Shelley’s 1818 classic novel, Frankenstein, is a tale for the ages. Its themes of genius, greed and godliness are pertinent across time. The dangers of unchecked research and creativity, the violence of the creations of man, Shelley’s text is ripe for reinterpretation in almost any setting; but there’s the rough: we have to ask why Frankenstein now, rather than any … [Read more...]
Admin presented by Oisin McKenna at the Vault Festival
Oisin McKenna’s one-man show is about London, loneliness, laziness, love and more. There’s many a spoken word show about the injustices of capitalism, Thatcherite privatisation, and the difficulties of being gay in the modern world. McKenna’s show achieves the complex feat of synthesising all this in a beautiful, 55 minute, rage against the system, all the while … [Read more...]
Can I Touch Your Hair? at the Vault Festival | Review
Can I touch your hair? Can I touch your hair? Can I touch your hair? Can I touch your hair? Can I touch your hair? Lekhani Chirwa’s one-woman show is about, well, hair. That’s it, really. What’s hair got to do with anything, anyway? Everything, it seems. Though the title of the show might be a deliberate invocation of unshared experiences, the politics of natural … [Read more...]
Equus at Theatre Royal Stratford East | Review
Peter Shaffer’s 1973 classic Equus is revived by Ned Bennett’s English Touring Theatre Company, and the word out of the horse’s mouth is ‘kink’. Shaffer’s original text has a great many different allusions and suggestions and each production will interpret the emphasis differently. Bennett has read Equus to be a sexually charged look at the unconscious and the … [Read more...]
White Noise presented by New Public at the Vault Festival | Review
‘Yes... yes... Ok... Yes... Now, Apologise... Apologise! Thank you’ In modern politics, we often wonder if it’s all made up. A big game, with different players shifting positions, and all saying the same bullshit. This is the possibility taken up by New Public’s latest show, White Noise. Isn’t politics, and perhaps wider society, just a meaningless circulation of … [Read more...]
Tartuffe by Molière at the Lyttelton Theatre | Review
In the era of Trump, Bolsonaro, Erdogan and Brexit, satire and quasi-political ridicule are the order of the day. But can satire cut it when comedy writes itself? Moliere’s Tartuffe is the number one most frequently performed play in France. With its themes of impostership, decadence, male entitlement, egotism and more, it more or less applies to any time or place. … [Read more...]
Review of Orlando at the Vault Festival
When does a play begin? When is art ever completed? What are beginnings and endings? Interesting questions, though I’m not sure Lucy Roslyn has the answers. I’m sure, of course, that she wouldn’t pretend to have answered life’s big questions either. That would be pretentious. But we can at least ask of a play if it knows itself. It’s not clear what Orlando is … [Read more...]
Towers at Milton Court Theatre | Review
Towers is the third of Guildhall’s current showing of their final years. Fury reinterpreted Euripides’ Medea as the story of a working class, single mother in Peckham, a microcosmic examination of social housing and motherhood. Towers is the polar opposite, grandiose in every sense of the word, a macro look at the future of London, and the people who live in … [Read more...]
The Lady from the Sea at the Print Room at the Coronet
I should say before I start, that I don’t really like Ibsen. Despite being the second most performed writer after Shakespeare, I find his proto-feminist scripts dated, and his high-realism to be at odds with his heavily idea-oriented scripts. Though Ibsen ranks among Euripides, Bernard Shaw and Strindberg as writers apt for reinterpretation and adaptation, I find his … [Read more...]
Guildhall presents Phoebe Eclair-Powell’s Fury
Fury is a modern reworking of Euripides’ classical Medea, a play which has become increasingly popular for contemporary, often feminist interpretations. Rachel Cusk’s adaptation played at The Almeida last September; Pecho Mama’s Medea Electronica opens next week at The Pleasance - Islington; International Theatre Amsterdam’s Medea runs 6-9 March at The Barbican. It … [Read more...]
Salaam presented by Sara Aniqah Malik | Review
Sara Malik’s Salaam is about lots and lots of things. Islamaphobia, faith, family, food and much more. Too much more? Rema (Raagni Sharma) and her mother, Mariam (Yasmin Wilde), are passing Ramadan, when a pig’s head is thrown through their window, shattering their peace. In an instant, mother and daughter diverge and unite in their response to Islamophobia in … [Read more...]
Queens of Sheba presented by Nouveau Riché at The Vault Festival
In 2015, four black women were turned away from London’s DSTRKT venue for being “too dark”. Nouveau Riche take this incident as their starting point, but Queens of Sheba is about so, so, so much more. Peppered with a capella renditions of classic blues songs through the ages, an all black, female cast take to an empty to stage to fill it with a story. From … [Read more...]