The advertising for Constellations makes one think it is an adaptation of a Mills & Boon novel: “One relationship. Infinite possibilities.” Fortunately (or unfortunately, dependent on what you prefer) it is very far removed from that. This one-act two-hander wastes no time in exploring complex topics, discussing immortality within the very first sentence. Roland (Joe Armstrong), a beekeeper from somewhere within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, meets Marianne (Louise Brealey), a … [Read more...]
Review of The Young Idea and Hands Across the Sea
I did wonder if ‘The Questors Student Group 68’ held any particular significance or hidden meaning as a title for a young theatre company. Alas, not really: The Questors, which styles itself as ‘Ealing’s theatre’, a west London bastion of amateur dramatics and training courses, has had 67 previous cohorts of students who have also presented their skills to the paying public over some decades. Originally the Questors had decided to present Hands Across The Sea after The Young Idea in this … [Read more...]
Review of Helen Foster in The Diver at The Rag Factory
A show that begins with a spiel by the theatre’s artistic director about how the show deliberately attempts to challenge popular (that is, well-known) ideas of what an evening at the theatre is like calls for a review that responds – or attempts to respond – in kind. I’ll start by ditching any star rating. That is not, mind you, me rating a show zero out of five, but rather joining the spirit of ‘The Diver’ in challenging convention and thinking more widely, and therefore not allowing a rating … [Read more...]
Review of The Hampstead Players’ The Tragedy of King Richard II
First things first: it says something about the condition of the seating in some of the West End’s theatres when I can sit on a wooden church pew for three hours, with no cushions for support, and be more comfortable than I would in a tip-up upholstered seat with armrests. There is something a bit eerie about seeing a play in a working church - there were prayer mats being used as back supports and booster cushions, and parish notices tacked on to a large board at the rear of the nave. “The … [Read more...]
All-female production of King Henry V at the Union Theatre
It is one thing for the Union Theatre to host, as it did a few years ago, a production of an all-male cast of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, but Shakespeare’s Henry V is not a quirky light opera comedy. To present an all-female cast as a ‘band of brothers’ who score a decisive victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt is a bold move by the Lazarus Theatre Company, here making their Union Theatre debut. The cast list is striking because the King of France, Queen … [Read more...]
Review of THE KREUTZER SONATA and Other Works
The New English Ballet Theatre is certainly ambitious in presenting a programme of “Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata and an evening of new ballets”, even if the evening of new ballets came first. This is, their artistic director and founder Karen Pilkington-Miksa told me, the first time they have taken a show on the road: their previous productions have had resident (if ‘limited’) runs in a single venue. My initial irritation at the curtain going up 28 minutes late was dispelled when I heard the … [Read more...]
Review of Joe Bor and Jasper Cromwell Jones at the Museum of Comedy
An evening at the Museum of Comedy was always going to be somewhat different from my usual theatregoing fare of witnessing shows that deal with multiple themes with various degrees of poignancy and enlightenment. While I may have been labelled ‘the reviewer’ in the audience, one’s true friends are those who are brutally honest about whether a gag or a punchline works or not. And as Joe Bor’s friends (and family) had turned out in force, I am pleased to report that they were superb in making … [Read more...]