Etcetera Theatre London - News & Reviews

I read recently about the Vicar of Bearstead, who returns a £100 deposit paid by couples whose marriage service begins within twenty minutes of the published start time, but retains it if the service starts later than this, distributing it between the bell-ringers, vergers, choristers and organist. Road traffic incidents and other unavoidable situations are taken into consideration. It’s a policy that someone like Laura (Elina Alminas) probably wouldn’t have a problem with: taking to the … [Read more...]

If you see someone drop a five-pound note on the floor and continue walking, what do you do? I’m sure most of you are thinking “I’d pick it up and return it to the person” But, what if you had no money on you and no bank card to get any out, would your answer be the same? We all make choices every day and often these choices are shaped by our ideas on morality. And it is this concept that is at the heart of Emma Brown and Lawrence Smith’s new play Feet currently at Camden’s Etcetera … [Read more...]

Greenery, written and performed by Carmina Bernhardt is a powerful one-woman show that explores human nature, and how everybody has an unsaid story. Leading us through her horrendous morning, seemingly so bad because she somehow left the house in mismatched shoes, we eventually learn that there is a lot more to it than that, and a lot more behind the people she meets on the way. Bernhardt has captured the struggles of morning rush hour on public transport very well. On a near empty stage, … [Read more...]

I knew nothing about Irvine Welsh’s Filth before seeing this theatrical adaptation of his novel, but judging by what I do know of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, this wasn’t going to be for the fainthearted, and I suspected this was going to be a show best enjoyed in a state of being unshockable. It’s pretty much trademark Welsh, as DI Bruce Robertson (Jake Francis) indulging the audience in toilet humour within seconds of the show starting. References to Deep Purple, Whitesnake and other … [Read more...]

Dark, depraved and laugh-out-loud funny, Dark Room is a cleverly written and well-executed production. Performed in the intimate Etcetera Theatre above the Oxford Arms in Camden, the space fits well with the setting of the play. Set in a small dark room in an ordinary house in an ordinary street, we meet our 4 characters, A (Roger Perkins) B (Jim Mannering - Jim also wrote the piece) C - Rebecca Finch and D (Arthur Cull). D is the newest member of the Dark Room gang. He has been carefully … [Read more...]

There’s some stereotyping in Doomed Resistance, but Simon Godfrey’s script is perceptive enough to not only point it out, but make a meal of it. More than the usual level of suspension of disbelief is required to even get one’s head around what precisely is happening in a storyline set in World War One but with its characters having distinctly twenty-first century outlooks and assumptions. It may, for some, make the show unnecessarily complicated, but it works here insofar as it allows the … [Read more...]

An Englishman’s home is his castle, as the old proverb goes. Andre (Andrew Jardine) certainly can do as he pleases in his recently purchased second home out in the country for use at weekends and holidays. There’s an analogy, somewhere, about his form of escapism from London life and the audience’s use of theatre, and this play in particular, as - well, a form of escapism from London life. The events in The English Heart are not always easy to envisage actually happening. But then, as the play … [Read more...]