Marmite and Spam
Monty Python’s Spamalot
by John Du Prez and Eric Idle, lyrics and book by Eric Idle
Teddington Theatre Club at the Hampton Hill Theatre until 9th December
Review by Mark Aspen
Spamalot is anachronistic, it is puerile, it is scatological. It is has schoolboy humour, bad taste, and weak jokes.
But this is the whole point. It is meant to be all these things. It doesn’t take itself seriously, and there is not much danger that we should either. What it is meant to be is pure unadulterated fun … … well, actually fairly impure and adulterated fun.
To make everything work favourably requires great acting, spot-on comic timing and lively physicality. TTC’s high-energy Spamalot, in the capable hands of Director Nigel Cole, has this all. Plus more; it is a musical, and the singing zings, the dancing is electric. It is a brilliant show that is a must-see and a must-see again (in case you missed anything during this high-energy production).
Read more…In Sheep’s Clothing
The Lamb Disagrees
by Eratle Wang
Kibo Productions, at Baron’s Court Theatre until 2nd December
Review by Gill Martin
Willow is living her worst nightmare. Not only has she discovered that her boyfriend James is married, but his wife has just been found dead. And now Willow is prime murder suspect, as the last person who saw her alive.
That’s until Willow realizes: what if she’s actually a token Chinese character in a murder mystery -whodunnit novel? Can she track down the author, change her destiny and help an uninspiring and uninspired male author with his lazy writing?
Read more…Burns Hot
Lady J
by Lewis Webb and Christina James, after August Strindberg
Off Main Stage and Umbilicus Productions, at Waterloo East Theatre until 26th November
Review by Gill Martin
The set is suitably black and bleak for the premiere of Lady J, a new translation and adaptation of Strindberg’s Miss Julie. Even the programme’s content-warning bodes ill: mental health issues, inter-generational trauma, suicide, emotional manipulation … violence towards animals.
The two main characters are fatally flawed in this dark and depressing study of human nature. It’s Lady Chatterley meets Downton Abbey as class and money motivate a troubled triangle.
Read more…Domestic Insight
The Women’s Centre
by Eliza Halling
The Play Is Not The Thing at Oxford House, Bethnal Green until 22nd November
Review by Denis Valentine
The play The Women’s Centre is presented under the aegis of a company called The Play Is Not The Thing, with an opening programme note that the focus is ‘on the process rather than the product’ so any audience member going into it, can be forgiven for thinking that they may not be getting quite a coherent show, but more a mish-mash presentation of ideas and concepts. This is however not the case, and what writer Eliza Halling, director Louise Wellby and their company have put together is an acute look into a maligned aspect of society through what is, for the most part, a well-crafted linear piece of theatre.
Read more…Wars of Succession
The Mongol Khan
Hero Entertainment, Wild Yak Productions and Maktub Productions at the London Coliseum until 2nd December
Review by David Stephens
Written in 1998 by the late, great Mongolian writer, Lkhagvasuren Bavuu, and based on his original play, A State Without a Seal, the beautifully crafted piece The Mongol Khan tells a cautionary tale of imperial greed and the determination of a fictitious leader of the Hunnu people, Archug Khan, to maintain stability and the enduring legacy of his empire, even at great personal cost.
Read more…Dual Duels
Passion Play
by Peter Nichols
Teddington Theatre Club at the Coward Studio, Hampton Hill Theatre until 25th November
Review by Brent Muirhouse
Entering Hampton Hill Theatre’s Noel Coward Room, the intimate setting felt appropriate for Passion Play by Peter Nichols, centring around the changing relationship of married couple James and Eleanor Croxley, which undergoes a forensic examination on stage when James is tempted away by the lure of a younger woman, Kate. What threatens in this description to be a simple soap opera instead takes in the best parts of interpersonal dynamics, the workings of the human conscience and the dichotomy between inner and outer selves.
First published in 1981, the play delves into themes of fidelity, morality, and the conflict between desire and societal expectations. In practice we meet the couple at centre of Passion Play, James (Oliver Tims) and his wife Eleanor (Kirsty MacDonald), as he grapples with his inner conflicts when tempted by a new lover, Kate (Natasha Nicola), mistress of his late best friend Albert, and public enemy number one to Albert’s widow, Agnes (Cath Messum).
Read more…Perfect World
The Creation
by Joseph Haydn, libretto by Gottfried van Swieten
Glyndebourne Productions at Glyndebourne Festival Theatre until 15th December
Review by Mark Aspen
One of the joys of visiting any of our national art collections is to stand in a gallery and immerse oneself in vast Old Master canvasses depicting the Garden of Eden, the world of the earliest part of the Book of Genesis, by say by one of the Brueghels, probably Jan, or Rubens, or Cranach. The more you look, the more you see; and the more you see the more you feel.
(Of course nowadays, your pleasure may be interrupted by a destructive and pitifully ill-informed protester; a fate that even, ironically, environmental aware Glyndebourne has suffered.)
Haydn’s oratorio, The Creation is the musical equivalent of these canvasses, a work of art that bears listening to again and again; for the more you listen, the more you hear; and the more you hear the more you feel. Regretfully, there are just two opportunities to hear Glyndebourne’s wonder-filled presentation of Haydn’s 1799 masterpiece this year, while it runs in parallel with another pre-eminent oratorio, Handel’s Messiah, as part of its Autumn Season.
Read more…Playing Plays
The Rehearsal
by Jean Anouilh
The Questors at the Questors Studio, Ealing until 25th November
Review by Brent Muirhouse
John Turner hints at the meta nature within his direction of Jean Anouilh’s The Rehearsal in a sentence containing forms of the word ‘rehearse’ no fewer than five times. This describes the fact that the French aristocrats at the centre of the play are themselves rehearsing for a play, which is to take place during a weekend party at a chateau. Their rehearsal takes place against an backdrop of a variety of love – both required and unrequited – which, for the evening, turns The Questors’ in Ealing into a complicated amorous and indulgent battleground in the francophone countryside.
Read more…Bare Bottom Cheekiness
La Clique 2023
by David Bates
Underbelly at the Spiegeltent, Leicester Square, until 6th January
Review by Gill Martin
Popcorn and parasols, hip hop and hoola hoops, shaving foam and bare bottom cheekiness, daring aerial acrobatics, music veering from opera to Adele, eye-watering splits and sequins.
Welcome to La Clique, the poor man’s (other genders are available) Cirque du Soleil. With a lot more laughs and a much cheaper ticket, Underbelly’s La Clique has pitched its Spiegeltent in Soho’s Leicester Square for the seventh year, ready for a festive fling.
Read more…Mozart on a Tightrope
Amadeus
by Peter Schaffer
Putney Theatre Company at Putney Arts Theatre until 18th November
Review by Andrew Lawston
With a verbose script, a daunting running time of almost three hours, and huge themes of seething creative jealousy, the ephemeral nature of genius, and the unpredictable question of which art endures for posterity and which is forgotten, not to mention a huge number of 18th century costumes and endless musical cues, Peter Schaffer’s Amadeus is a bold and ambitious choice for any theatre company, but one which Putney Theatre Company have attacked with great gusto at Putney Arts Theatre.
Amadeus ostensibly tells the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s final years in Vienna, but the play belongs to Antonio Salieri, the sweet-toothed court composer and devout Catholic who, appalled at Mozart’s immature and coarse behaviour, resents his enormous talent and his arrogance, and vows to destroy him to spite God. The play zips along at a tremendous pace thanks to director Ian Higham, and three enjoyable hours fly by.
Read more…
Mark Aspen 