Zoomin’ and Boomin’
The Brown Suite
music and lyrics by James Brown, Sam Cooke and Etta James
Fundamentally Dance at Richmond Theatre until 3rd October, then on tour until 22nd May 2027
Review by Vince Francis
This week, Richmond theatre is the premiering The Brown Suite, a funk-soul dance show, set in 1970s New York, created by Nahum McLean and Darius Drooh, under the moniker BlackBrik, produced by Fundamentally Dance, with Jamiel Davernay-Laurence as Creative Producer.
Here’s the background. Having met in The Ailey School in New York Nahum McLean and Darius Drooh discovered a shared enthusiasm for the music of James Brown in particular, but also Etta James and Sam Cooke. They describe their jointly choreographed duet, Death of the Bachelors (2023), as being “pulled forward” by Brown’s music, rather than being secondary to the movement in any way, which, in turn, led them to consider how they might put together a full-length piece.
The show seeks to depict the evolving relationships, connections and tensions within a group of friends, and uses a fusion of dance styles from ballet to hip-hop, with a soupçon of locking – remember that? – to boot.
Read more…More Equal
Animal Farm: As Witnessed by Moses the Raven
by George Orwell, adapted by Dov Citron
Dov Citron Productions at the Barons Court Theatre until 3rd October
Review by Eleanor Marsh
George Orwell’s Animal Farm was written in 1945 as an allegorical study of the Russian revolution of 1917 and the subsequent rise of the Stalinist regime. It could have been written at any time in history and remained relevant. It is more relevant than ever today and the fact that Dov Citron’s adaptation is heading for schools is greatly encouraging; there is no better way to educate than through storytelling and Victoria Waddington’s direction and Citron’s charismatic performance are both thought-provoking and moving.
Read more…Fangs a Lot
Dracula
by Bram Stoker, adapted by Nick Lane
Reading Rep and Blackeyed Theatre at the Reading Rep Theatre until 10th October
Review by Sam Martin
Blackeyed Theatre’s Dracula arrives at Reading Rep with all the menace, theatrical ingenuity, and Gothic atmosphere one might expect from Bram Stoker’s enduring tale. Yet it is the production’s new surroundings that give this revival a particularly compelling bite. Having previously seen it staged in a considerably larger theatre, I found that Reading Rep’s intimate auditorium transforms the experience. The audience is drawn closer to the action; every shadow seems darker and every approaching footstep more threatening. The result is a production that feels enticingly immediate, as though Dracula has slipped free from the stage and entered the room beside us.
Read more…Clouded Courage
a small and quiet light
by Stephanie Street
Chichester Festival Theatre and Orange Tree Productions at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond until 24th October
Review by John Davies
So, what’s in a name? Or more precisely who’s behind the name? Stephanie Street’s play a small and quiet light tells of a young woman, known by many names: Babuli, Jeanne-Marie, Nora, Madeleine – an undercover World War Two operative, who is being questioned by the Gestapo while reflecting upon her life. The story is not complete; we are left with gaps in her journey and no definitive ending, but we are given a glimpse into some of the events, feelings and relationships that shaped this remarkable life.
Read more…Miner Differences
by Beth Steel
Putney Theatre Company at the Putney Arts Theatre until 26th September
Review by Heather Moulson
There is a deception in the simple open set for Putney Arts Theatre’s Till The Stars Come Down, in its painted images of coal miners against the soft pink lighting. A rotating mirror ball adds needed glamour, but it’s a clever paradox when set against a backdrop that shows stark black and white images of miners and former collieries in Nottinghamshire.
Read more…Forty Years On
Man to Man
by Manfred Karge
The English Stage Company at The Royal Court Theatre, Chelsea until 24th October , on tour until 7th November , then on international tour
Review by Patrick Shorrock
As part of its Seventieth Anniversary celebrations, the Royal Court has revived its forty-year-old production of Manfred Karge’s Man to Man: the story of a woman (Ella/Max, played by Tilda Swinton) who takes on her late husband’s identity just before Hitler comes to power and is unable to let it go. Director (Stephen Unwin), designer (Bunny Christie) and performer (Tilda Swinton) are all the same as they were forty years ago, but there is no hint of this as a museum piece, and they have all clearly come to it fresh. In addition, Karge has added a couple of additional scenes to include the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the resurgence of the right wing in the recent German polls.
Unwin says in a programme note that the piece is a ‘study of survival in a terrifying world’ and ‘explores the deepest forms of alienation – in which all identities are fluid and everything that is solid melts into the air’. The play doesn’t provide answers or even much by the way of narrative clarity. Initially, Ella/Max’s change of gender seems to be about economic survival – she takes over her husband’s job – but then it isn’t possible to switch back, despite being subject to conscription, although, now she doesn’t present as a woman, she is likely to avoid sexual molestation and rape.
Read more…River Reveries
Three Men in a Boat
by Al Smith, based on the novel by Jerome K. Jerome
Rose Theatre Productions at the Rose Theatre, Kingston until 10th October
Review by Gill Martin
The warning was clear at the entrance to the auditorium of the Rose Theatre: This show contains strobe lights, explosions and severe maritime incompetence.
Male incompetence meets hilarious farce, slapstick humour, vaudeville theatrics and rollicking musical score in a show based on Jerome K. Jerome’s classic novel Three Men in a Boat.
The book was published in 1889, has never been out of print and has spawned a couple of movies and two TV series. Now is its enjoying a world premiere as a musical showcasing three lifelong chums Jerome, George and Harris.
It’s a friendship tested to the limit as their river holiday in a hopelessly unsuitable rowing boat sets off from Kingston-upon-Thames, home of this very theatre, to the dreaming spires of Oxford where Harris is to marry Petronella, his fiancée of a dozen years.
Read more…Afternoon Delights
The Lover and A Slight Ache
by Harold Pinter
Questors Productions at the Questors Studio, Ealing, until 26th September
Review by Andrew Lawston
There’s an entry in Alan Bennett’s diaries where the BBC phone him to discuss how they ought to mark Harold Pinter’s fiftieth birthday, and after the call he thinks that he ought to have suggested a minute’s silence.
The “Pinter Pause” has become so widely recognised as one of the playwright’s techniques, that I’ve seen productions where parts of the audience start sniggering knowingly as soon as an actor stops to draw breath. Pinter himself said that directors should feel free to cut them.
All of which is to note that David Erdos’s new productions of Pinter’s one act plays The Lover, and A Slight Ache in the Questors Studio largely avoid the pauses, and sensibly proceed at a brisk pace, as though the director is mindful of the running time printed in the programme.
Read more…Itching to Scratch
Witch
by Jen Silverman, after Thomas Dekker, John Ford and William Rowley
Teddington Theatre Club at the Hampton Hill Theatre until 12th September
Review by Polly Davies
I can’t say that the idea of a modern take on a Jacobean morality play sounded very appealing, but how wrong I was. This is a fabulous production of Jen Silverman’s witty and clever adaptation of The Witch of Edmonton. And to be honest it doesn’t bear a great resemblance to the original 17th Century version. True some of the names are still there. It still features a woman generally regarded as a witch and yes, it still has a devil, but that’s about it. And director Alexsandra Marzocca and the production team make the most of a very promising and unashamedly feminist script.
Read more…Semi-Opera but Not Half-Baked
The Tempest, A Semi-Opera
by William Shakespeare, with compilation of music by various composers*
Vache Baroque in collaboration with Out of Chaos at The Vache, Chalfont St Giles until 6th September
Review by Patrick Shorrock
Since its premiere, Shakespeare’s The Tempest has generated a huge amount of music to accompany its performances. This is hardly surprising, when it abounds in opportunities for music and masques, Ariel is given songs to sing, and Caliban describes the Isle where it is set as ‘full of noises’. So, it makes a kind of sense for Vache Baroque to put the play on in a performance where the main priority is the music and to call it a semi-opera.
Semi-opera, with its combination of spoken text and musical interludes is a response, so the programme says, to English audiences’ dislike of fully sung Italian operas. It remains misconceived to lovers of full-fat opera: a self-sabotaging, pragmatic fudge that puts music and drama into separate boxes, when the whole point of opera is that music and drama need to confront and strike sparks from one other. Purcell’s King Arthur and his The Fairy-Queen are hard going when performed with the full spoken text: the musical interludes ruin the dramatic momentum, and the resumption of purely spoken text after sung music feels like an anti-climax, particularly when this annoying spin goes through several cycles.
Read more…
