Mayfair Lady
Pygmalion
by George Bernard Shaw
Teddington Theatre Club at Hampton Hill Theatre until 8th October
Review by David Stephens
One of George Bernard-Shaw’s finest plays, Pygmalion has been a favourite of theatregoers since its Viennese debut over a hundred years ago. Its prominent messages of social mobility and gender inequality remain as resonant with today’s audiences as they were to those who first saw it.
Also often told in its musical incarnation, My Fair Lady, this wonderful play tells the story of a working-class flower-girl, Eliza Doolittle (Anastasia Drew) and her aspiration to become one of the beautifully presented, well-spoken ladies that she so admires through the windows of Covent Garden’s dress shops. A chance meeting with Henry Higgins (Oliver Tims), a world-renowned professor of linguistics, leads to her being accepted as one of his projects and whilst guiding her, sometimes rather too sadistically, on her journey from ‘street’ to ‘chic’, he discovers a thing or two about his own flaws along the way.
Read more…Don’t Give Me Your Troubles
Ulster American
by David Ireland
Putney Theatre Company at the Putney Arts Theatre until 8th October
Review by Eleanor Lewis
Leigh is trapped on the sofa in his London apartment with Jay, an Oscar-winning, A-list Hollywood actor. Jay is loud, intense and very, very needy. Both men await the arrival of Ruth, the writer of a new play set in Northern Ireland about a Protestant activist to be played by Jay, in the West End. Jay thinks Ruth is an Irish writer and he’s hugely proud of his Irish roots, despite not having realised the difference between the Republic and the north of Ireland. Leigh is going to humour Jay for box-office purposes.
Read more…Doors and Sardines!
Noises Off
by Michael Frayn
Theatre Royal Bath Productions at Richmond Theatre until 15th October, then on tour until 29th October
Review by Andrew Lawston
There is something terribly fitting about the short delay before the curtain rises on Noises Off this evening. Although the word in Richmond Theatre’s foyer is that they’re finalising the extensive set, everyone who has seen a previous production of Michael Frayn’s much-loved play is cracking wry jokes about plates of sardines, and wondering what state the production will be in by the time the tour reaches Stockton-on-Tees.
But soon enough the curtain rises on Robin Housemonger’s classic bedroom farce Nothing On, and Mrs Clackett totters across the stage to answer a ringing telephone, with just a shade of the opening scene of The Real Inspector Hound in her delivery.
Read more…All for Nought
Noughts & Crosses
by Malorie Blackman, adapted by Sabrina Mahfouz
Pilot Theatre at Richmond Theatre until 1st October
Review by Eleanor Lewis
I vaguely remember, quite a long time ago, a TV series in which the power was flipped, and women were in control. They (the women) turned out to be nothing like as inspiring as you’d hope them to be. I think the basic idea was probably that all humans will behave badly if you give them the means and opportunity but, as I say, it was a long time ago.
Noughts & Crosses applies the same idea to race (it’s interesting that such a simple idea isn’t used more often). The dark-skinned Crosses hold all the power, which they wield over the light-skinned Noughts. Two central characters: Sephy, a Cross, and Callum, a Nought form a friendship as children and grow up with difficulty within the system that in fact oppresses both of them.
Read more…Arctic Adventures
The Gretchen Question
by Melly Still and Max Barton
Fuel Theatre at the Master Shipwright’s House, Deptford until 2nd October
Review by Patrick Shorrock
The Gretchen Question is a wonderful display of theatrical virtuosity in a glorious setting (the Master Shipwright’s House, which is one of the few remaining parts of Deptford’s former royal dockyard, founded by Henry VIII in 1513). Whether Melly Still’s and Max Barton’s piece is a viable play or not is, perhaps, more open to question. But it certainly makes for a stimulating and enjoyable evening in the specific site for which it was devised. However, punters are strongly advised to wrap up as warm as possible. Sitting down beside the River Thames for 90 minutes without an interval on a late September evening is a decidedly chilly experience, but well worth the trip.
Read more…For Want of a Nail…
Death and the Maiden
by Ariel Dorfman
The Questors Theatre at Questors Studio, Ealing until 1st October
Review by Andrew Lawston
One evening, married couple Gerardo and Paulina Escobar bicker about whose job it ought to be to keep their car’s spare tyre inflated, as they celebrate Gerardo’s appointment to a new Commission. It ought to be a familiar-enough domestic scene, but the audience have already seen Paulina pull a gun from a drawer on seeing an unfamiliar car outside their house, and we quickly learn that the Commission has been appointed to investigate murders and other human rights abuses committed under the Escobars’ unnamed country’s previous regime. From the outset, Death and the Maiden’s tone is unsettled and intense. The cosy domestic setting of the Escobars’ seaside home is a thin veneer over a couple, and a country, who have clearly suffered huge psychological and physical damage.
It Must Be Love
Our House
by Tim Firth, music and lyrics by Madness
TOPS Musical Theatre Company at Hampton Hill Theatre until 24th September
Review by Heather Moulson
To attend a production by TOPS is always a treat. I have enjoyed many of their detailed musicals in the past. Our House certainly did not disappoint, and my companion commented that the TOPS show of this London love story was as good as the West End version he saw some years back.
So where to actually start? With a backdrop of a Sliding Doors plot, there was a choice of destiny, with break ups, heartbreaks, relevant issues, an unforgettable Las Vegas number and a car wheeled onstage. If the story sagged a little at times, the vibrant choreography and strong singing more than compensated.
Read more…Mourning for Ukraine: How Poets Tried to Make Sense of Lives Lost
Poems for Ukraine
Poetry Performance at The Willoughby Arms, Kingston, 16th September
Review by Greg Freeman
When Russia invaded Ukraine in late February 2022, a number of UK poetry groups and organisations reacted with heartfelt events and initiatives in protest and sympathy. One was a group based in Teddington, south-west London, Poetry Performance. Its organiser Anne Warrington called for submissions from its poets and beyond for an anthology. Last Friday saw the launch of that anthology, Poems for Ukraine, packed with honest, angry and compassionate thoughts about the deaths and damage wreaked on Ukraine and on his own people by Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin.
Read more…Misalliance
Miss Julie
by August Strindberg, adapted by Howard Brenton
Richmond Shakespeare Society at the Mary Wallace Theatre, Twickenham until 24th September
Review by Louis Mazzini
First performed privately in Copenhagen on the 14th March 1889, August Strindberg’s Miss Julie was, on its first publication in an English translation, deemed to be “a play so revolting that even the plot is impossible to describe”. After more than a century, what was once shocking and novel in feeling and technique, feels old-fashioned even when re-presented in Howard Brenton’s modern language adaptation. Strindberg was an exponent of naturalism and what he described as forsøksteater (experimental theatre). His aim was to bring about a radical change in the presentation of drama by posing issues and questions for the audience without providing resolution or answers, while at the same time encouraging producers to allow actors to perform naturally and even to extemporise. However, while Strindberg was originally seen as challenging orthodoxy with respect to the role of women, today – in the wake of the #MeToo movement – he can appear like simply another male playwright relying on over-familiar tropes about women and their motivations and, as is the case with some of the other great nineteenth century melodramas, the once startling conclusion of Miss Julie is today as predictable as it is unconvincing.
Read more…The Dream Unravelled
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
by William Shakespeare, abridged by Roger Warren
Putney Theatre Company at the Putney Arts Theatre until 17th September
Review by Vicki and Chris Naylor
As much part of an English summer as cricket on the village, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is part of traditional open-air activities of balmy days. And this year’s Hurlingham Arts Festival featured Putney Theatre Company’s abridged version of Shakespeare’s magical summer show in a successful open-air run. However, those record hot days of this balmy summer gave way all too soon to thunderstorms and heavy rain, and the show has is now transferred into the company’s own Putney Arts Theatre just across the river from Fulham’s Hurlingham Club, better known for polo, tennis and croquet.
Read more…
Mark Aspen 