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…Holy Smoke, and Mirrors
The Two Popes
by Anthony McCarten
Royal and Derngate and Anthology Theatre at The Rose Theatre, Kingston until 23rd September, then on tour until 29th October
Review by Mark Aspen
Now for something completely different … papacy complexity. Problems in the highest echelons of the Roman Catholic Church, discussions on theology and politics, the personal interests and minor tribulations of cardinals and their opinions, ecclesiastical and political, do not seem at first to provide fruitful material of a stage play. But thanks to Anthony McCarten’s witty and nimble script, and the skills of two highly respected actors in this touring production, these are the subjects of two hours of enthralling and thoughtful theatre.
Read more…Matter of Black Lives
Yellowman
by Dael Orlandersmith
Orange Tree Productions at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond until 8th October
Review by Eleanor Lewis
“If you’re born in America with a black skin, you’re born in prison”, said Malcolm X. Dael Orlandersmith’s play Yellowman further points out that black is only a starting point and there are many types of prison. This two-hander play is a clever and absorbing examination of what that means in real life.
Two characters, Alma (Nadine Higgin) and Eugene (Aaron Anthony) are growing up in the searing heat of South Carolina in the sixties. The title Yellowman refers to the derogatory term used to describe the lighter skin tone of Eugene. Alma is darker skinned. The action follows the trajectories of both their lives as they become aware of, and struggle to free themselves from the race-based system they’re caught in, before it damages them as it has their parents before them.
Read more…
Queen Elizabeth II
21st April 1926 – 8th September 2022
Rising Tide of Anxiety
The Sea Between
by Demi Leigh
Driftwood and Kibo Productions at the Barons Court Theatre until 17th September
Review by Denis Valentine
The Sea Between, written by Demi Leigh, offers a great snapshot into a modern day problematic relationship whilst intertwining with elements from Greek Mythology.
Leigh (Ginny) and Matthew Kay (Mike) play their two characters well and both bring a high sense of definition and realism to their roles. The chemistry between their two characters builds from the awkward first meeting into being more familiar, but never properly knowing each other. The audience, as the fly on their wall to their relationship, can clearly see through well-played foreboding moments where the problems lie, as the play explores those red flag incidents that can be so easily missed when you’re in the subjective rather than objective position.
Read more…Mind Games
The Bear
by William Walton, libretto by Paul Dehn and William Walton from the play by Anton Chekhov
And I Decided …
by Daniel Felsenfeld, libretto by Robert Coover, Will Eno and Jennie Ketcham
Opera at Home at the Arcola Theatre until 7th September
Review by Heather Moulson
I was looking forward to catching the seventh week of the Grimeborn Opera Festival at this cutting-edge theatre off Dalston Lane, for a double bill of somewhat singular opera. I have seen edgy theatre there before, and Grimeborn’s aim to see opera differently was alluring. I settled down in Studio One amidst the full, predominately middle-class audience … the Bohemians staying at home presumably.
Opening up to The Bear, an operatic parody on Chekov’s play of the same name, the solitary pianist, Daniel Felsenfeld played a haunting introduction, lulling us into the great man’s bleak humour and sardonic wit. A dark and sombre set with a grieving widow, Popova, sitting in black alongside her outspoken maid Lusha, the former’s grief turning to anger and disillusionment with her late husband. The smartly dressed, vibrant presence of Smirnov, a peasant landowner, turned events around as he confronted the aristocratic widow for outstanding debts. Mind games were edgy and played with real wit, to the point of turning to pistols, before he realised how much he loved her. So much so, he would waive the deceased’s debt to pursue the snobbish and alluring Popova.
Read more…
Mark Aspen 