Ass You Liked It
Drop the Dead Donkey: The Reawakening!
by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin
Hat Trick and Simon Friend Entertainment at Richmond Theatre until 22nd June
Review by Heather Moulson
Despite this clever and controversial comedy being off our screens since 1998, the original cast energetically bounce back onstage. What time lapse?! Yes, the actors show their age but they still retain their vibrant wittiness, with all their characteristics firmly in place as if they had never left us. Drop the Dead Donkey, directed with intricacy by Derek Bond, has returned in its Reawakening!
A well-written script unravels each much-loved character to welcoming applause. Starting with Jeff Rawle as the gentle George grappling with a sophisticated coffee machine. Then the laddish Neil Pearson as Dave, a reformed former gambler, who has more to reveal in the gender neutral toilets! They both admit to being headhunted. The odious Gus, played by the wonderful Robert Duncan comes on and gleefully takes all the credit.
Read more…Operatic Artistry
National Opera Studio with English National Opera
National Opera Studio at Cadogan Hall, Chelsea, 11th June
Review by Susan Furnell
In captivating evening of rising stars, the National Opera Studio presented a spellbinding showcase featuring gifted young vocalists performing alongside the Orchestra of the English National Opera (ENO).
The National Opera Studio (NOS) trains young musicians over a nine month period to become the leading artists of their generation. NOS works closely with six of the leading opera companies in the UK. In addition to a bespoke coaching programme, the young artists work closely with leading directors, conductors and six leading UK opera orchestras to prepare opera scenes for public performance.
Read more…Blue Chip
Bluets
by Margaret Perry, adapted from the book by Maggie Nelson
Deutsches Schauspielhaus at the Jerwood Downstairs, Royal Court Theatre until 29th June
Review by Harry Zimmerman
Bluets is a story about depression and desire, pleasure and pain, and an individual possessed by a lifelong obsession with the colour blue. Communing with artists like Joni Mitchell, Derek Jarman, Andy Warhol and Billie Holiday, blue is their constant companion as they navigate the devastating pain of a romantic heartbreak, cope with a serious injury to a close friend, and, overwhelmed by loss and despair, contemplate suicide.
Yet these bald facts do not even start to tell the story of an experience that defies convention and weaves a melange of theatricality and cinematic sharpness that is simultaneously immersive and gripping.
Read more…Stress Ball
No Love Songs
by Kyle Falconer, book by Laura Wilde and Johnny McKnight
Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre at the Southwark Playhouse, Elephant and Castle, until 15th June
Review by Heather Moulson
After a successful run at The Traverse Theatre at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe, No Love Songs arrives in London, fresh from its home in Dundee Rep.
On this my first visit to this second venue at Elephant of the Southwark Playhouse, I encounter an open and simple stage. It is impressive how the cast of two walk in naturally like normal punters. But this a gig theatre show. The musical director, Gavin Whitworth fits in sympathetically at his keyboard between the two performers. Directed with sensitivity by Dundee Rep’s Artistic Director, Andrew Panton, and Tashi Gore, No Love Songs is the creation of Kyle Falconer, the lead singer-songwriter of the Scottish indie band, The View and his partner Laura Wilde.
Read more…Swan Song
Suite in Three Keys
by Noël Coward
OT Productions, at The Orange Tree in Richmond until 6th July
Review by Harry Zimmerman
Marking the fiftieth anniversary of Noël Coward’s death, and the 125th of his birth in nearby Teddington, The Orange Tree in Richmond offers a rare opportunity to see a trio of Noël Coward plays, Suite in Three Keys, his last completed writing for the theatre. This production represents the first complete revival of this work for a generation.
Directed by Tom Littler, and featuring Stephen Boxer, Emma Fielding, Tara Fitzgerald and Steffan Rizzi, the plays are conceived as a loose trilogy, with all three of the stories set in the same Swiss hotel suite. They are subdivided into the standalone A Song at Twilight and the double bill of the romantic Shadows of the Evening and comedy Come into the Garden, Maud.
Read more…Heaven on Their Minds
Jesus Christ, Superstar
music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Tim Rice
Regent’s Park Theatre Company at the New Victoria Theatre, Woking until 8th June and then on tour until 17th August
Review by Heather Moulson
Although I saw this great rock opera many moons ago, I was prepared to watch this vibrant piece with fresh eyes. The curtain rose on a simple set that housed musicians and a cross catwalk centrepiece. Boldly lit and led beautifully with passionate movement by Jasmine Jules Andrews, and Judas’ haunting Heaven on Their Minds, the ensemble’s What’s the Buzz created a tight tension, as it introduced Jesus and the devoted Mary Magdalene. Judas naturally had a lot to carry with his conflicting views and frustration, and Shem Omari James carried this reverently with a high pitch of energy and vocal skills … And anger.
Read more…Follow the Light
Viola’s Room
by Daisy Johnson, conceived by Felix Barrett, based on The Moon Slave by Barry Pain
Punchdrunk at One Cartridge Place, Woolwich until 15th September
Review by Patrick Shorrock
Punchdrunk break all the rules of conventional theatre, not simply removing the fourth wall but nuking the entire auditorium. The audience wanders through a vast elaborately decorated maze in the hope of locating some dramatic action. On a bad day it can be a bit like popping into Ikea for some tea lights and then not being able to find the exit. It’s a combination of the mesmerising, worrying, and frustrating, as those who came to the Burnt City, Punchdrunk’s last installation, based on the Trojan War, will know.
Read more…Any Dream
Heroes
by Gérald Sibleyras, translated by Tom Stoppard
Richmond Shakespeare Society at the Mary Wallace Theatre until 8th June
Review by Salieri
Looking back on this play, the first thought I had was part of a quotation from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where Oberon returns Titania to her original self. The part-quote includes “the fierce vexation of a dream”. Heroes fits this, in that we have three elderly ex-officers from the war who have been together in their care home for many years. And, as the play progresses, we see the “fierce vexation” as they try to escape from their current life without any real future, none of which could really work, but it does not daunt them. We are surely looking at their forthcoming dreams.
But this is basically a comedy, albeit with many more moving and soul-searching moments. During its progression our dauntless three come up with a number of increasingly ludicrous ideas to put their “plans” into action. What the play needs is careful direction, with nothing overdone – no gimmicks, strict attention to the script and to the period (which is set in 1959), all of which was faithfully observed.
Read more…Hell Hath No Fury …
Medea
by Euripides, adapted by Ben Power
The Questors at the Studio, Questors Theatre, Ealing until 8th June
Review by Polly Davies
The last time I saw Medea performed it was in a Roman amphitheatre in Syracuse, Sicily at sunset. So I was a bit apprehensive about how it would translate to a thirteen strong cast adaptation by Ben Power on a small stage in the Studio at Questors. But I did not need to worry. The set was nicely redolent of a Greek village and having half the audience standing as onlookers worked well. From the riveting opening monologue to the dark finale the cast held my attention throughout.
Read more…Swamped with Love
Platée
by Jean-Philippe Rameau, libretto by Adrien-Joseph Le Valois d’Orville, after Jacques Autreau
Garsington Opera, at Wormsley, Stokenchurch until 30th June
Review by Mark Aspen
Bizarre, bold and brilliant; Garsington’s Platée is packed with wild grotesquerie, vivid fluorescence, and exuberant energy.
In a municipal garden near my home in Twickenham, there is a very imposing statuary group of Naïades, or possibly Oceanides, always known locally as the Naked Ladies. They had found their way there early in the nineteenth century, when classical subjects provided thinly veiled eroticism. Anyway they are water nymphs. The Ladies are beautiful and full of joy.
Not so the water nymph in Rameau’s Platée, who is aesthetically challenged and hapless. She is one of the Limnades, the nymphs of swamps and marshes, not the most hospitable of habitats. The eponymous Platée has puffed herself up with unrealistic vanity and obsessional delusions, weaknesses which lead her to become the butt of a cruel practical joke.
Read more…
Mark Aspen 