undeniable power, and also it’s filthy flaw. The na...

Tag: Rowan Armitt-Brewster

A Brief Case of Crazy – Hull Truck Theatre

Boys in the Buff – Golden Goose Theatre