Andrew Neil is having a bad time: not only was his flagship late-night politics show shelved, he was also denied the chance to interview, live, prospective PM Boris Johnson. And to cap it all he lost the ability to be impersonated by stand-up comic and politics satirist par excellence, Matt Forde. Yep. It’s true. Amongst all of Forde’s wonderful re-creations of our … [Read more...]
Hamlet: Rotten States at The Hope Theatre | Review
Fardels. Yeah, fardels. If you know your soliloquisation of tragic procrastinators you’ll know we’re talking Hamlet here. That is, of course, if you hadn’t already spotted it in the title. Hamlet, arguably the greatest play ever written, has lent itself, rather too often in my view, to various bastardisations in search of what we might term “further meaning” or “extra … [Read more...]
Superstar by Nicola Wren at The Little at Southwark Playhouse
Superstar: hot play or cold gig? Actually a hot gig about Coldplay. Well a bit about Coldplay, anyway, but much more about what it’s like to be the runt in a family of five siblings, what it’s like to be a panto bunny (aged 8), what it’s like to be Anne Frank and in love with Shippy, and what it’s like to be a bespectacled Toad who spots through her squint from the … [Read more...]
Mischief Theatre’s Groan Ups at the Vaudeville Theatre
The trouble with a franchise - and Mischief Theatre is now on it’s 6th (or is it 7th?) show - is that - if you are not careful - it grows a bit stale. Groan Ups has all the accoutrements of the Mischief Theatre brand that we have come to know and love but, honestly, the joke and, yes they are all basically based on the one elongated joke, is wearing a bit thin. The … [Read more...]
Pictland written by Eilis Price – Part of the Watford Fringe Festival
At a time of jittery national uncertainty, as we ladle our way through an extraordinary mish-mash of magi-mix politics, it’s encouraging to come across a piece of theatre that boldly attempts to deconstruct democracy and explore the concept of community. I suspect there were some wise voices that urged writer Eilis Price not to go there (boldly or not) but I for one … [Read more...]
Stagescripts: We Are The Lions Mr. Manager
Townsend Productions’ excellent play We Are The Lions Mr. Manager, which received rave reviews during its 2018 tour is to be published by Stagescripts as part of the publisher’s 11th birthday celebrations. Written by Neil Gore, We Are The Lions Mr. Manager takes as its subject the infamous Grunwick strike of the mid-1970s and through its clever staging and … [Read more...]
Midlife Cowboy at the Pleasance Theatre | Review
Welcome to Cliché Gulch. OK, so we have the cowboy boots, the studded Levis, the check shirts, the stetsons and a smattering of obligatory “yee-haws” but these necessary accoutrements of a Country and Western show are not the clichés I am referring to. I’m talking about the dreary, uninspiring, going-through-the-motions, cliché-ridden apology for a narrative which is … [Read more...]
Women of Paradise at Trafalgar Studios | Review
When you sort through the chaff of the bitter wheat of this collection of Tennessee Williams-inspired short plays then it is pleasing and inspiring to come across a glinting, golden ear of maize in Happy Tenth of August - a superb piece of writing by Chloe Ewart, with magnetic performances by Ewart herself alongside Amy Garner Buchannan. The interplay of these two … [Read more...]
The Sea Queen at The Scoop – London’s Free Open Air Theatre
There aren’t many more pleasant ways to spend an hour, in my view, than watching some al fresco theatre, when the sun shining, with a cooling breeze, on the vibrant South Bank of the Thames next to Tower Bridge. Overlooked on one side by the shimmering Shard and on the other by the amusingly lop-sided, apparently drunken, City Hall - a kind of portly leaning tower of … [Read more...]