UK Theatre Network

SHOW: A BRITISH SUBJECT, Pleasance Theatre
12 August 2009 - £9.50

Mirza Tahir Hussain, a British subject, travels to Pakistan where he kills a taxi driver in self-defence. The young man is sentenced to death by hanging. He spends eighteen years on death row before a British journalist visits him to tell his story.

Nichola MacAuliffe’s play is the true account of this case and a scathing critique of the criminal justice system in Pakistan, the British authorities who would not save their own subject because their efforts might jeopardise British-Pakistani relations and the inhumanity of the death penalty. This poignant drama is extremely well acted and the relationship between MacAuliffe – who plays herself – and the condemned man is very touching. Both are deeply religious and although MacAuliffe is a Catholic and Tahir a Muslim there is a true understanding between them.

There will be a Q&A session on the production on 18 August at 2.20 pm. 

Review by Carolin Kopplin

Visit the official Edinburgh Fringe website for more details and tickets:-
http://www.edfringe.com 

SHOW: THE SHAPE OF THINGS by SPL, C, Chambers Street
12 August 2009 - £9.50 

The Shape of Things is a comedy with a vicious twist. Neil LaBute, one of the most intriguing American playwrights today, is a moralist who indulges in polarising his audience and he often succeeds. Adam works in a museum in a small college town where he meets Evelyn, an art student, who wants to make a statement by spray painting a penis on a statue – her point being that the sculpture is already ruined because a vine leaf was plastered over the genitalia six years ago to placate the outraged town folk.

Two people could not be more different that the shy, insecure Adam and the self-confident artiste. As Adam and Evelyn become closer Adam changes in more ways than one. The dialogues are snappy and the action is fast paced – a most enjoyable production with impressive performances by the four young actors.  

Review by Carolin Kopplin

Edinburgh Fringe Website http://www.edfringe.com

SHOW: CRY FROM UNDERGROUND (TELL ME YOUR NAME)
New Town Theatre
11 Aug 09, £10.00 

Thorston Manderlay adapted Dostoevsky’s novella “Notes from the Underground” and successfully transferred it to the 21^st century. The themes of the novella – isolation, alienation and disgust with a self-obsessed society are as relevant today as in 1864.

The protagonist, an educated and intelligent man, finds himself in a culture of mediocrity where “brainless action men” suppress “clever mice”. The very people he despised at school and university have become high/flying lawyers and successful businessmen while he - who is far superior in intelligence - is rotting away in a hole, tormented by his landlord. Retired at the age of 40 because he had enough of working in a stupid, mindless job to pay the rent he has no prospects and little hope. After a particularly unpleasant evening the protagonist finds himself in a brothel where he meets the Russian prostitute Lisa. Having escaped from a miserable life in a nondescript rural town Lisa now finds herself trapped as an illegal sex worker. Will they be able to find a way out?

Thorston Manderlay gives a brilliant performance as the tormented protagonist who hides his sensitivity and capability for love behind the veneer of a sociopath. Anne Burns Walker is impressive as the young woman. 

Review by Carolin Kopplin

Visit the official Edinburgh Fringe website for more details and tickets:-
http://www.edfringe.com 

King Arthur by Siege Perilous

The Edinburgh based company Siege Perilous, well known for high quality adaptions of classical text as well as new writing, presents Lucy Nordberg's interpretation of King Arthur. The play is written in blank verse while using contemporary language, an intriguing combination.

King Arthur is an enlightened leader who decides to impose democracy on his people. Yet they will have to learn to rule themselves, and who will train them? Furthermore, a successor must be found as his marriage to Guinevere has remained childless. The Christian Arthur hopes to achieve peace with Morgan Le Fay who rules a Pagan border state by accepting his illegitimate son Mordred as heir to the throne. Mordred is trained for the role of a traditional king but in a democracy he would only be a figurehead. The confused teenager falls under the influence of power hungry factions in court who want the crown for themselves.

In this fine production the actors are present on stage all the time. The stage design is minimalist with a circular chequered floor and only few props. There are outstanding performances throughout, especially Jim Byars as Arthur, Paul Crommie as his antagonist Kay, Anne Kane Howie as Morgan Le Fay, and Allan Scott-Douglas as the scheming Breunor.

 
(Carolin Kopplin)


For tickets visit the official Edinburgh Fringe website  http://www.edfringe.com

Almost 10 is a darkly comic monologue about being a child.  Rachel is celebrating her ninth birthday but nobody comes to her party except for her best friend Hortense. So Rachel decides to call up the mothers of all fourteen girls who did not show pretending to be her own mother. She soon finds out that they all went to Eugenia's birthday party - a party to which she was not invited!

Clearly Rachel is not the most popular girl in school her mother calls her "Little Mowgli" because of her unruly hair and her art teacher won't let her draw her own picture for Mother's Day, she has to give somebody else's work to her mother who promptly adds it to the growing collection of paintings in the toilet. In this outrageously funny and touching show Rachel talks about her life and the poeple in it, aptly impersonating every single character to great comic effect - her vicious teachers, her obnoxious Bulgarian nanny, her overbearing mother, even He-Man!


(Carolin Kopplin)


For tickets visit the official Edinburgh Fringe website  http://www.edfringe.com 

Comedy in theatre is usually a path to make the sad, dirty and cruel aspects of life more approachable. In suddenlossofdgnity.com, The Bush Theatre’s second commission for Latitude Festival, it is our very own, sad, and dirty aspects of life that are revealed.

Using examples from people writing in about their most humiliating, undignified moments, five bright young playwrights have compiled and composed a fun and light-hearted sketch show that whizzes through an hour and ten, leaving plenty of time in the bar afterwards with which to drunkenly re-live your own most tragic humiliations.

(left to right: Kathryn Drysdale, Felix Scott, Hugh Skinner, Katie Lyons ) 

For those of you that caught last year’s hit, 50 ways to Leave Your Lover, the format is the same. Two guys, two girls, and lots of laughs. This is real take-away humour, based on observations and clips; short, breezy and humorous. So when a real serious note hits us three-quarters of the way in, it feels a bit like a harpoon attack. We aren’t prepared to make the investment in the drunken character making a horrifying best man speech before us, so we find ourselves staring at our feet in discomfort.

The four young actors are put to their paces, working incredibly hard at their graft. Their energy constantly remains high and everything is attacked full vigour (possibly a little too much for the small Bush surrounds). Highlights include Hugh Skinner’s portrayal of a wannabe musician with a huge Westlife fetish and Katie Lyons’ outrageous clubber. Particularly memorable is Lyons’guitar serenade (I’ve never seen my brother blush a deeper shade of red).

The skilled singing and dancing proved these actors, can go further than simply pulling a one-line gag. A fun display of talent.

The Bush Theatre

1^st July – 15^th August

Book Online www.bushtheatre.co.uk

Box Office 020 8743 5050

THE WRONG SLEEP                 COCK TAVERN THEATRE

The Cock Tavern Theatre, Kilburn, under the artistic direction of Adam Speadbury –Maher continues with The Wrong Sleep, to offer some of London’s finest and most innovative fringe work.

Ruthsdale, a desolate town is rocked by an explosion that leaves many dead and injured. A priest offers the community God as comfort, despite beginning to doubt his own faith, and a deeply disturbed Muslim woman suffering from extreme insomnia, comes to him seeking answers. She is torn between Islam, Christianity and secularism, and as it becomes increasingly clear that she is willing to use violence to vent her frustrations, she also uses the place to confess. She is unashamed of her actions both past and present. Currently she seems to be talking to her dead lover wrapped in a sleeping bag that shares her bed, and also admits she is the enemy within, having caused the bomb blast. In the past she claims to have murdered her three children and stuffed them into flowerpots.

With this surrealistic play produced by visiting company Lumenis, it is never certain what is real, or what is created as part of a manic awake dreamscape devised by Janet’s long term sleep deprivation. Writer Mary Mazzilli, seems to be heavily influenced by Martin Crimp’s Attempts On Her Life, and the absurdist theatre of Ionesco, and this structurally fragmented script seems be an ‘open text’ which offers little resolution. Janet could be crazy as a loon, a victim of psychosis due to long term insomnia who is not sanely responsible for her actions, but she could just as easily be a monster who just enjoys killing. It is left to the audience to decide on this and other matters. As with much surreal theatre the story is polymorphous, and is sometimes hard to see where it is going, but it is held together by Adam Morley’s tight direction, and compelling performances by the actors.

Nadia Shash is highly watchable as Janet, who seems to respond instinctively to the dramatic twists and turns of her character, and David McCelland is excellent as the persecuted priest.

Mazzilli’s intense, poetic language flits between themes of sex and incest, imperialism and terrorism, compassion and retribution. It challenges and touches the audience, and despite striving to be a little too intellectually abstract at times, manages to engage from beginning to end. 

If you want to see theatre that breaks away from the bog-standard commercial norm this is the show to see.

OLIVER VALENTINE                           Box office: 08444771000

FRY AND LEY – A Double Bill            COCK TAVERN THEATRE

 

Stephen Fry’s Latin, and Duncan Ley’s Last Drinks at the Cock Tavern Theatre, Kilburn, offers an interesting, if not a peculiar mix and match of theatre.

Latin was written by Fry whilst still at Cambridge and remains his only play to date. It won him an Edinburgh Fringe First, and led to his collaboration with Hugh Laurie. Set at Chatham Preparatory School for Boys, it is a witty spoof of the traditional boys boarding schools so often immortalised in fiction. Dominic Clarke is the new school master of Latin who has a cunning plan to marry the headmaster’s daughter in order to become head himself when her father dies. However his older colleague Herbert Brookshaw discovers that Clarke has been having an affair with Cartwright, one of his 13 year old pupils. In return for not revealing his secret he asks Clarke to beat him “twice a week with a coat hanger and a wet towel, not forgetting the peanut-butter!”

It’s all a bit naughty with double entendres all the way. Latin is a gem of subversive juvenilia, and it’s uniquely British humour with references to bottoms, sticky ends and firm hands manages to bring the crowd into hysterics. From the beginning the audience take on the role of the errant pupils as they are addressed face to face with a Joyce Grenfell approach. Punters are put in detention for lateness, and exercise books are hurled at them with derisive comments from the tutor. Fry never apologises for the illegal relationship in the play. Indeed he almost celebrates it. Perhaps it is because of it’s sensitive nature that it has been rarely performed. Not surprisingly when it premiered in Edinburgh, a local councillor attacked the play for promoting paedophilia.

Matthew Burton displays outstanding comic timing as Clarke, and Mark White is scarily convincing as the merit obsessed Brookshaw, who appears the epitome of the old- fashioned master who surreptitously delights in late night extra-cirriculars. The pair embrace this titillating romp with gusto and it’s all very watchable.

The same cannot be said of Last Drinks by Duncan Ley. This feeble attempt at a poor man’s Waiting For Godot, had me wanting to run for the bar long before last orders had been called. Despite probably the best intentions by Ley, the play at times frequently seemed more like a parody rather than a homage to Beckett. Nathan Godkin’s direction veers between confused states of attempted comedy through ‘League Of Gentlemen’ characterisations and desperate drama. As the theatres of Paris and Berlin show, absurdist theatre is a specialised art form that has to be done extremely well or it comes across as trite and very pretentious. Unfortunately this production is a victim of the latter. This is not a reflection on the very capable cast who cope admirably with direction that appears to be guessing at this particular type of theatre.

The night’s double-bill is a reminder of how the success and failure of any production depends on so many fragile factors. It felt like a very long night, and perhaps the productions should have been presented on alternative evenings rather than together.

 

OLIVER VALENTINE                          Box Office: 08444771000

A powerful new play from the unequivocally adventurous Second Skin Theatre and penned by resident writer William Whitehurst  brings the story of Rasputin –that mythical mad monk who helped destroy an empire – and his era to the stage in a stunning new production at the Rosemary Branch Theatre in Islington.

The opening moments of the play resound with the sounds –and even the smells –of Russian orthodoxy and as the lights go up we are confronted with a set that really wouldn’t look out of place in a national theatre. This kind of high-reaching and meticulous approach used by designer Mike Lees acts as an indicator of what’s to come on stage.

Andy McQuade brings to the role of Rasputin an astonishing depth of feeling and authenticity, capturing at once the man’s raw peasant vitality, his lust, his craftiness, and most of all the extraordinary pain at the core of his being. His principal antagonist, Felix Yussupov, is played to the hilt by one of the two Russian actors in the cast, Benny Maslov. Maslov brilliantly captures the sinister aspects of Yussupov but we also see this shell progressively shredded by the final dramatic scene –“In spite of everything, I still believe!” And we all know he’s not even fooling himself any longer.

The other Russian actor in the cast, Nika Khitrova, plays the bitterly wronged servant girl Katya, who transforms from humble servant to raunchy stripper to dark instrument of revenge with bone-chilling conviction. With just a few short scenes spread throughout the play she manages the near impossible task of presenting a monumental journey across many years with gut wrenching authenticity; her final moment is as moving as it is horrific.Alice Fernbank as the tormented Tsarina, caught between the demands of empire and a desperate desire to help her suffering son, offers such emotional nuance and range that we come to understand and deeply sympathize with her even as we watch her help unleash the chaos that will destroy her world.

The last link in this remarkably talented ensemble, Alastair Natkiel, creates in the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich a thoroughly sympathetic portrait of a vulnerable, wounded man who wants most of all to love and be loved. Natkiel understands how to maintain the outer façade while showing us how the inner man crumbles. Love may be all this character really wants, but it is in desperately short supply in Russia in the last years of empire and so he like everyone else is swept along by a tide that ultimately chokes off all but the worst aspects of human nature. And that, this play suggests with extraordinary power and conviction, is ultimately the tragedy of Russia itself at the dawn of the twentieth-century.

Do not miss.

http://secondskintheatre.com/

Sean Baker

PRODUCT MEDEA 4.0                           COCK TAVERN THEATRE

Medea.4.0 at the Cock Tavern Theatre, Kilburn is a modern marketing take on the classic Greek myth that engages from beginning to end.

Slovenian playwright Sasa Rakef gives the legend a 21^st Century angle by placing it in the corporate world, and spinning Medea’s tragedy for mass entertainment and maximum financial return. With an aggressiveness that would shame even Alan Sugar’s apprentices Medea. Inc uses ‘emotion design technology’ to sell their product.

The main character enters the stage ready to tell her story as an Eva Peron persona, but is stripped of her clothes, jewelry and dignity by Medea.Inc, in order to repackage her. The company conveniently rebrand her long held reputation as a monstrous child killer and makes her a victim who had no choice. We as the audience become investors of this new product, and are also able to buy Medea memorabilia at auction. Believing she has found her Max Clifford with Medea.Inc, she becomes complicit with her new image exploitation.

This brilliantly written and thought provoking play makes some spot-on and cynical observations of product advertising and media manipulation. Medea’s ancient tale could just as easily be replaced today by the late Jade Goody’s, as her demise has probably sold more media copy recently than any other. The message is sell the story, celebrity or brand however dubious the ethics.

The production is tightly directed by Maja Milatovic-Ovadia, and is supported by Verana Meneses imaginative choreography. James Palmer’s original score is highly effective and perfectly compliments the action on stage.

The cast work well as an ensemble, and there are notable performances by Victoria Grove and Konstantinos Kavakiotis as part of the selling team. Nikki Squire as Medea displays strong emotions, although sometimes there is a tendency to make her classic speeches extremely staccato and drawn out.

Product Medea.4.0 has all the best components of theatre. Along with the drama of hard sell and the pathos of it’s central character, there are also some very funny lines. This is probably the best hour of theatre you can invest in all week.

 

OLIVER VALENTINE                                          08444771000             www.cocktaverntheatre.com