“In this place every child is destined to be a soldier,” so reads the front cover of the programme for Knock Knock. As I took my seat I couldn’t help thinking that I must steel myself for some harrowing depictions of the brutality of war. In the end, the copious amounts of fake blood that I envisaged remained a figment of my imagination, and my ear drums stayed unperforated as the loud noises of artillery and explosives didn’t materialise. What the show does depict tugs at the emotional … [Read more...]
‘The subtlety and delicateness are golden’ in The Red Barn
It wasn’t that slow, despite slowness being the prevailing view of my fellow theatregoers immediately after leaving the National Theatre, having seen The Red Barn. A slow-burner, perhaps, in the sense that not all is revealed at once, and there are some long and awkward silences, but this is all commensurate with the tension that the play creates. But I was never disengaged or disinterested in what was going on, and the alternative is much worse. Imagine a disorganised play with too many … [Read more...]
Harrogate ‘is a resounding success’ – Royal Court Theatre
This is one of those shows where the set comes across as deliberately unimportant, and might just as easily have worked as well as a black box ‘poor theatre’ set. But this production of Harrogate is minimalist rather than non-existent, with the audience positioned on two platforms, so to speak, with the stage effectively in the shape of a catwalk. And though the production makes full use of the available space, the trade-off comes in the form of members of the audience, particularly those sat in … [Read more...]
Hotel for Criminals at New Wimbledon Studio Theatre – Review
BUZZ! One of the questions I am sometimes asked about shows is whether there is one particular thing, good or bad, that stands out about a production, and will linger in my long term memory. BUZZ! This production of Hotel for Criminals likes to have a highly irritating buzzing noise, too loud and too long, to indicate a scene change. BUZZ! It got to the point where I began to dread the ending of musical numbers because of the deafening buzz that would inevitably … [Read more...]
Ragtime ‘is an absorbing and heartfelt musical’
The Charing Cross Theatre stage looked crowded even as the audience was still filing in, with a number of musical instruments taking up much of the available space. The cast of Ragtime is, I daresay, kept on their toes by constraints of space, and from my vantage point, I occasionally felt uncomfortable that someone might just crash into someone else, particularly during the full ensemble numbers, of which there are several. Such fears thankfully proved unfounded, for which Ewan Jones’ … [Read more...]
London Horror Festival: Mountains of Madness – Review
Unless you have some familiarity with the fantasy horror world of HP Lovecraft, and understand what ‘the Necronomicon’ and ‘Shoggoths’, amongst other Lovecraftian terms, refer to, a full appreciation of Mountains of Madness is difficult to achieve. I just about managed to plough through At the Mountains of Madness, the Lovecraft novella, prior to seeing this theatrical adaptation – the book was more compelling overall, leaving more to the reader’s imagination in its restraint and repeated … [Read more...]