The theatre

[Small Man Big Horse]

Ride The Musical at The Charing Cross Theatre, Charing Cross - Exhilarating two hander that tells the true story of the first woman to cycle around the world, back in 1894 when the idea of a woman walking alone in to town might upset many a white male. Using the framing device that said cyclist Annie Londonderry is pitching for a job as a news paper columnist by telling her story, she ropes in secretary Martha to play some of the supporting roles, and while initially bright and breezy in the second half there's a lot of depth that makes it not only fascinating but extremely engaging, and half way through I realised I was in love with the show. It's a musical that I think any fan of the genre would adore, with two lead performances from Liv Andrusier and Yuki Sutton that were breath-taking, I'd be astonished if they don't go on to have very high profile careers and this deserves a transfer in to an even bigger West End venue asap. 5/5

It's only on until the 17th of September but I can't recommend this highly enough, and here's a couple of the songs from it to give you a sense of what it's like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qm4KT-io4k / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiRjbCRKhS0

[flotemysost]

Saw the excellent The P Word at The Bush Theatre tonight. It's a two-hander about an unlikely friendship between two gay Pakistani men - one an asylum seeker fleeing unspeakably grim homophobic abuse, the other a young London-raised creative navigating systemic racism both at his corporate workplace, and from the white men he hooks up with.

If that sounds like it's got potential to be a pretty emotional ride, it is, almost relentlessly so; but that's balanced by how deftly the dialogue flits between heart-wrenching drama and effortlessly droll one-liners, in a way that rarely feels forced or unnatural. There's plenty of swipes at the hypocrisy of companies jumping on the Pride bandwagon, and knowing insights into the complications of being a queer brown person in Britain, but the real vitriol is reserved for the horrors of our asylum system.

That might all sound a bit preachy - and honestly, given the subject matter, it's got every right to be. But it's the tender warmth and charm of the chemistry between its two talented stars, playing out across the most minimal of sets, that really carries this show. Hard recommend. Bring tissues, I was a flat-out snivelling mess by the end.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Cava Charley's Backstage Pass at Bread and Roses, Clapham - A one hour one woman / one drag king show which is a mixture of a celebration of theatre and old style music hall performers and the message that we need to take more care of our mental health and not allow ourselves to be bullied, but this latter point is so lightly touched upon that it lacks substance. It's quite charming to see some of the old classic songs performed in this way, and the lead actor is great, but the script needs to be sharper if its really going to affect anyone. 3/5

[Small Man Big Horse]

About Bill at The Other Place - A one woman show where we learn all about the life of the (fictional) famous Jazz trumpeter Bill Fitzgerald through the women he was involved with, from his mother and his Aunt Dot, who raised him, to lovers, those he took advantage of, a journalist and his long lost daughter. And it's awesome, a whole load of different styles of songs, a fair chunk of smartly scripted dialogue, all of which captures both the man and these women, and Kim Ismay was really great and made each character feel real and believable. 4.5/5

Are You As Nervous As I Am? at The Greenwich Theatre - A brand new British musical with a fairly big cast and live band, this follows the life of a Welsh girl called Peggy as she moves to London in the 1960s to find her long lost sister, but finds fame instead. It's a rags to riches to rags and back to riches again tale, and the big problem is that the lead character is so bland, Peggy's sort of nice, and then a bit arrogant, and then she's a drunk, then she's sort of nice again, but it's hard to care and it felt like all of the supporting characters were more interesting. This wouldn't be too much of a problem if the songs were great, but only a couple are, there's nothing actively bad in it but it's rarely anything more than mildly pleasant. 2.75/5

[Small Man Big Horse]

Stranger Sings at The Vaults - A slightly truncated version was performed tonight as the actors playing both Joyce and Will were sick, and so the actor playing Barb took on both roles pretty damn impressively, albeit often with a script in her hand. I don't know how much was cut, or from where, but suspect it might have been the second half as the first half was really great, packed with catchy songs and daft gags (including a very meta gag

Spoiler alert

involving Joyce, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and Beth from Little Woman

[close]

which they just about pulled off), but the second half felt flimsier. There was still some cute moments but I was definitely disappointed by the lack of memorable jokes or songs in that part. 3.75/5

[Small Man Big Horse]

From Here To Eternity The Musical - The Charing Cross Theatre - Based on the famous film that I know I watched as a teenager (as I briefly kept a record of everything I saw) but had absolutely no memory of whatsoever, this is set in the two weeks before Pearl Harbour as a solider is transferred from A-Company to G-Company so that they can win some dumbass boxing competition, except that he refuses to fight as the last time he did he blinded someone, and so everyone makes his life a misery. Meanwhile Captain Holmes is fucking his superior's wife but they're worried he'll find out and so are rarely happy, and a couple of soldiers are gay and when this is discovered their lives are made horrible too. Despite having so much story to deal with this is only quite interestingly staged, it deals with the themes of racism and homophobia effectively, and is nicely anti-military, but a lot of the dialogue feels a bit flat, and as it's performed in the round I spent what felt like more than half the production staring at the back of the actors heads, and when they did wonder over to the other side of the stage it rarely felt natural. Songs wise this is just above average, though for my money all the good numbers were in the first half, and the second half is duller due to this. Hmmmm, I feel like I've been a little too harsh given that I liked this in places, but at the same time I'd only recommend it to hardcore musical fans. 3.25/5

[sevendaughters]

been hoping for an all purpose theatre thread, here are three things I have seen this year. Sorry this goes on a bit, but I don't know how to compress theatre writing.

A Dead Body in Taos at the Old Vic in Bristol. The premise is this: a young woman from London is called to New Mexico to identify the body of her estranged mother, who has died in the desert. Just as she's sorting out the post-death admin, she finds out that at the last minute mum gave all her money to a tech company, and that that tech company has created an AI version of mum who will in theory live forever. Daughter is torn, but contests the will. Meanwhile the story of mum is intercut - teen runaway, campus revolutionary, period in hippy commune, flees to Britain to be a punk, ends up in marketing, divorce, and then returning to being a lonely artist, spurning various chances at real connections with uni love and daughter.

I quite liked the idea of connections with AI potentially 'feeling' real and I'm a sucker for parental/kid distance stories. Sci-fi works best at its most human rather than at its most conceptual. So when I heard about this and I had a free evening and a £12 ticket with pretty garbage sightlines I thought why not.

Well, I shouldn't have. It was bad. The classic issues I hate in a lot of post-2010 UK visual media such as i. Brits playing Americans and sounding 1-d ii. an embarrassing 'punk' scene that played like a Young Ones skit about embarrassing punk scenes in middle class drama iii. being all subtext and little text. There was nothing to guess, it was all just there for you.

Psychologically it was pretty thin: the daughter's entire psyche is 'lonely future winemum' while the mum is given no real reason to be this hurricane of broken connections. She's influenced by the (real) artist Agnes Martin but there's no connection other than she seems to rip her work off. If you're going to do psychological drama rather than social realism, I think this is important to embed; the play says she's from smalltown Iowa and it is boring. Well so are a lot of people.

There's also a bit of a look-at-me-clever-child approach to history: mainly using the Kent State massacre as a narrative point just seemed egregious, and the little nods to Thatcherism in the UK 80s scenes were also a bit Young Ones. Even worse, the writer missed a huge point of signifiance - the mum flees uni and joins a Transcendental Meditation community in California. The thing is, TM's spiritual home in the US is....Iowa. Where the main character is from. It just speaks to how superficial the play is - oh, California, hippies, oh punks, anti-cap, but all of a sudden I am capitalist bcs rebellion? Oh fuck off.

The staging was good and the best actor powered through a bit where his prop suitcase didn't work and improved the scene (I imagine).

Maybe I don't understand theatre so well but I'd give this a 3.
---

A few weeks later I saw Hamlet also at the Old Vic in Bristol. I like Shakespeare loads but for some reason I have never seen a full-length production of Hamlet; I've read it and I've seen reimaginings of it (Sons of Anarchy, The Lion King) and read and seen works that use it as a strong reference point (To Be or Not to Be, Ulysses, Infinite Jest) but not actually seen it as a straight play or film.

Full-length proper bastard versions can touch 4hr 30 so there were a number of sensible (to my mind) cuts to the text to make it run to about 3hr 10 with interval. Off the top of my head they were that loads of the political context of Denmark worried about Norway invading was reduced to a couple of lines, and that the early part where several minor characters claim to have seen King Hamlet wandering around though he is dead is compressed into Horatio just telling Hamlet he has seen him.



The two main injustices this might create for puritans are i. that Horatio becomes something of an observer-facilitator character rather than having a real psychology of his own and ii. in the first half of the play Hamlet is playing at being mad and then turns mad - here he is pretty mad and manic all the way through. For me both decisions still work.

This version wass still in preview the first time I saw it (I went twice!) but all-in-all I thought it was tremendous - Howle is very believable as the borderline suicidal nutso prince riding an intense moment of clarity before death and the play does a really good job of showing up the parallel between him and Ophelia; both lose their fathers and Ophelia just goes nuts and dies, she can't hold her feelings in, while Hamlet is a bit of a pseud, a bit of a pussy, 'to be or not to be', should I do this?, how would it look if I did this, the guy only actually kills people i. by accident ii. when tricked and iii. when he himself is as good as dead.

Then I really liked the guy who played Laertes and Rosencratz, the former played quite earnestly and the latter kind of like Stephen Merchant. The only one I wasn't so sure about was Horatio, who I always imagined as quite a jolly lad, when here the actor was a bit 'I am doing some serious acting here in this proper venue'. She wasn't bad or anything. Just committed the crime of not being like I imagined it. Mrs 7D said the Claudius sounded a bit like Stephen Toast for her liking.

The staging was really good and left the play in a sort of halfway house between the past and present. The back of the stage was like a long thin black shipping container that revolved between scenes to reveal a staircase or a passageway at the end. Some of the deaths were modern weapons, but they left the fateful duel as a sword fight. There was a bit of Beckett in there, with some of the speeches and moments replayed on cassettes, letters sent through the post as voice messages, and little filmed bits projected to show the history rather than tell it.

Anyway, look, it was really good, it had the seriousness that you want from a Shakespearian tragedy but they also knew how to handle some of the levity really well. There's a bit of a greatest hits quality to Hamlet (literally how many lines in this are just things people say to this day) and I don't know how you'd even think you can do something new with 'alas, poor Yorick' and all that but I think they might have! In a cramped hot theatre I wasn't bored or sleepy for a nanosecond so let's fuckin do this and go 10. Being on the front row second time confirmed it and made it more physical.
---

Then last night I saw the closing show of a run of The Cherry Orchard at HOME in Manchester. The adaptation by Vinay Patel moves the drama from an aristocratic garden to a doomed spaceship and, not that it is relevant, most of the cast are Asian.

Apparently this hasn't done too well, commercially - Saturday night house was about half full, my front row upper circle tickets got moved down to the stalls. It's a shame but I don't think Manchester is a theatre town in the same way London, Bristol, or even Liverpool are. Maybe it was the play, but I've seen far worse than this more-than-competent adaptation, so maybe not.

The play takes place entirely on the bridge and implied living quarters of the officers of a space mission. The ship is knackered and the 'down-deckers' are starting to revolt. The chief engineer, a former serf, wants the captain to give up power to mollify the mob. But (in this, she) struggles to, because she knows that turning over the beauty of the cherry orchard (which we never see, and is implied) to the mob will see it turned into fire wood.

Obviously the implicit comment here is that the bourgeoise are on the rise and that fading institutions need to get out of the way, but also maybe they don't understand the finer points of beauty. But also, the officer/leader class get to move on and live, forgetting their servant, who dies without them.

The staging was fine - the circular bridge revolved occasionally to give a sense of different areas, and there were some very convincing touchscreen/computer voice aspects that helped bring things to life. The acting was mostly solid, not spectacular, but not helped by the adaptation cutting up interesting characters like Gayev (here Panchal).

Best of everything was Hari McKinnon as the robotic butler Firouza (originally Firs) - who managed to be legitimately hilarious at physical comedy and spoken timing and have lots of pathos. One or two more of his quality in the cast and we might be talking about a better adaptation. I could see him having a real future in the right roles.

I enjoyed it but it wasn't great. 6

[Small Man Big Horse]

As I was reading your review of A Dead Body in Taos I was thinking it sounded quite interesting, and at least wasn't like anything I'd personally seen at the theatre, until it got to:

So when I heard about this and I had a free evening and a £12 ticket with pretty garbage sightlines I thought why not.

Well, I shouldn't have. It was bad...

Which made me laugh out loud. It's a shame as I do like the concept, but it sounds horribly cliched and poorly written, so I'll definitely never see it if it's restaged.

I'm glad you saw a good Hamlet though, I've watched a good few of the filmed versions and to be honest can't really remember that much about them, other than that I liked parts of Branagh's but thought it too long.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Peter Pan's Labyrinth - The Vaults, Waterloo - It's a real shame that for many people if you hear the term "adult pantomime" it'll bring to mind images of Jim Davidson making terrible jokes and sexually assaulting his female co-stars, because there's no reason a pantomime just for adults can't be great, and this proves that's the case. A cast of four mash up Peter Pan, Pan's Labyrinth, and the 1986 classic Labyrinth in a very, very silly way, that's full of funny gags and only the odd bit of dodgy innuendo, you can see the cast love performing with each other and their sense of joy is infectious. Add in a sprinkling of re-worded Bowie classics and lots of plain dumb but very funny idiocy, and an actor who is superb as Bowie (or Dave, as they insist on calling him throughout) and you've got something really enjoyable on your hands,4.25/5

I feel like I should add the caveat that you really have to be in the right mood for this kind of nonsense, and I'd understand why some might not like it, but if you fancy something which is just daft mucking around with no pretentions about it being serious art then there's a good chance you'll like it.

[Small Man Big Horse]

The Autumnal Plays: Kicking Up The Leaves - Theatro Technics - This is the second time I've been to one of these shows, where the set up is over a ten week course a bunch of young kids learn to write scripts, then they're teamed up with professional actors (including a friend of mine, which is how I discovered their existence) to work on them, and then they're performed about four or five times at the local theatre. All of the plays are two handers, and they're often quite absurd, for example one involved a whale breaking in to an apartment where a kneepad lives, and anther saw a very lonely panda meet the tree of love. You can tell the dialogue's by young children as it leaps all over the place, adding to the surreal nature of it, but some of these kids are pretty talented and came up with some genuinely funny jokes, while a song between Rose The Rhino and Bob Tescos is now annoyingly stuck in my head. 3.75/5

[Small Man Big Horse]

Harry's Christmas by Steven Berkoff - King's Head Theatre, Islington - Described as a black comedy, there are occasionally funny moments but most of the time this one man play is a bleak exploration of loneliness, as Harry's hit forty and faces another Christmas alone with only his mother for potential company. About half way through Harrys cynical ways start to suggest he's a bit of a misogynistic shit, which makes it a more complex and interesting piece, and Stephen Smith puts in an extremely strong performance, but by the end

Spoiler alert

I was struggling and the final ten minutes where he blathers on about a fantasy life as he takes pill after pill led me to want him to just down the rest.

[close]

3/5

[flotemysost]

This might be more of a post for Comedy Chat I suppose... but I saw long-form improvisers Austentatious at the Arts Theatre the other night. I suspect there's probably not a lot of love for improvised comedy round these parts, which I can sort of understand because it's hard to do it well, meaning not-particularly-great examples abound.

This lot do it really well, crafting over an hour's worth of story based on a title suggestion from the audience. I thought maybe the historical trappings might be a bit twee and cringey, but they're really just a vehicle that gives the story a bit of context and shape; all the bonnets and mannered turns of phrase are just props, really.

The real joy comes from seeing how skilfully the six-strong cast play off one another, not letting any lines or actions go to waste, and bypassing all the stuff that usually gets associated with bad improv (like selfishly wrong-footing your costars for an easy but obvious laugh, or getting lost in tangibly self-congratulatory smugness and losing sight of where you're actually taking a scene/relationship, etc.). They really support each other throughout, but also manage to throw in time-honoured audience-pleasers like callbacks to stuff that came up in the first half, etc.

I can still see how it wouldn't be everyone's bag - I'm sure loads of people find that style of comedy excruciating by default, and it's true a lot of the laughs do come from the whimsical silliness that's sort of inevitable when you're making things up on the spot - but it's definitely a pretty impressive feat either way.

(Also, just wanted to say I've really enjoyed reading all your reviews in this thread throughout the year, SMBH, so thanks - keep it up! And anyone else, of course!)

[Small Man Big Horse]

(Also, just wanted to say I've really enjoyed reading all your reviews in this thread throughout the year, SMBH, so thanks - keep it up! And anyone else, of course!)

Thank you, and likewise, I've enjoyed your reviews a lot too.

As for Austentatious, I've only seen the two shows they've recorded but before the first one I had the same concerns as you, I like improv (and Jane Austen, as it goes) but I wasn't sure a full hour would work, but they're consistently very funny and something I enjoyed a great deal.

Out of interest, do you know if Joseph Morpurgo was part of the cast you saw? He's my favourite comedian and has been part of the group for a very long time, but I've no idea if he's still working with them or not.

[flotemysost]

Nope, when I saw them the men were played by Graham Dickson and Daniel Nils Roberts, but I'm not sure how often the cast rotates (I guess just depending on everyone's availability). Cariad Lloyd was great too.

And thanks to you too! Definitely intending to try and see more stuff next year, so this thread's as good a reminder as any!

[Small Man Big Horse]

Nope, when I saw them the men were played by Graham Dickson and Daniel Nils Roberts, but I'm not sure how often the cast rotates (I guess just depending on everyone's availability). Cariad Lloyd was great too.

And thanks to you too! Definitely intending to try and see more stuff next year, so this thread's as good a reminder as any!

Thanks for that, it's weird as the three solo shows I've seen him do were astonishingly good (with Soothing Sounds For Baby being the only time I've seen Chris Morris in the audience of a comedy show) but since the pandemic he seems to be writing American cgi kids cartoons and his most recent credit was for coming up with a Justin Beiber video, so I'm starting to worry that he might not return to comedy if he's earning a sod load abroad.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Six The Musical at the Vaudeville Theatre - I went in knowing nothing about this apart from that it was about the six wives of Henry VIII, so was surprised to find the framing device is that the six Queens are performing at a concert, and the one with the most tragic backstory will become the lead singer of the group. I wasn't won over by the opening number, but I found myself really enjoying the show after that, and the way it explores their lives was quite effective, and then it came to an end after 78 minutes and I was left all a bit fucked off. I mean, I knew it was short and there was no interval, but presumed that'd mean it was around the two hour mark, and for sixty quid (row c, and not the most expensive ticket that they sell) I was really disappointed it was so short, and due to that I can only rate it 3.75/5.

[flotemysost]

Fake News at the Southwark Playhouse - journalist turned playwright Osman Baig's one-man Edinburgh Fringe hit invites us to attend a lecture on "journalistic integrity". Our host, we soon learn, started out as an ambitious young reporter who bagged an internship at a sought-after news company. Like so many trying to get a break in the industry, he struggled to make his voice heard amid nepotism and prejudice, until he grabbed the world's attention with an incendiary story... except it wasn't true.

I found the premise interesting, and I thought distilling the chaos and hypocrisy of a newsroom into one individual's account could have worked really well... but I found it a bit all over the shop, if I'm honest. Impressive though Baig's performance is, it's a little one-note. His character speaks in a very florid, theatrical manner throughout - which I'm guessing is meant to ape the way a budding journo might write - but it got a bit grating. I don't really feel like I know who our protagonist is and what makes him tick, other than career ambition; there's a bit where he laments how his poor immigrant parents weren't supportive of his media aspirations (unlike his rich white colleagues), and that hinted at some interesting character background, but it didn't really go any further.

There were a few laughs, but if I'm honest some of them were a bit laboured - an over-long description of an eccentric fellow intern dragged on, while jokes about the drudgery of office life, how everyone goes to Pret for lunch etc. seemed kinda obvious and could have just been stuff I've heard from colleagues in real life. And the message of the "payoff" seemed a bit underwhelming and frustratingly vague. If it was a WIP I'd be really interested to see where this went, but I was a bit disappointed sadly.



(Sorry to hear you were disappointed by Six, SMBH - I really liked it, but you can tell - in the nicest possible way - that it started on the Fringe too. I'm glad it's done so well, but can see why people expecting a big flashy West End production might feel a bit let down.)

[Small Man Big Horse]

(Sorry to hear you were disappointed by Six, SMBH - I really liked it, but you can tell - in the nicest possible way - that it started on the Fringe too. I'm glad it's done so well, but can see why people expecting a big flashy West End production might feel a bit let down.)

It really was mainly the shortness of the production versus the cost, I've been listening to the soundtrack and liking it more and more, and an extra 30 minutes / 4 songs and I would have been rating it a lot higher.

On that front, this review is pretty positive as I paid £25 for a good Row Q seat, if I'd paid £100 for one in the first few rows it would have been a little different!

Orlando at The Garrick, Charing Cross Road - I read the novel about twenty years ago and have seen the Sally Potter film, and loved both, but this is quite different. It takes the idea of Orlando living through centuries and changing gender and uses it to explore how women were treated terribly throughout the this time, but Orlando's reluctance to fall in love feels a little odd, and when he does we see very little of his romance with Sasha, and other major characters in the story are completely missing. What's added is unusual too, as nine Virginia Woolfs are on hand to explain to Orlando what is taking place at various times in their life, and having read a few reviews, a lot of people aren't happy about that! I was really impressed by the staging and script though, all of the performances are very strong but Emma Corrin is especially superb, and I found myself fascinated by what it had to say and the ideas it explores, though at the same time anyone who loves the books and is hoping for a faithful adaptation may not like this. 4/5

[Small Man Big Horse]

Charlie and Stan at Wilton's Music Hall - The PR blurb for this goes on about how Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin knew each other before they found fame, touring in America for two years with Stan as Chaplin's understudy, so why doesn't Chaplin not mention Laurel in his autobiography? It doesn't really answer the question though and doesn't intend to, with it mostly paying homage to both men's careers as one comedy sketch after another plays out, and as with their early careers there's no dialogue (though the use of a projector allows occasional snippets of speech) and only a live pianist producing any music. It's an odd mix, and includes a long sequence which was supposedly Chaplin's greatest nightmare, a part with Laurel and Hardy supposedly meeting on a golf course, flashbacks to Chaplin's youth and flashforwards to Laurel seeking Chaplin out in 1961, and for the first ten minutes or so I was confused by the lack of the suggested narrative, but as soon as it became apparent there wasn't going to be one I found myself enjoying it a lot. 4/5

[Small Man Big Horse]

The Book Of Mormon at The Prince of Wales Theatre, Piccadilly - Two Mormons (Elder Price and Elder Cunningham) are sent off to Uganda to spread the good word of Joseph Smith, only to arrive and find the eight previous Mormons sent there have failed to convert a single person, and spend most of their time hiding in their house. But Elder Price is convinced he's super special, and Elder Cunniingham is desperate for Price to be his best friend, so they try their hardest to convert the Ugandan people. It's a curiosity this, and the portrayal of the Ugandan people is pretty racist in places, in that thoughtlessly offensive way Trey Parker and Matt Stone specialise in, but at least the majority of the satire is of the Mormons and the story of how the religion was born, many of the songs are great and there's a lot of funny lines. The first half is by far the strongest, and the second half is a bit weak (unless you like rape jokes, then you'll love it) but the final half hour is a return to form, and I have to admit to really enjoying it overall, apart from when I think about the racist aspect and it's annoying as hell. Hmmmm. 4.25/5

[Small Man Big Horse]

Mother Tree at The Vault Festival - For about twenty minutes I thought this might turn out to be something special, as it contained a very physical performance from Kim Wildborne as she uses aerial silk (a term I wasn't previously aware of, but essentially means two very long pieces of fabric which are bolted to the high ceiling) to contort her body above the stage from time to time, illustrating the misery of sleep deprivation and an ever crying baby, while chunks of this were set to original music, and there's a funny scene when she finally has a night out with friends. But then it just repeats itself over and over again, each time she uses the silk to take to the air it seems to be increasingly pointless, the music is sparsely used, and the theme of children being repetitive nightmares is hammered home to such an extent that this became a repetitive nightmare, and I found myself bored to tears. There's a brief respite as she suddenly performs a sequence relating to giving birth which is strong, but then it's back to the ever demanding misery of having children and it's not only dull but incredibly unoriginal, this kind of thing has been covered in a huge amount of tv shows (with it reminding me a lot of Daisy Haggard and Martin Freeman's Breeders) and films, and it's so disappointing that after a promising opening this became so tedious. 1/5

[sevendaughters]

this thread is making me wish I lived in London, a rare thing. it's also funny that as someone without kids I would rather see art that is like 'here is how being a parent is a liberation and a joy'.

Phaedra at the National Theatre has been getting mixed-to-bad reviews (right wing sheets see it as a satire on the chattering classes of N London, which it isn't) which is a shame because I was thoroughly entertained by the brooding Freudian menace of it all. Phaedra (in this: Helen) is an MP who had a steamy affair with a married Moroccan man who died, so she resumed being an entitled twat back home. His son turns up out of the blue; does he want revenge, or something else?

The staging is all done in a big glass box in centre stage that occasionally revolves - for scenery and for effect. It felt expensive and well-judged, if very occasionally gimmicky. I wonder if it helps the actors or disconnects them. The cast were all great and I bet between you you'll recognise or have heard of most of them from their extensive credits. The opening moments were quite verisimiltudinous - crosstalk and chatter and not facing the crowd - but the staging became knowingly more stagey as it progressed.

I liked it a lot as did Mrs 7D (probably more, even). Solid 8/10.

[lauraxsynthesis]

London's theatre is one of the main things keeping me here though I'm following Glasgow theatre social media in preparation for a possible move.

Got a few productions lined up at the National plus the new Complicite thing at the Barbican - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. I read the novel which was ok but since Complicite's Caucasion Chalk Circle was the best night I ever had in the theatre I try to get to their stuff when I can.

[sevendaughters]

Got a few productions lined up at the National plus the new Complicite thing at the Barbican - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

this is on at Bristol Old Vic atm, might see if I can snag a ticket on strike day

[dontpaintyourteeth]

London's theatre is one of the main things keeping me here though I'm following Glasgow theatre social media in preparation for a possible move.

Got a few productions lined up at the National plus the new Complicite thing at the Barbican - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. I read the novel which was ok but since Complicite's Caucasion Chalk Circle was the best night I ever had in the theatre I try to get to their stuff when I can.

this is on at Bristol Old Vic atm, might see if I can snag a ticket on strike day

thought the book was mint personally so will be interested to find out what you both think of the stage production

[Small Man Big Horse]

this thread is making me wish I lived in London, a rare thing. it's also funny that as someone without kids I would rather see art that is like 'here is how being a parent is a liberation and a joy'.

I feel the same way, "kids are fucking horrible ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" is something I've seen too many times before, so I'd loved to have seen the opposite. That said it's really frustrating because at first it was quite fascinating, but the amount of repetition was appalling.

London's theatre is one of the main things keeping me here though I'm following Glasgow theatre social media in preparation for a possible move.

It's that and the comedy scene (and partially due to family being about 90 minutes by public transport away) that keeps me in the UK, otherwise I'd be very tempted to move away as I work from home so it doesn't matter where I am as long as I have a decent wi-fi connection.

[Small Man Big Horse]

A friend and I went to see Re-Animator The Bloody Musical last night and the first time in my life I walked out after 45 minutes, though only because the people in front of us stood up and started to leave and we leapt up and followed them, and so did two more of the audience, so I think only about ten people were left once we'd gone. Here's a review I wrote for another site:

There's a trailer for an American version of Re-Animator The Musical that features a large cast, impressive songs and a heavy dose of blood and gore that makes it look like it's a delight, at least if you're fond of musical parodies of daft comedy horror films. As it goes they're one of my favourite genres, so it was incredibly frustrating to find out that this was a different adaptation, and one which has very little to do with either the Stuart Gordon film or the original Lovecraft story.

I should point out however that I'm only reviewing the first 45 minutes of this production, and perhaps this is unfair, perhaps the second half suddenly improved, but half way through the play I couldn't stand a single moment more, so when the cast briefly left the stage, and four other audience members stood up and left, I quickly followed behind them, leaving a production before it had ended for the very first time in my life.

It's difficult to begin to describe just why I left as there's so, so, so many reasons. But the main one is the horribly homophobic aspects of many of the attempts at humour. The initial set up is that Herbert West is trying to reanimate the dead, has an all but mute female assistant (more on that later) and a skull that is seemingly sentient and voiced by an actor off stage. And so many of the jokes are about Victor and the skull having sex together, sometimes Victor boasts about it, but then suddenly denies it ever happened despite the skull giving a list of each and every occasion, and the homophobia is horrible and bleak.

The play also seems to have absolutely no plot, as the actor playing Herbert West rants away about how he's desperate to re-animate the dead but has so far failed over and over again, and he's incredibly jealous of Victor Frankenstein who apparently now lives in the same town and is trying to do the same thing. He's aided by an assistant who wears a nurses costume that I presume was bought from a sex shop in the nineteen nineties as it bares very little resemblance to the real thing, but the character mostly stays silent, sometimes trying to sleep, occasionally picking up props and looking at them nervously, but her presence is never explained and it just feels bizarre, like someone's wondered in off the street and now refuses to leave the stage.

When the jokes aren't based around either skull related oral sex or West's hatred of Frankenstein it's largely about prostitutes (his never seen but sometimes heard elderly landlady is one apparently) and he also speaks about his second favourite brothel in the town, and it's the kind of bawdy end of the pier humour that might have made an audience in the prim and proper nineteen fifties laugh but in 2023 felt unpleasant, and the audience remained largely silent all night long.

In the opening forty five minutes there were three songs, and this was where the evening took an even stranger turn as the actor playing West just couldn't sing, his vocals were either flat or off key, and even worse were that the lyrics were not only bland but extremely repetitive, with the opening song repeating the chorus about six times. The (recorded) music was at least okay, but that is the one and only positive I can say about this mess of a production.

There was a fair amount of fourth wall breaking comments, mostly concerning how many mistakes were being made or mocking the actress for being unable to move a plastic skeleton around, while inexplicably West at one point takes out a jar that supposedly has a baboon's penis in it and compares it to his own, though it's got nothing to do with the plot at all. Odder still was a part in the third song where after one verse West proclaims "Let's Dance", and the two cast members move their bodies in an uncomfortable and strange way which made me question if they'd ever seen anyone dance before, and had just read the definition of the word in a dictionary.

I've seen a lot of lo-fi low budget productions in various tiny spaces above pubs, and I'm normally very forgiving of them, and largely very fond of them, you often get to see some fascinating ideas and themes explored that are a little too niche for the West End stage, that or it's something a cult audience will love but a larger one may not respond to. So I take no pleasure in leaving early, or in writing this review, but it is such a poorly acted and appallingly scripted work that it should never have been performed in front of an audience, alive or dead.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Killing The Cat at Riverside Studios, Hammersmith - A new musical where the writer of a scientific book which explains why we have emotions goes on holiday and meets some bloke who has spiritual beliefs, and so they argue a lot even though they've only just met. Meanwhile he's become friendly with two youngsters, one of whom believes dead poets and writers like E.M. Forster speak to her, but nothing is really made of this other than to suggest she is wise beyond her years, while the young fella has an existential crisis that the adults find vaguely amusing. And it's okay, it's alright, as it plays with ideas which aren't that original, and it has a few nice songs (and the onstage band are pretty decent, the cellist especially), but it just feels quite vague and pointless, like it's not really quite sure if it has anything to say. 3/5

[mjwilson]

Saw Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons in Manchester on Friday - I hadn't realised it was going on tour, and it was only here for a week, so it ended up being a bit of a last-minute thing.

Aidan Turner and Jenna Coleman are a couple faced with the prospect of the government passing a law to restrict everyone to being able to say 140 words a day. He's on the forefront of protest, she's a bit more relaxed because she doesn't think it will ever come in. But it does, and so they're forced to adapt their communication, inventing shorthand, starting each conversation with the number of words they have left.

I don't love the title, I have to say, although that line works well when it comes up in the play. There are shades of Twitter, of course, with the choice of 10, and it's impossible not to read hints of Brexit into it (with a big referendum followed by a tonne of regret). But neither of those things overshadow the play.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Hanging Aroud at Pleasance Theatre - A one hour one woman show involving a good few characters, all of which is centred around Kate, who begins the play in a coma after a hit and run, and how when she eventually comes round she's got her great, great, great, great, great, etc, Grandmother Agatha living inside her brain. Agatha's still rather miffed that she was accused of being a witch and then murdered, but slowly becomes fond of the 21st century, and also empowers the previously meek and mild Kate. I wasn't sure what to expect beforehand but this was a pleasingly twisted affair, Stacey Evans is convincing in all of the roles she takes on, and it avoids the clichés of the genre in a pretty effective way. 4/5