Xhloe Rice Archives - North West End UK

A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads it First – theSpace @ Niddry Street

16Aug

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

Scotland

A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads it First – theSpace @ Niddry Street

Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland are bringing their award-winning comedy back to Edinburgh this year with a reprise of ‘A Letter to LBJ….’ which is playing to sold-out houses on Niddry St this month. This is the first opportunity for me to witness their Absurdist clowning in the flesh, and I confess I was completely charmed and blown away by this moving take on the idealised 1960s American childhood. Ace and Grasshopper are two young Scouts, covered in mud and badges and on a self-proclaimed mission to see President LBJ’s train as it whistles through their town. Ostensibly this is a simple tale of boyhood, camaraderie and adventure but the setting of the timeframe in early 1960s America foreshadows the boys' later involvement in the Vietnam War and the horrors of Southeast Asia for the...

What If They Ate The Baby? / A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First – Soho Theatre

The ceiling is clanging. the spaghetti casserole is green and the two housewife’s mannerisms are disconcertingly in-sync. In this absurdist comedy, beneath a polite veneer, nothing is quite as it seems… Shirley (Natasha Rowland), 1950s housewife, is a picture of idealised domesticity - scrubbing floors in a marigold dress to match the marigold gloves that it is apparent she lives in. But when Dottie (Xhloe Rice) arrives to return a casserole tray, despite synchronised displays of social respectability - a polite remark to their husbands’ health - an exchange of recipes - it is clear something is desperately wrong beneath all this. Exploring female autonomy, McCarthyism and queer relationships, as the pretences unravel, so too does the world the characters inhabit. What hooks you firs...

A Letter To Lyndon B. Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First – King’s Head Theatre

A Letter to Lyndon B. Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First is a powerful exploration of the pressures which shape a childhood, devastating loss of innocence, and the path which American foreign politics carved out for a generation of working class boys. Grasshopper (Xhloe Rice) and Ace (Natasha Roland) roll onto the stage as impossible-not-to-love Boy Scouts. Scruffy, mud covered, scamps! Spending a summer camp play-fighting imaginary enemies for the elusive praise of Lyndon B Johnson, a comically God-like father figure in their whimsical imaginations, the duo give magnetic, vulnerable and tender performances, creating characters you instantly invest in. As the story unfolds, folklore and propaganda blends with harrowing truths, and suddenly the looming pressures of manhood and w...