Like a lot of plays recently (McQueen, Song Of Riots etc.), RoosevElvis has the actors on stage as the audience enter the auditorium. In this case we can only see the back of a head and a leg as the two actors are hidden by the back of a large sofa as they watch “Thelma & Louise” on television. When they emerge, they are in fact “Teddy Roosevelt” (played by Kristen Sieh) and “Elvis Presley” (played by Libby King). They sit themselves down on a couple of high stools and proceed to bat … [Read more...]
Song of Riots at Battersea Arts Centre
As you enter what was originally the Council Chamber of the old Battersea Town Hall ten minutes before the start of Song Of Riots, you see four men dressed in shorts and singlets wrestling vigorously on a mat, whilst behind a gauze screen at the back of the room, two women stand motionless. Are these men soldiers? Why are they wrestling? Why are the women not moving? Then the lights dim and the four men by now bathed in sweat, stop wrestling, disperse and the performance begins. The men get … [Read more...]
Motown The Musical London West End Launch
Motown The Musical doesn’t open in London until February 2016 but it was launched to the media this week at the Hospital Club in Covent Garden hosted by Sir Lenny Henry. The show which opened on Broadway on April 14th 2013 and ran for over 700 performances, is the story of Motown’s founder Berry Gordy and his iconic record label and he was in London at the launch to take part in a Q&A session curated by Sir Lenny. Also on the panel were director Charles Randolph-Wright and one of the … [Read more...]
Wicked Review 2015: Superb cast in a spectacular West End show
Is there anyone out there who’s interested in musical theatre that hasn’t seen “Wicked”? It’s been running at the beautiful art deco Apollo Victoria since September 27th 2006 - that’s over 3700 performances (and that’s not counting the UK tours) - with numerous regular changes of cast and last night I got to see the latest. So what’s the appeal of this multi-award-winning show and the reason for its longevity? I think it’s down to the fact that the producers have tapped into a demographic … [Read more...]
The White Feather at the Union Theatre
When I was young I used to play a game called “Consequences”. A subject would be chosen and then the first player wrote a line on a piece of paper about the subject, folded up the paper and passed it onto the second player who wrote the second line without being able to see what came before, folded up the paper and passed it to the next player and so on until the last player had written the last line which began “And the consequences were….”. The paper was then unfolded, the story read out loud … [Read more...]
Spring Awakening at The Old Finsbury Town Hall
The teenage angst was pouring out of the young cast both metaphorically and literally (it was a very hot and humid evening in the Old Town Hall) as they performed Stephen Sater (book and lyrics) and Duncan Sheik’s (music) superb and rarely performed Tony winning 2006 rock musical “Spring Awakening”. Based on German expressionist playwright Frank Wedekind’s controversial 1891 play “Fruhlings Erwachen”, (which as recently as 1963 was banned from the British stage), “Spring Awakening” tells the … [Read more...]
Review of La Bohème at the Arcola Theatre – Grimeborn 2015
Grimeborn Opera Festival was formed in 2007 to reimagine classics, perform little known masterpieces and encourage new work. Their aim is to make opera more accessible and take it out of the opera house and into places such as the Arcola in Dalston. This year’s festival kicked-off with Puccini’s masterpiece updated from a group of bohemians living in a garrett in 1830s Paris to a contemporary group of out of work hipsters living in an apartment somewhere not too far from the Arcola. The set … [Read more...]