London theatre reviews written by Tori Jo Lau

London is full of millions of people, and we’re all squished together like sardines in tins on the underground. Who are these people, what are their stories? The writers of Crossing take a tube carriage of people and try to tell some of those stories.

We start overhearing part of a conversation and follow the couple speaking off the tube, she’s pregnant and about to meet her father. I say father, but it is actually more like a daddy – of the sugar kind. A bit extreme perhaps, but it happens more often than you’d think, desperation can lead to making choices you thought you never would even consider for a moment.

In the less extreme, a character gets overlooked at work because she isn’t assertive, and keeps imagining she sees her mother, two colleagues compete about a promotion and an art student from a wealthy background comes face to face with poverty.

But this piece isn’t really about the plot of the different stories. More than anything, Crossing is about moments in people’s lives. And the moments are very, very moving.

A young woman stands on the tube, talking about feeling invisible, about the loss of her mother, the only person who understood her, while more and more people crowd her, underlining the words so perfectly it hurts even more to watch. A young man with anxiety attack lies in bed unable to sleep, overwhelmed with thoughts and fears, and you see the effects on his life, his mood and his career.

An older man, a refugee, is humble and embarrassed at a food bank, where he’s being helped by a French girl from Cannes, who goes from feeling awkward and weird about the experience over time builds a real connection and a real understanding.

There are more moments, but those are the three that really stood out. There is so much honesty in this play, pieces from people that are so private, you feel like you’re visiting their hidden thoughts and feelings in a way that’s almost too intimate, but it doesn’t feel pretentious or overplayed at all.

The cast are all exceptional, and they all play at least two characters that are polar opposites and are equally believable as each extreme, which is delightful. The swap between scenes and characters are done with the movement of sparse furniture and adjustments to outfits, like a pair of glasses or a scarf. At no point did you confuse the different characters.

And while I thought the entire cast were great, I have to particularly mention Zain Qureshi as Mujahid, the Muslim refugee who has come to the UK from Syria. The writing doesn’t hit us over the head with his sad story, whilst it’s clear Mujahid has suffered from severe trauma, he has a clear moment of strength as he dismisses being a refugee, as he says refugees don’t make it across the border, they die at sea. You get a glimpse of a passionate, strong man who has been knocked down by life but is still fighting. The scenes with Mujahid are subtle but so strong, and it’s something you keep thinking about after leaving the theatre.

Crossing is heartfelt, funny and profound, and doesn’t offer any solution. The ending is a bit abrupt and you feel there are more things to say about these characters that didn’t fit into the one hour, and there’s certainly space to either develop the piece further or take the individual stories into separate plays. Wherever it goes, it will be interesting to watch.

Lovely writing by Arghierenia Kyrimi, Florence Wright and Ugo Nelson, skilfully performed by the ensemble cast and wonderfully directed by Tomas Stone.

Review by Tori Jo Lau

It is 2018 and the population count of London totals 10.66 million people. Of these, 2.67 million cross paths on the tube every day. The eye of the average commuter will fall on hundreds of people every day, but they will never know any more about them apart from the snap judgements they might make based on their appearance.

‘Crossing’ intends to observe and understand the people we see every day on the busy tube. We tend to put people in boxes and assume things about them but everyone has their own story. This piece investigates these stories and relationships as we follow our characters trying to make sense of their lives in the city.

Jittery Pens Productions present
CROSSING
A dynamic new play investigating life in the city
Written by Arghierenia Kyrimi, Florence Wright, and Ugo Nelson
The Hen and Chickens Theatre, 109 St Paul’s Road, N1 2NA

Martin, a London cabbie, has a problem – he can’t make any new memories since he went to the dentist ten years ago. Every morning he wakes up he thinks it’s 2008 and the last ten years are a complete blank. He has The Knowledge but doesn’t know how to turn on the television. He went for a root canal that day, and that’s the last thing he remembers.

We’ve seen this sort of plot before in movies like Groundhog Day and Memento, but on a grander scale. In Timeless, it’s smaller and more personal. We’re in a room with Martin, and he’s telling us about his day, from waking up and learning the facts of his situation, to gradually going through his day, with more information coming through about what’s gone on in his life, his relationship with his family and best friend, but like Martin, we don’t know what’s happened in the last ten years. There’s no grand murder mystery or massive life-changing experience to get him out of the situation in this play.

John Rayment as Martin talks to us directly, choosing different audience members at different times and draws all of us in. He’s compelling, engaging and felt completely like a genuine person talking. A real person in a difficult situation, trying to stay positive, trying with all he has to keep it together. He makes jokes to his wife that she’s heard again and again, and you get the sense that he’s not the only person living through the same day repeatedly.

As the day goes on and Martin gets more and more information about the life he’s missing out on, the positive mask does slip and there are moments of hurt and despair, particularly with regards to what he’s putting his wife through. He picks up pieces of information and adds them to the information he’s written on his smartphone, which he is instructed to look at every morning. And more than anything, Martin cares for his family. He doesn’t want to be a burden, and you wonder – what would be the alternative for him if his family moved on with their lives?

But already they have somewhat moved on, things happen in ten years that can’t be undone, and Martin’s day gets increasingly worse, increasingly painful and you ache for him, as he realises that whilst it’s nice to forget the bad days, he doesn’t get to remember any of the good days either. He’s emotionally stuck in ten years ago, not being able to feel the weight of his daughter growing up and having a child of her own, for example.

At the end of the play, we know more than Martin, as he starts his day over again and the events of the previous night are forgotten. It’s then you really see the strength and love of his never seen wife, and your heart breaks a bit for what she must be going through. We always change and grow, and she is with someone who will forever be stuck in the past. And yet, you know the two of them will keep going, one day at a time, somehow. Is it happiness? Maybe not. Do you understand her? Absolutely.

Excellent writing by Brian Coyle, excellent direction by Charlotte Peters and wonderfully acted by John Rayment. I didn’t want it to end, and I hope this killer combination will be seen again. An absolute treat, tender and strong all in one, and you leave feeling profoundly affected by the meeting.

Review by Tori Jo Lau

If you can’t trust your memory what can you trust?
Martin, a London cabbie, has a problem – he can’t make any new memories since he went to the dentist ten years ago. Every morning he wakes up he thinks it’s 2008 and the last ten years are a complete blank! It’s not only strange and upsetting for him, his partner has the unenviable task of explaining what’s wrong with him every single day – and the strain is beginning to show. Can Martin’s relationship survive his condition?

A single-hander, written by Brian Coyle and performed by John Rayment, TIMELESS is a bit like Groundhog Day meets Memento, only the main character is a London cabbie!

How does memory define who we are? What happens if it goes? And, just how reliable is it anyway?

Twitter: @TimelessPlay

Eigengrau by Penelope Skinner is a play about two sets of 20-somethings in London living what at first seem very 20-something lives. Mark is a rich and successful young professional, living with his friend Tim who has just lost his grandmother who he used to care for. In the other flat, we have Cassie, a professional feminist, and her new flatmate Rose, who believes in unicorns, numerology and Signs.

The play talks about what it’s like to try to connect with people in the busy metropolis that is London, with its somewhat ups and very clear downs, where people get hurt and communication can be poor, and caring is considered unfashionable. Even though the play is already eight years old, the references still feel current and relevant.

The first act did drag on a bit. The writing is very snappy, and it seemed a bit slow, and I noticed a few missed technical cues. The actors were a little quiet, and it took them a while to warm up. It did get increasingly better during the act when the more extreme parts of the characters start coming to the surface. But there were just too many pauses.

However, the pace and delivery picked up significantly in the second act. The cast were engaging and in it, and the storytelling really worked. There are a couple of fairly intense moments in the second act that can be very difficult to stage, but it was solved well with good lighting and sound effects. I particularly enjoyed Rose’s solo scene where everything came crashing down for her, and from then on you finally engaged with Rose.

The penultimate scene with all four characters was by far the strongest in the entire piece. It was good to see the four characters finally all interact with each other and seeing the strength and weaknesses of all four. Rose had a grounded quality that was delightful to see, and it suggests that Robyn Wilson might fare better with a more grounded, earthy character than the scattered Rose. But the scene was fully owned by Joseph McCarthy, whose Mark cracked and showed him for the real human being he actually was. It’s difficult to not make Mark a caricature, but the way the actor portrayed him really worked, particularly in this scene. I found myself wanting him to be a bit more of an asshole earlier, but at the same time, when he finally showed true feelings it may not have been believable, so I understand the choices completely.

There’s no way around it, the highlight of the show from start to end was Katharine Hardman as Cassie, an extremely talented and engaging actress who had a bit of a Kerri Russell quality to her. She constantly drew your attention, and the journey the character went on was interesting and believable. I have no doubt we’ll see Hardman in bigger and greater things in the future, she was clear, interesting and you believed the conflicts in her.

I also very much enjoyed Joseph Holroyd as Tim, he’s a fine actor, but I couldn’t help think that he didn’t quite fit the character, and I couldn’t quite believe him as being a bit of a loser, despite the ill-fitting clothes. When Tim was dressed up, I felt Holroyd could just as easily have been playing Mark.

All in all, it was all well done, but it felt like it could be so much stronger and engaging, and that’s just a pity.

Review by Tori Jo Lau

Eigengrau / [ay-gen-gr-ow ] – noun. intrinsic light; the colour seen by the eye in perfect
darkness.
In a city where Gumtree can feel like your closest friend, looking for the right person can lead you to all
the wrong places.
Rose believes in true love and leprechauns.
Cassie believes in the power of change.
Mark believes in the power of marketing.
Tim believes in nothing at all.

New Light Productions’ 2018 revival of Penelope Skinner’s whirlwind of a play dives into four London
lives, swinging from flat to flat, karaoke bar to Eastbourne Pier, asking us what we really believe in, and
what we are prepared to sacrifice to get it.
https://www.newlightproductions.co/
Performance Dates:
31st July – 11th August at 7.30pm
Runtime: 120 mins (including interval)
https://www.greenwichtheatre.org.uk/

Dots by Annie Cheung is a solo self-revelatory performance, which she describes as “a unique genre of theatre which combines therapy for the performer and performance for the audience”. The show starts with Cheung with her hands tied and tape across her mouth, in a sparse space with two chairs and a number of grey and white balls that represent good and bad memories. It becomes clear quite quickly that she has been imprisoned by herself, as she keeps talking back at an invisible someone who is most likely her inner voice, the one we all have. You know the one, the one that tells you that you’re terrible and will never amount to anything.

In Dots, that part of Cheung has trapped her and given her a puzzle to solve, to work out her issues, her depression and bad thoughts, which she then tries to do right in front of us.

The problem with this kind of show is that unless you like the person in it, it becomes very tedious. Thankfully, you can’t help but like Annie Cheung. She’s engaging and charming, and easy to watch. And she tells her story beautifully with passion. She pours her heart and soul into the work, but I do think she would have benefited from working with an outside director on the piece, as there were some technical issues that are easier to spot from the outside.

The biggest issue with the show was that a lot of it took place on the floor, for example with arranging the balls in different ways, and from where we were sitting, we just couldn’t see it. We know she arranged the items in different ways to “solve the puzzle”, but if there was any significance to the patterns she tried, it didn’t translate to most of the audience. I would say only the first and second row could see anything that happened on the floor.

Another issue is that Cheung’s delivery at times was a bit fast. We could hear her, but there was more space for thought and thinking in her conversations with her other self, to make the point land better. The conversation didn’t feel quite real.

With regards to the subject matter, it was very much a show about acting for actors, and the larger chunk that was mostly about this, which was hard to connect with for someone who isn’t in the industry, like my companion. When she later went on to talk more about her relationship with her husband and her husband’s career, the issues were a lot more universal and a lot more engaging.

That said, how she jumped from arguing with her inner voice to talking to other elements of her life was very interesting, and I’m sure many people would love to talk to their partner’s work, for example. And when we saw the child version of herself, it was just adorable.

We have to commend Cheung for powering through in a small and extremely hot room without letting her energy drop. By the end of the show, we were all melting. And it was a very sweet ending that made us smile. As she said herself, “It’s a bit cheesy, you know. But I like it.” And that’s how we felt, too.

All in all, it was an interesting show, but it needs more work.

Review by Tori Jo Lau

Teetering dangerously between tragedy and comedy Annie takes you into the high-achieving, low-esteem world of a lawyer turned actress and her ever questioning alter ego. Inspired by a real-life story, DOTS is a deeply poignant, and, at times, frankly farcical reminder of life’s real challenges – serious stuff that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

DOTS is a solo self-revelatory performance, a unique genre of theatre which combines therapy for the performer and performance for the audience. This piece was born as a result of six therapy sessions with my dramatherapist, who specifically worked through my current struggles as an actress, a wife and a living person. With utmost honesty and humour, the play explores high functioning depression, medically referred to as Dysthymia or Persistent Depressive Disorder, a mood disorder which is hard to spot but becoming increasingly prevalent.

The Lion and Unicorn
4th-5th August 2018
https://camdenfringe.com/

Interactive theatre can be tricky. When do you participate? Is it okay to keep quiet? What if you’re shy? Is this even really a play or did a friend just trick me into a self-help group? The latter question was posed by a woman sitting a few seats away from me, and if I hadn’t had the press release, I would’ve asked the same question. I was surprised when I walked into King’s Cross Community Centre and instead of a stage, I found an open room with a circle of chairs. I was welcomed in by Sandra, made myself a cup of tea and felt, to be frank very, very awkward and hid behind my laptop for a few minutes while observing people coming in.

Having a brain for patterns, I soon noticed several of the chairs were discreetly reserved with jackets or bags, and the people coming in to take the seats communicated with Sandra as if this was a regular meeting that most of them had been coming to for a while. Ah, these must be the characters. I shared this with the people next to me, who were just as bewildered as I was.

As the room filled up, the “meeting” eventually started, and I’m not going to lie, it was a bit awkward when the leaders Sandra and Mike opened up for people to share their stories about love. My sense of reality shattered completely when someone who did not have anything on their seat started talking. Now I truly didn’t know who were characters.

Thankfully the confusion was short-lived as the scripted characters started speaking and telling their stories and getting involved with the meeting. I don’t want to give too much away, but we were in the company of some rather sweet people who were unlucky in love and didn’t quite know how to get what they wanted, to truly connect with someone.

You can relate with some elements of every story and every character, and the show is both funny and rather sweet, with good physical comedy, interesting lights and sound effects (simple but effective with lights out, flashlights and using voice and foot taps to transform you into another moment), and the hour flies by before you know it. You do have to take part to a certain extent – I had to tell a complete stranger: “Wake up, you lazy bastard!” as if he was my lover falling asleep in bed, that was something else – and a piece of audience interaction towards the end could leave the show at a sweet or very awkward ending, depending on who happens to be in the relevant seat and how they respond.

This sort of theatre can be very exciting or very cringey, and thankfully it was the former. It was thoroughly enjoyable to step into the world of these characters, and the actors involved, who also devised the show, took every moment and ran with it, no matter what happens. This makes the show alive and truthful. It’s a bit silly, sure, but it’s also quite profound.

I would’ve liked to have spent more time with some of the characters, in particular, Mickey (Steven Calvert), whose story I wanted to know a lot more about. His moment was possibly the most interesting part of the play, with so much to unpack, and I felt it ended too abruptly. But I think there might be a whole play to be written about that character.

I absolutely adored every character in the show at some level, the slightly dysfunctional but well-meaning couple leading the meeting, Sandra (Rebecca Gibbs) and Mike (Edward Kaye), who clearly had problems with their own relationship, the outrageous Annie (Grace Wardlaw), who used every fibre of her being as a physical art therapist – with a random Mugabe name drop that made me laugh so hard!, the slightly sad but rather endearing Simon (Oliver Roy) and Clifford (Sebastian Porter) that made you feel for them. Not to be forgotten were the dynamic duo of the visiting experts Dr. Elijah Clunge (Joseph Prestwich) and Bianca Candida (Silvia Mannazone) that made us crack up so hard for very different reasons.

But the heart of the piece belongs to two characters, the quirky and slightly lost Olympia (Kelsie McDonald), who you just wanted to hug and had to root for, and the broken but hopeful Brian (James Dart), whose story got us back to remembering that love is rare and wonderful, and worth fighting for.

A beautiful hour of laughter and hope, which I would love to see developed further, possibly into a television show.

Review by Tori Jo Lau

Funny and provocative, Encompass Theatre Collective’s ‘Lovers Anonymous’ is a brand-new comedy event devised by the company. We invite the audience to join a typical ‘Lovers Anonymous’ group-counselling session, where a variety of participants will tell their own stories, from Tinder thrills to courtly love, helping the group get a handle on sex, romance and love in 2018.

Lovers Anonymous
A new piece of devised theatre exploring love and romance in 2018
As part of the Camden Fringe
8:00pm – Thursday 2nd August (Press Night) St Pancras Community Association
8:30pm – Saturday 4th, 11th & 18thAugust 67 Plender Street
Tickets £7.50 / Running Time 1hr London
Available from camdenfringe.com NW1 0LB
https://www.encompasstheatrecollective.com/