The Will is billled as a ' 2-man comedy play with a touch of music.' This is an understatement as this new piece by David Doyle  is an hour choc full of cabaret and comedy, farce and  and pop culture pastiche.

Father Howard (Kevin Potton) and Doctor Donald (David Doyle) meet up to read  at midnight the will of an old colleague.

We are taken on a ride through each characters neuroses, from espionage secrets in Serbia to disillusionment with their present careers, all sprinkled with song and dance routines.

  The Will has laugh out loud moments, Doyle and Potton have good voices and nice comic timing. With first night nerves overcome some some gags could do with speeding up to reduce their repetitiveness. The nods to popular sayings and past comedy greats are a nice touch.

Doyle's text is certainly linguistically challenging for the two actors and they pull it off with aplomb.


The Camden fringe
Etcetera Theatre
August 21 to 23 1030pm

In an old mansion in the Garden District of New Orleans a family is gathering together for the first time in almost a year. Last Summer Sebastian Venable died in suspicious circumstances and now the only witness to his death has appeared and will destroy everything in her wake.

 

"Suddenly Last Summer" is considered by many to be one of Tennessee Williams darkest and most surreal plays. Although the play's first production was in 1958 it didn't receive its Broadway debut until 1995.

 

It is perhaps best known as the inspiration for the Academy Award nominated 1959 film starring Elizabeth Taylor, Katherine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift.

 

Whilst the play deals with subjects such as insanity and repressed sexuality it also contains the lyricism that is frequently found in Williams writing. And this production by Theatre Alba in the gardens of Duddingston Kirk Manse should certainly prove to be one of the most atmospheric and memorable productions of this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

 

Let's just hope we get some of that balmy New Orleans weather to go with it!

 

 

“Suddenly Last Summer”

by Tennessee Williams

10-14 and 17-21August

16:00 (1hr 20mins)
 

In the Marquee at

Duddingston Kirk Manse Gardens (Venue 121)

 

Photos by Alan Guthrie

SUBS                                                    COCK TAVERN THEATRE, KILBURN

You don’t need to be a sub-editor to enjoy Subs, the latest offering from the Cock Tavern Theatre, Kilburn.
Set in the gloomy, generic office of Gentlemen Prefer…, 3 subs face repetitive days of spell checking, headline writing and colleague in-fighting..
Chief sub Derek, is hoping to be promoted and get rid of his moaning Minnie of a co-worker Finch, by sacking him. The ambitious office junior James, brown-noses Derek while ruthlessly having his own agenda to get ahead. Finch has fallen into addictive whinging and internet porn to get through the day, and given up all hope of ever moving on. However the unthinkable happens and Anna a young woman joins the team, signalling that the time has come for things to change both career wise and personally for the subs.
R.J.Purdey’s observant and often hilarious script is rife with catty and condescending remarks, and shows that men can be the biggest bitches in the office if provoked. The funniest lines are given to the semi-tragic and acerbic Finch, and are delivered with immaculate timing by the superbly cast Michael Cusick. Euan Macnaughton is convincing as Derek, the older man who has missed the career boat, and Naomi Waring is very likable as Anna. The play is tightly directed by Hamish Macdougall.
For fine acting, thought provoking drama and a hearty laugh, Subs is the play to see right now.

OLIVER VALENTINE  
                                                                                        Subs plays until 12th August
                                                                                                                 08444771000                                     

PAY AS YOU GO                              COCK TAVERN THEATRE

 

The Cock Tavern Theatre boldly continues with it’s policy of showcasing new writing talent with Steven Hevey’s play Pay As You Go.

Set in modern day Southend-on-Sea, Mark and his colleagues work in a mobile phone shop where scripted-selling, blokish banter, and sexual competitiveness dominates. With the exception of Tom a teenage employee, the other male workers are heading towards middle-age but persist with their laddish behaviour. Mark is tiring of this, has problems at home and is heading towards an emotional meltdown.

Hevey’s dialogue is strong and naturalistic, and the play ably takes on the theme of mis-communication - despite technology being designed to improve this. Face to face conversations are often blocked with constant text and call interruptions, and the mobile phone takes on a menacing persona through happy-slapping.

It is only towards the end of the drama that it seems to lose it’s way and feels more like a work in progress. There are lots of little scenes that that add little to the plot, and key themes are not fully developed. These however are small shortcomings to what is essentially a good piece.

Structurally the play could also have done with an interval. And this is not just because after an hour and a half in the hot and airless space of the auditorium, it became decidedly uncomfortable.

Samuel Miller’s direction is focused, and there are strong performances by Marc Geoffrey, Daniel Jennings and Richard Aloi, as the key players running the shop.

It is good to see Good Night Out Productions supporting new writers and directors, and as result maintaining it’s lead in producing some of the best innovative quality work on the London fringe.

 

OLIVER VALENTINE   

                                                        Pay As You runs until 14^th August.

                                                                    Box Office: 08444771000

The Cock Tavern theatre’s production of A Stretch Of The Imagination, based around the popular stereotype of the Australian male, makes interesting viewing.

Monk O’ Neill lives very much alone in an old iron shack on One Tree Hill, in the bush. He is facing the physical deteriorations of old age, and is haunted by memories of his past relationships. Monk kills the time with obsessive daily routines, and by telling tales that are often hard to determine as the truth, or a stretch of his imagination. He introduces us to a bunch of lively characters such as biker Mort Lazarus, who died outside his shack from frost bite, to ex-lover Dora-Bella and her angry husband Merve. He’s persistently belligerent, and O’Neil seems to have alienated most of the people in his life and turned an angry back on society. He faces his loneliness and inevitable death with acceptance, but not before rewriting his tattered will and leaving it to the dispossessed of the land.

Despite being slightly too young to the play the character, Mark Little gives an interpretation of this anti-hero which has depth, and is often as moving and as it is funny. Monk is essentially not a likeable character, but nevertheless it is hard not to give empathy when he is dumped by this girlfriend Muriel, or even when he shoots his own dog because it is an extra mouth to feed. In contrast, Little is hilarious with his affectations at a posh dinner party, and his satire of the French during his visit to Paris.

Written in 1972 by Jack Hibberd, one of Australia’s most famous writers, A Stretch of the Imagination, is one of the classics of Aussie theatre. Culturally it is so important that in 2009, it was studied as a set text on the drama syllabus in Australia. However as a newcomer to his writing, the incoherent ramblings of this monodrama were in parts quite difficult to follow. The text which is often thematically clichéd, is partly a throw-back stylistically to absurdist writers like Becket, and is a mish-mash of prose and poetry. It hasn’t aged well and offers few surprises.

Mark Little has ably directed himself as Monk, and also created a rather nifty set representing his character’s lonely, ramshackle life. The Cock Tavern also provides the perfect venue for the intimacy of Monk’s revelations. 

A Stretch Of The Imagination runs until 17^th July. For more information call the box office on 08444 771 000 or visit www.cocktaverntheatre.com

OLIVER VALENTINE   

            

 

 

It’s been a long time since I saw a play at Taurus, and in the interim it has either been brilliantly revamped to make the tiny, cramped downstairs bar into a viable performance space with decent viewing lines, or emerging theatre company Organised Chaos have worked wonders to create an almost site-specific production which cleverly evokes the genteel and refined pleasures of an upmarket tearoom. 

We come down the basement stairs to find two couples tête-à-tête at neighbouring tables which are decked out with all the accoutrements of a leisurely and indulgent afternoon tea.  The white linen tablecloths, fine china, teapots and cafetières, not to mention the laden cake stands and mouth-watering array of pastries, made me want to summon a waitress and look at a menu at once - designer Alice Allen’s attention to detail is spot on.

What playwright Lindsay Kernahan and director Emma France then set up is a Siamese-twin of a comedy, with styles of writing and acting almost diametrically opposed, as the couples chat over their refreshments and intriguing stories come to separate but equally dramatic climaxes.

Jean (Celia Carron) and Poppy (Dianne Rimmer) are nicely turned-out ladies who lunch - or in this case, take tea.  Being of a certain age their conversations range across all the problems that can beset a woman in her middle years - ex-husbands, new partners, grown-up children, antisocial cats, transgender internet dating - that kind of thing.  With just a hint of the Cheshire Set about them (though that set is perhaps more Hollyoaks than Wilmslow) their bantering northern humour is reminiscent of Alan Bennett and Victoria Wood, and the characterisations are broad without being over-the-top.  I don’t know whether first-night nerves caused these scenes to played at a snail’s pace with Pinteresque pauses, but the snappy comic dialogue seemed to demand something a great deal less languid.

At the next table William (Laurence Pickford) and Abigail (Julie Burrow) are in a more modern and downbeat style of comedy.  William is divorcing his wife to be with his much younger girlfriend, but their long weekend away in the country is not turning out to be as romantic as anticipated, partly due to the age gap, and partly due to Abigail’s jealousy and William’s wandering eye.  The two actors establish a convincing relationship, conveying genuine emotion and even arousing our sympathy.  The humour comes less from the dialogue than the playing - small but true moments, such as when the slightly vain and self-absorbed William includes the whole audience in his lascivious stare, or glimpses his own smile in the wall mirror and stops to admire it.

Tonight’s performance really tweaked the audience’s funnybone.  If you miss the company’s work this time around there’s a further opportunity to catch one of their previous Taurus shows at the Buxton Fringe Festival this summer.

 

Evenings: 22nd to 24th April @ 7.30pm

Matinee: Sat 24^th @ 5pm

Tickets: £7 (£5 conc) from Quaytickets: 0843 208 0500 or www.quaytickets.com

 

Taurus Bar

1 Canal Street
Manchester

M1 3HE

 

www.organisedchaosproductions.co.uk

www.taurus-bar.co.uk

That Alchemy is a pretty kind of game...to cheat a man with charming

 

Three con artists – the venture tripartite – take over a London house while the owner is away and set about trying to swindle and cheat greedy people who are naïve enough to fall for their trickery. Their gulls include the pompous knight Sir Epicure Mammon who dreams of a life in extreme luxury yet pretends he will donate all of his “lead turned to gold” riches to charity, Dapper who expects to win millions as a gambler by charming the Fairy Queen, and a young shopkeeper, Abel Drugger, who seeks good fortune and prosperity for his business. However, Sir Epicure’s companion Surly sees through the scam and strives to expose the con artists.

 

First performed in 1610, The Alchemist is Ben Jonson’s most successful play. It is a cynical view of a world inhabited by people who are practically spellbound with greed and are willing to believe anything as long as it will make them rich. It is difficult to feel empathy with their plight because they are so blinded by their desire to be filthy rich that they actually deserve to be conned.  

 

The Alchemist is a very funny play and the director (Scarlett Plouviez Comnas) makes it accessible to a wide audience although Jonson’s language is more difficult than Shakespeare’s. The production is fast paced and very energetic. The leading actors go a bit overboard at times but generally the cast is very good. Kevin Millington as Subtle is hilarious and there are also very good performances by the gulls – particularly Daniel Moore as Sir Epicure Mammon, Alex Williams as Dapper / Kestril, and Rose McPhilemy as the clergywoman Ananias and Kestril’s sister Dame Pliant.

 

23 March – 11 April, Tue – Fri 7.30 pm, Sat and Sun 7.00 pm

Tickets: £ 12 / £ 10 (concessions)

BOX OFFICE: 020 7704 6665

The Rosemary Branch, 2 Shepperton Road, London N1 3DT

 

 

A BIG DAY FOR THE GOLDBERGS        NEW END THEATRE

 

A Big Day For The Goldbergs is a delightful new play that continues to maintain the high standard of work at Hampstead’s New End Theatre, and provides a family night out suitable for most ages.

The drama takes place in an ordinary semi-detached house in Leeds, where 2 teenage sisters are hiding secrets from their mother. Lucille is pregnant and Michelle is planning to run off to the circus. With a series of monologues that mimic their relations, the sisters cleverly bring the Goldberg home to life.

The one hour drama written by the New End’s artistic director Brian Daniels, is a witty observation of three Goldberg generations as seen through the two teenagers eyes. The characters endearingly and convincing played by Emma Gordon and Elisa Boyd, make this new work highly watchable.

The play is smoothly directed by Olivia Rowe, who also designed the nifty set for the production. Although playing to the generally older audience of the New End, the drama could just as easily work with teenage audiences, as its revelations also touch upon the interests of a younger market.

This charming play runs until 21^st March.                      

Box Office: 0870 033 2733

 

Oliver Valentine                                                    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There There is no happy love.

Writer Tomas Hirst and director Oliver Lyttelton return to the stage after their success of In Parallel at the Arcola Theatre to take a fresh look at the traditional courtroom drama. Matryoshka illustrates the brutal mechanism of a seemingly cold and aloof legal system and its effects on those caught up in it.

 

Sophie (Nanou Harry) and Alexander (Alex Walker) are locked in an increasingly ugly divorce battle. Their focus is not on dividing their considerable assets but on who will be given custody of their daughter Catherine. They hire two ambitious lawyers – Charlotte (Tara Hart) and Leo (John Sandeman) – to help resolve the impasse. Instead of reaching a solution, however, the warring pair drag their legal council into the fraying web of their relationship. 

At the same time, Luke (Stefan Doolan), the bipolar son of Charlotte’s cleaner Sue (Ruth Evans), decides to wean himself off his medication. With his state of mind unravelling his mother is given the choice of risking to be judged as an overbearing control-freak or remaining passive while her son is slipping into complete isolation from those around him.

The six characters desperately try to stay in control of their own lives but they find themselves merely fuelling the chaos. The divided couple and Sue are trying to do what is best for their children but their actions only seem to make matters worse.

There are fine performances by the entire ensemble. I was particularly impressed by Ruth Evans as the tormented mother and the cool aloofness of Alex Walker’s husband. Jean Apps convincingly portrays the judge who bears the responsibility for the fate of the child.

Feb. 23 to March 13, 2010 at 7.30 pm
Box Office: 0207 737 7276
Tickets: £ 10  Conc.: £ 8
Landor Theatre, 79 Landor Road, London SW9

 

 

 

The Rosemary Branch Theatre in Islington - winner of „Best Theatre“ in the 2010 Fringe Report Awards - presents a solo performance by Judith Paris about the life of Madame Tussaud. Although her name graces one of the main tourist attractions in London little is known about the life of Marie Tussaud.

 

Aptly directed by Ninon Jerome, Judith Paris recounts the story of this remarkable woman who was arrested as a royalist during the horrors of the French revolution and barely escaped the guillotine. Marie Tussaud tells her younger son the story of her life before the opening of her new show. Now aged 72 she has been working hard since she was a child to become a  gifted artist as well as a successful business woman. She describes how she was taught the art of waxwork by her uncle Philippe Curtius against the explicit wishes of her mother who saw her daughter in a more traditional role. Marie eventually married but left her husband and her younger son to tour the towns of Britain with her wax cabinet, fighting off competition against a background of fire, riot, shipwreck, and betrayal. Madame Tussaud became one of the greatest showpeople along with P.T. Barnum - which makes one wonder: How much of her story is really true? 

 

Judith Paris, who has also written the play, gives a beautiful performance as the admirable Marie Tussaud.

 

9 – 14 February 2010, Tue – Sat 7.30 pm, Sun 3 pm

Tickets: £ 12 / £ 10 (concessions)

BOX OFFICE: 020 7704 6665

The Rosemary Branch, 2 Shepperton Road, London N1 3DT