London theatre reviews written by Faye Stockley.

Have you ever wondered what that little voice in your head looks like? Maybe it’s a small child, a ‘devil-like’ figure? Some would have you believe it’s a chimp! Well, One Duck Theatre have the answer, and in Lad, the lastest production from writer-performer duo Rhys Dunlop and Alan Mahon, that voice in your head is a twentysomething manchild!, attired in an oversized patterned shirt, very tight cycling shorts and in possession of an oh-so seductive Irish accent! His primal aim in life is to protect you from embarrassment, ensure you get laid and to keep your mind focused on sex! And herein lies the problem!

On the face of it, Lad is a laugh-out-loud, 60-minute production with buckets full of sex jokes, both verbal and mimed! However, when you step back from this production what you see is a beautifully written, expertly performed production exploring how millennial men, lads, are struggling to navigate society – how the role of the dominant, beer-swilling, foul-mouthed sexist lad is balancing his masculinity whilst also trying to become a feminist and embrace his emotional, softer side.

Lad is a two-handed monologue, both Rhys Dunlop and Alan Mahon portray our protagonist! The archetypal lad. There isn’t really any set, just a large bench which is shaped like a cock and balls. The lighting is used to break the scenes and show movement in time, but the rest of the production is just Dunlop and Mahon. They are excellent, their onstage chemistry is the best I’ve seen in years, they are one and the same. Watching them banter, work together and in conflict is like watching a masterclass. Their characterisation, movement and interaction is seamless.

We join the action with our lad writing, or trying to write his best man speech, and the piece ends with the delivery of that speech. What happens in the 50+ minutes in between is a pure joy to watch.

I found my self laughing loudly throughout most of the production. I particularly enjoyed the scene where our lad is on a night out at a student bar, and his alter ego is narrating David Attenborough style the mating dance of the young drunk man!

The way in which this piece explores mental health is really positive and impactful.

I would highly recommend this show if you are looking for a release, or you need reassurance that you’re not alone in this world, or you just want a good old belly laugh.

Review by Faye Stockley

Steve is fine. No really, he’s grand. He’s a lad. He’s always been a lad — one of the lads. But the lads have changed and Steve feels like an endangered species. The last of his kind. With nobody to talk to.
But there’s one lad left. His lad. And his lad… talks back.

LAD is a cheeky two-hander that tugs playfully at the knot of toxic masculinity.
A balls-to-the-wall comedy about… balls. And becoming a better man.

Credits
Written and performed by Alan Mahon & Rhys Dunlop
Director Thomas Martin
Movement Consultant Bryan Burroughs
Lighting Design Cillian McNamara
Sound Design Ekaterina Solomatina
Set Design One Duck
Set Builder Stephen Lockhart

4 – 8 Mar 2020
http://vaultfestival.com/

The final installment of the It’s a Girl Trilogy – Sticky Door is currently showing at the Vault Festival. Following on from Bicycles and Fish and Sexy Lamp, Katie Arnstein’s Sticky Door is a self-penned one-woman show true to its original form; raw, intelligent, funny, emotional and empowering. As with her previous two productions, Arnstein’s show comes with free sweets for the audience, monologues that amplify her comedic talent and firmly places her in my top ten list of female storytellers, as well as songs performed on the ukulele and vox pops played through audio starting the piece.

The set is minimal; she has created a room on stage, a safe space with big comfortable armchair (think the Lemsip advert), there is a large lamp (formally the sexy lamp prop) to her left and a table with photo, phone and personal effects to her right. In this safe space, Arnstein can say and do anything. She is empowered to tell her story to us. She controls the language and delivery. There is no doubt that Arnstein is in control and she has us, her audience, leaned inwards listening with eagerness to her words.

Arnstein’s story-telling technique is compelling, I could listen to her talk for hours, she has mastered the ability to fill a room with her voice and draw the audience into her world. She comes across as vulnerable, however, this is not a weakness it is instead empowering. If you’re a Ted Talk fan, you’ll most certainly be aware of Brené Brown and her vulnerability is power talk – Brown says that “vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy and creativity.” I believe this is a great way to describe Arnstein’s work.

Although the content of her story is sometimes hard to hear, everything she talks about needs to be heard. The struggle as a twenty-something, living, working and having sex in London is not a single unfamiliar occasion, it’s a unifying event that audience members can connect with. Her every day is our every day. The stories and memories she regales are familiar, funny and heartwarming. We laugh with her as she talks about her first experience of a bikini wax, and groan with her when she shares her gin-inspired chat up lines and Tinder encounters.

It seems silly to single Arnstein out as a Feminist, because in 2020 how can anyone not be a believer in gender equality? However, the very fact that this piece exists highlights that more needs to be done to address gender inequality, sexual harassment, sexual assault, guilt and shaming and archaic beliefs that women exist to please men. Katie Arnstein’s work really does need to be captured and shown to every teenager in the UK. It is only by sharing our Sticky Door stories that the world can change. The narrative had me laugh out loud, it also had me shed a tear. This woman is my hero.

Review by Faye Stockley

From the multi-award-winning team that bought you the “exquisite” (The List) Sexy Lamp and Bicycles and Fish…

“The 2014 plan was a simple one, I would “Casanova” myself around our nation’s capital looking for consenting heterosexual adult males. One no-frills lover-man for every month. I was the original calendar girl. Helen Mirren plays me in the film.”

In 2014 Katie was very sexually active. She was also extremely depressed. Join her as she examines whether the two things are connected.

A storytelling show with songs about sex, stigma and cystitis.

Sticky Door is the third part in Katie Arnstein’s It’s a Girl! trilogy.

Catch Katie’s other shows at VAULT 2020 as she presents three shows together for the first time on 16th February. Three. Because that’s how trilogies work.

1 to 16 Feb 2020
LOCATION
Cage – The Vaults, Leake Street
START TIME: 19:30
DURATION: 1hr 00m
AGE GUIDANCE: 12+
https://vaultfestival.com/

“There are two kinds of people in this world, those who take and those who are taken” says actor Fred Perry as he reprises his role of Mr George Love in Tryst. Love is one of two characters we meet in Karoline Leach’s reinvigorated production currently playing at the revamped Chiswick Playhouse in Turnham Green.

The play itself is based on real-life events that took place in the UK in Edwardian London, without giving too much away (and I beg you not to read ahead and research the piece before you go) the piece is a thriller with a climactic end that creeps up on you unaware and leaves you with a spine-chilling sensation and a desperate need to google our main protagonist! (Mouth firmly closed here!)

The production is a two-hander brought to life by the superbly cast Fred Perry (George Love) and Scarlett Brooks (Adelaide Pinchin). 85 minutes in length without an interval, the production is pacey, the on-stage chemistry tight and the story is compelling enough to not check your watch once throughout the show! The dialogue is a mixture of soliloquy style story-telling as well as fast-paced duologues which amplify the chemistry of our on-stage duo.

Perry portrays George Love as an enigmatic rogue, a fantasist, a bigamist with misogynist tendencies that cause groans from the audience, yet still appears attractive, likable and we can totally see why our heroine Adelaide Pinchin falls for his banter. The fact that he is charming, well-dressed and has a great smile does not go un-noticed on or off the stage! Adelaide, in contrast, is our working class milliner, a lady who purposely works in the back room so as not to trouble the customers. Brooks plays her character’s frigidity and vulnerability well, we cannot help but love her, warm to her and want her to see through the charms and wiles of George Love. The contrast and powerplay between these two is really great to watch. As power shifts between them and back again you really do get to see these actors show their craft at its best.

Considering the stage at The Chiswick Playhouse is very small and black box in style, the creative team have worked really well with their set design and lighting. Curtains and lights are used particularly well to highlight and mask various areas of the stage coupled with minimal props to illustrate scene changes from the millinery shop to train carriage to a hotel in Weston-Super-Mare. Subtle sound effects, such as the striking of a match, and the boiling of a kettle are coupled with instrumental music to enhance scenes and appear natural to the ear.

This play works because of the on-stage chemistry, where the script lacks a bit, the direction by Phoebe Barran and the performers have worked together to drive the play forward – I was in their world, feeling their pain and wanting a positive resolve for them. I really enjoyed this piece and I’m really glad that I had no idea who the inspiration behind the piece was until I was on the train checking google on the way home.

Review by Faye Stockley

Based on a true story, this tense thriller focuses on the serial fraudster, George Love, who encounters a naïve and vulnerable shop-girl, Adelaide Pinchin, in Edwardian London. What follows shocks them both as Love’s elaborate heist begins to unravel in frightening and unpredictable ways.

Leach’s suspenseful masterpiece has shocked audiences with its enthralling twists since its West End debut in 1997, with a later run off-Broadway. A gripping charade of predator and prey, the audience is drawn into a world dominated by the exploitation of insecurities and the seductive façade of charm.

Producer Chiswick Playhouse Productions
Director Phoebe Barran
Writer Karoline Leach
Cast Scarlett Brookes and Fred Perry
Designer Jessica Staton
Lighting Design Chris Mcdonnell
Sound Design David McSeveney
Production Manager Bryony Drury
Stage Manager Sophie Kohl
Twitter @ChiswickPlay, #TrystChiswick

Chiswick Playhouse
2 Bath Road
London, W4 1LW
https://www.chiswickplayhouse.co.uk/

Feeling Lonely at Parties is back and this time it’s playing at The Space Arts Centre near Canary Wharf. The production is a devised piece of physical theatre, just shy of 60 minutes in length. It’s an ensemble piece with a cast of 9 emerging artists from Middlesex University. The show is promoted as a production where “five broken individuals seek love in the face of oppression.” I’m not sure that I interpreted the production in the way it was meant to be received, neither did my +1.

I was really excited by the plays title and their promotional blurb; I really wanted to see this production, however, for me it fell short of my expectations and what started as a really interesting and carefully devised theatrical study of how people are controlled by the media, turned in to a bit of a far-fetched sci-fi version of 1984/The Truman Show/Doctor Who. For the first 25 minutes or so I would have given the piece 5 stars, but frustratingly by the end I was ready to leave and the piece had lowered in my estimation to 3 stars.

The cast has a mix of really talented performers, in particular Stefano Puppio – who was magnetic, whenever he was on stage I could only watch him, his craft is extraordinary and really well-honed. Also worth mentioning are our two lovers Bryan Carvalho and Joshua Wainwright. The cast are all of a similar age and are dressed in boiler suits; our protagonists in a shade of grey and our antagonists in black. All the boiler suit people are wearing large headphones which are attached to their head in a way that looks like they are a permanent fixture in their universe.

Music is pumped through their headphones which we are always able to hear. This soundtrack to our show, is the soundtrack to the characters’ existence.

Also in this universe is a Puppet Master – a controller of the music so to speak. This character is portrayed by Pedro Araujo Santos, he performs with a vitriol and menacing presence, pure evil and dominance. He doesn’t wear a “uniform” and isn’t wearing any headphones and as the piece continues we see his belligerent and cruel character develop and worsen.

Their Universe is a dystopian holding pen for people who are forced to wear headphones, characters perform menial tasks and interaction with other people is not encouraged. As an audience we quickly see that the music that is transmitted through their headphone controls their actions and mood fully. There is no escape. People are told when to get up, how to move, who to interact with and and what speed/beats per minute. It really reminded me of 1984 and the controlled way of living.

For me the standout moments in the production are when we meet our lovers, Bryan and Joshua. The coupling of these two is a dream to watch, their partnership is pure joy and brought a huge smile to my face – watching them learn to dance together then become more intimate made me feel embarrassed to witness such intimacy. I really did feel that I was a voyeur secretly watching something not meant for me. This was a spectacular onstage moment, their joy, their tenderness, their onstage connection and presence.

About half-way through the production, it felt to me like they weren’t sure how to continue the piece and from what was a very controlled physical performance, I began to feel frustrated. There was intermittent shouting, and sighing that wasn’t needed and hugely distracted from their controlled mime, movement and physicality. They also seemed to change the rules in their universe and were behaving more in line with superheros from the DC Universe throwing lightning bolts at each other – for me this didn’t fit. However, saying this, my +1 really enjoyed this.

To me it felt like the final 5 minutes was them just filling time and I lost all sense of what I was watching, such a shame when the show displayed such hope at the start.

I would be keen to see more work by Pursued by a Dragon, and even a revisit of this piece after it has been visited by a dramaturg.

Review by Faye Stockley

In a dystopian future, where people are forced to listen to music to regulate their mood, five broken individuals seek love in the face of oppression. Reflecting how relationships are affected by today’s society, Feeling Lonely at Parties is a story without words, which takes its audience on a journey from mania to melancholy before reaching its uplifting conclusion. Stunning physical theatre with a cleverly woven soundtrack, this new version of the show has been created by international ensemble Pursued by a Dragon and follows a successful run at the Camden People’s Theatre in July 2019.

Pursued by a Dragon are a fresh collective of emerging artists dedicated to telling fantastical stories and increasing access to the arts. Formed at Middlesex University, this international group create theatrical shows that tell stories using different disciplines. Pursed by a Dragon are passionate about exploring important themes and giving a voice to the under-represented.

Writer: Pursued by a Dragon
Director: Yusuf Niazi
Assistant Director: Toby Moran Mylett

Performers:
Bryan Carvalho
Ieva Ungurytė
Ivani Ca
Josh Wainwright
Pedro Santos
Rebekka Dybvik
Shemekka Proud
Stefano Puppio
Toby Moran Mylett

Movement Direction: Yusuf Niazi and Kelly Horne.
Sound Design: Ben Devlin
Lighting Design: Josh Wainwright
Costume Assistant: Joana Marta Sotomaior

14th to 18th January 2020
https://space.org.uk/