Speak No Evil
The Dumb Man
by Jagoda Kamov
The Cockpit Theatre, Marylebone until 6th August
Review by Gill Martin
The Camden Fringe, which runs throughout August, has earned a reputation over the sixteen years it has been running as a London alternative to Edinburgh, offering fresh new theatre, edgy and experimental, at affordable prices. This year two hundred productions are on the menu across the Borough of Camden and beyond. The range is wide, from children’s shows, comedy and dance to magic, music, physical theatre and musicals – even opera.
We opted for The Dumb Man at the Cockpit Theatre, a sixty-minute play billed as a dark comedy. Dark it certainly was. Comedic? The jury is still out.
The man character of Richard (Michael Molino) is angst-ridden and grief-stricken. The balding widower in his comfy rocking chair and cosy cardie cannot come to terms with the death of his wife Anne (Lana Helena Hulenic).
Read more…Send In the Clowns
Black, el payaso
byPablo Sorozábal, libretto by Francisco Serrano Anguita
Cervantes Theatre Co at the Arcola Theatre until 6th August, then at the Cervantes Theatre, Southwark until 24th September
Review by Patrick Shorrock
On paper, Black, el payaso(Black, the Clown) did not have a lot going for it: a composer Pablo Sorozábal (1897-1988) barely heard of over here writing in a distinctively Spanish genre that is likely to seem both obscure and defunct to UK audiences. This is its UK premiere. (There must be a reason why no-one seems ever to have tried to do a zarzuela in the UK before?). However, Grimeborn very definitely knew what they were doing. Blessedly free of the usual operetta clichés, the piece takes to the stage like a duck to water, and is pure delight. On this evidence, there is a lot more to zarzuela than operetta with castanets.
Sorozábal should take a lot of the credit, helped by an interesting plot and libretto, fine performances, and an effective production. Even in a reduction for piano and violin, his quirky score is extremely attractive. The violin in particular gets opportunities to sound romantic in a Brahmsian Hungarian Gipsy mode, as is appropriate for its central European setting (the kingdom of Orsonia). Ricardo Gosalbo (piano) and Elena Jáuregui (violin) made an excellent case for it, and never let the pace flag, and the audience interrupts regularly with delighted applause.
Read more…Can’t Buy You Love
L’elisir d’amore
by Gaetano Donizetti, libretto by Felice Romani, after Eugene Scribe
West Green House Opera, Hartley Wintney until 31st July
Review by Mark Aspen
The Theatre on the Lake goes to sea! Director Victoria Newlyn has an inspired self-referential idea to take the sleepy Italian village in L’elisir d’amore and transform it to the cruise ship Il Villaggio whilst taking the setting from two hundred years ago to the second half of the Twentieth Century.
The lake in the charming fragrant gardens of West Green House widens in the imagination of designer Adrian Linford to become the Med, while the “floating” stage, which post-pandemic has become the idiosyncratic image of West Green Opera, grows a prow and a funnel as the white-painted love-boat. The horizons of the acting space have widened too, semaphore signallers send messages from the audience pavilions along the lake margins, (sorry, seashore), and the quack apothecary, Dr. Dulcamara arrives in a dingy rowed across the lake … (er, in the ship’s tender across the breakers). Didn’t they use to call these, appropriately, bumboats?
Read more…Hot-Seats of Learning
Colloquium
by Katherine Stockton
Cavendish Productions at Hen and Chickens Theatre, Islington, as part of the Camden Fringe, then at The Golden Goose Theatre, Camberwell until 6th August
Review by Heather Moulson
A Colloquium is by definition an academic meeting of specialists, and this was the exact setting that took place in Oxford University.
During the interviewing of two potential candidates for a place in the English department, there are clashes of brilliant minds, arrogant candidates, overtones of resignation, and internal power games. There is a stand-off with a weary professor in his last year, and a maverick younger colleague who indeed sees things very much outside the box. The wry humour excelled during these encounters.
Read more…Desert Island Disclosures
The Tempest
by William Shakespeare
Globe Ensemble at The Globe Theatre, Southwark until 22nd October
Review by Gill Martin
The striking theatre programme offers a clue. An upside down image of a sun-bathing brunette wearing nothing but a scarlet sweetheart costume, matching lipstick, designer shades and a worried expression. Introducing The Tempest … but not as you’ve known it. This is heavy on comedy, lighter on drama.
Shakespeare’s tumultuous tale of vengeance, retribution and redemption is set on an enchanted island, in this new production directed by Sean Holmes. Marooned there are the banished Prospero, Duke of Milan (Ferdy Roberts), his teenage daughter Miranda (Nadi Kemp-Sayfi) and his sorely abused slave Caliban (Ciarán O’Brien), the son of a witch.
If enchanted means spellbinding this inventive production has the audience in its thrall. It is energetic, playful and at times confusing. But always engaging.
Read more…View of Your Dreams
Ordinary Days
by Adam Gwon
BB Theatre Productions at Studio One, South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell until 31st July then at the Edinburgh Fringe until 28th August
Review by Nick Swyft
‘Never let tall buildings obscure the view of your dreams’ or ‘real lives make the best movies’. These and other words of life advice are distributed to an uninterested New York population by Warren (Niven Willet). Warren is a penniless failed assistant to a failed artist, whose vision is nevertheless clear. He picks things up from the street, pieces of people’s lives, seeing the beauty of those lives in everything he collects. If such people end up in shop doorways, frying their brains on meths, perhaps it’s worth seeing them in a different light, and picking up the pieces of their lives.
One of the things he picks up is a book containing notes that Debs (Georgia Parsons) has lost. These are vital for her dissertation on Virginia Woolf, but fortunately the notes include her e-mail address which Warren uses to make contact with her.
Read more…Little of What You Fancy
Sin, the Musical
by John-Michael Mahoney
Dmii Productions at The Arcola Theatre until 25th August. World Première
Review by Vince Francis
To east London, Dalston, to be precise, on a warm Thursday evening to look in on a new piece of writing at a venue I haven’t visited before; the Arcola Theatre, in Ashwin Street. The building itself is a converted fabrics factory and has retained the atmosphere of naked brick and ironwork industry, which makes it a suitable venue for this production.
A very pleasant welcome and time for a swift ale before seating in the auditorium, laid out with the audience on three sides of the playing space and having the band on a scaffold platform above and tucked in one corner.
Sin, set in 1920s New York, is a musical written, scored, arranged and directed by John-Michael Mahoney, who also plays the role of Michael in the show. The plot centres around a power struggle within a group of friends led by the key character, Jack, who has inherited a considerable amount of money, which he has invested in a speakeasy. Early on, Jack’s leadership is tested, and factions start to form. The violent nature of the times and the competition for supplies and custom inevitably results in clashes both within the group and externally and results in the tragic loss of one of the group. To say more than that would probably start to give the game away and I don’t want to do that. There are several plot twists that are nicely executed among the strands that lead you to believe you know where this is going. The script is reasonably well turned, with believable dialogue and well-drawn characters.
Read more…Uneasy Rests the Head
L’Incoronazione Di Poppea
by Claudio Monteverdi, libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello
Ensemble OrQuesta at Arcola Theatre, Dalston until 30th July
Review by Patrick Shorrock
The wonderful Grimeborn Opera Festival celebrates its fifteenth season at the Arcola Theatre, Dalston, with a musically fine performance of Monteverdi’s most ambivalent opera, The Coronation of Poppea in Italian with surtitles. By throwing off the constraints of big opera house performance, Grimeborn has been able to develop an innovative approach that not only covers the standard repertoire but puts on neglected pieces that nobody else would dare risk. It seems to be acquiring an increasing musical confidence in doing this.
Poppea – not quite standard repertoire – is a strange piece in many ways, not least by having the emperor Nero as its (anti)hero. There is an awful lot of recitative, but also possibly the most ravishing closing duet in all baroque opera (maybe not even by Monteverdi, just to add to the ambivalence). Nero and Poppea rejoice together at her being crowned as his new empress, and time seems to stand still at their mutual musical rapture. And yet they have had to dispose of a number of people opposing this marriage (including his tutor Seneca, and current wife Ottavia) which we have seen them do with no hint of conscience or regret. Helen May – sweetly voiced but neurotically anxious as Poppea – and Julia Portela Piňőn’s dark toned Nero blended beautifully, although Piňőn was not remotely convincing as a psychopathic tyrant. I’m really not sure what the point of giving the role to a mezzo is when there are so many good countertenors around.
Read more…Let’s Tryst Again
Le Nozze di Figaro
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, after Pierre Beaumarchais
West Green House Opera, Hartley Wintney until 24th July
Review by Mark Aspen
As a hush descends on the pavilions around the Theatre on the Lake, a lively wind blows across the gardens of West Green House, bringing with it the perfume of flowers, and setting the vast canvas roof feathering with a loud crack. It is the perfect cue to Mozart’s breezy overture to his commedia per musica, Le Nozze di Figaro, surely his best known, and often regarded as his greatest overture.
Le Nozze di Figaro is based on La Folle Journée (the crazy day), the second play of Beaumarchais’ Figaro trilogy. The first play is Le Barbier de Séville, the source for Rossini’s opera Il Barbiere di Siviglia.
Read more…Bengal Fire
Chasing Hares
by Sonali Bhattacharyya
Young Vic and Theatre Uncut at the Young Vic, Waterloo until 13th August
Review by Heather Moulson
Poverty, desperation, vast unemployment and an exploitive situation; these were the issues explored in Sonali Bhattacharyya’s new play Chasing Hares. Set in West Bengal, the stark open set had a floor of loose sand and a revolving square, leaving the actors to work hard to create the scenes. The simplicity of this design worked well, with employee’s shoes left outside a factory sign … the sign that indicated an exploitative factory.
Read more…
Mark Aspen 