Posts

Showing posts from January, 2014

Featured Post

The brown word: Death on the Throne @gatehouselondon

Image
We’re warned at the start of the show with an upbeat number that this is not the usual sort of musical. And it turns out to be just that. But with boundless enthusiasm and energy from its two leads, who deploy a range of voices and breathtaking energy to create a series of voices for puppet characters, a bedtime story becomes a silly oddball tale about four souls stuck in purgatory. With puppets. And various toilet humour references. It’s currently playing at Upstairs At The Gatehouse . The piece starts as a bedtime story. Daddy (Mark Underwood) is about to read a bedtime story for Louise (Sarah Louise Hughes). But her stomach felt funny, and soon, she went to the bathroom. Then, for reasons that seem to only make sense in the confines of the show, they start telling the story of four people who died in unfortunate circumstances in the bathroom. Depicted as puppets, they’re stuck in purgatory as St Peter doesn’t have enough space for each of them in the afterlife. And so begins a puppe...
Read more...

Phytophilia and other tortures: Fiji Land @swkplay

Image
Torture, boredom and having strange things done to plants are explored in Fiji Land, a thought-provoking piece currently playing at the little space within Southwark Playhouse for a short season. The title comes from the testimony from a Professor Ali Shalal, who became a symbol for the torture at Abu Ghraib after catching the interest of the New York Times and it mistakenly attributing him as the man hooked up to wires and a black hood. His testimony describes a part of the prison in open space and made up of five sectors, surrounded by walls and barb wire as Fiji Land, where anything could happen. The play is a short piece about what happens when cell doors are closed and nobody else is watching. You walk into the little space within the Southwark Playhouse to be greeted with what looks like a cross between a cold storage facility and an indoor plant growing facility. Unsure about what the next eighty minutes had in store for us, @Johnnyfoxlondon and I opted for seats towa...
Read more...

Opera: Carmen pleasures

Image
The tale of a cigarette worker and a promising soldier who throws his career away in lusting after her seems like an unlikely premise for an opera. But Bizet's rousing music and the melodramatic tale of love and obsession woven around it make Carmen  hard to resist. The casting and current production make for a satisfying night out at the Royal Opera . I caught this production just before Christmas with the alternative cast. Korean tenor Younghoon Lee as Don José delivers a thrilling performance with his range and gradually escalating dramatic intensity. By the finale the audiences were cheering.  Christine Rice as Carmen was equally thrilling and has a dark timbre and luscious sound that is well suited to the role. The rest of the cast rise to the drama of the occasion. As Escamillo, the  Johnny Depp of opera  Kostas Smoriginas, dominates his scenes with a commanding voice and presence.  Francesca Zambello's stylish production evokes Seville but...
Read more...