Thursday, October 1

Tag: Simon Darwen

Handbagged – Theatr Clwyd
Wales

Handbagged – Theatr Clwyd

Written by Moira Buffini, we are taken back between 1979 and 1990 during Margaret Thatcher’s three terms as Prime Minister and her weekly meetings with Queen Elizabeth 2nd. Theatr Weston is in the round for this performance with the stage in the centre. A raised round stage with cleverly laid props and costume pieces laid on stands around the lower part of the stage, those of which are used throughout the show by the two male cast members to help transform them in to numerous characters with a lot of help from our imagination. The play starts with Alexandra Mathie entering the stage waiting for one of the men to bring her a chair. She doesn’t need a chair, but she doesn’t want them to know that. She is followed closely by Meriel Scholfield as Queen Elizabeth 2nd, dragging a chair beh...
Bindweed – Arcola Theatre
London

Bindweed – Arcola Theatre

What can you do about domestic abuse? Martha Loader’s whopper of a one act, Bindweed, begs the question. Directed by Jennifer Tang, the play follows Jen (Laura Hanna), a group counsellor for men who have committed acts of domestic abuse. Although the bulk of the play’s plot comes apart in these facilitated sessions with the men she is attempting to rehabilitate, Loader does not confine her heroine exclusively to the therapeutic setting. We see her on a date with disappointing romantic prospect, Peter (Shailan Gohil), having drinks with married friends Nina (Josie Brightwell) and Ed (Simon Darwen) and in check-ins with her supervisor Alistair (Sean Kingsley) each played by an actor who also takes on a role in the world of the sessions themselves. This double casting and its both troublin...