Featured Post

A Man For All Seasons: Seagull True Story - Marylebone Theatre

Image
It's not often that you see a play that tells you not so much a story but gives you a sense of how it feels to be in a situation, how it feels to be silenced, how it feels to be marginalised, how the dead hand of consensus stifles your creativity. However, in Seagull True Story, created and directed by Alexander Molochnikov and based on his own experiences fleeing Russia and trying to establish himself in New York, we have a chance to look beyond the headlines and understand how the war in Ukraine impacted a a group of ordinary creatives in Russia. And how the gradual smothering of freedom and freedom of expression becomes impossible to resist, except for the brave or the suicidal. Against the backdrop of Chekhov's The Seagull, which explores love and other forms of disappointment, it presents a gripping and enthralling depiction of freedom of expression in the face of adversity. After playing earlier this year in New York, it plays a limited run at the Marylebone Theatre . Fro...

The finer things in life: The Long Road South @KingsHeadThtr


The Long Road South at the Kings Head Theatre takes the period of the 1965 civil rights marches and distills it into a small character study. But the pleasure from this piece is in its humour and strong performances.

Not much is happening in the summer of 1965 in Indiana. It is hot and the house of the Price family needs looking after. And over the course of the next ninety minutes, it becomes clear that it is not just the hedges and the grass that need trimming.



Grace and Andre are two domestic workers intending to collect their wages and head south to join the civil rights marches. But each member of the Price family conspire to keep them from leaving. Yet for all their platitudes about how important they are to their family, they are never shy at pointing out that in the end they are still just the help.

Lydea Perkins as Ivy is delightfully annoying as the teenager with a wild imagination. She tries to manipulate Andre into staying. At first she flirts; showing her body off, leaving her shirt unbuttoned. And when that fails she threatens to blackmail him and tell her father that he seduced her.

Cornelius Macarthy as Andre has to navigate the between being Ivy's noble mentor and his violent past. But he also has to contend with his new partner Grace (played by Krissi Bohn). She has less patience for his softly-softly approach to getting their back wages.

Imogen Stubbs plays the housewife Carol. She wanders about looking sexy in a lime green negligee, clutching a bottle and a few secrets. Michael Brandon is Jake the father with a simmering rage and at the mercy of his manipulative daughter.

The speed in which the characters are set up, and the scenarios they are placed in could have allowed for a much longer piece. But writer Paul Minx covers the plight of black workers (and their indifferent white employers) well. In the programme notes he mentions a handyman who worked for his father and talked about the civil rights movement inspired him to write the piece. Here he unpacks what might have been...

A great little production from the So & So Arts Club, directed by its founder Sarah Berger. Keep an eye out for what they do next. In the meantime The Long Road South runs at the Kings Head Theatre through to 30 January.

⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎

Photos: Production photos by Truan Munro

Popular posts from this blog

Opera and full frontal nudity: Rigoletto

Image
David McVicar's oddly modern production of Rigoletto is back at the Royal Opera House . This modern and minimalist dark production has evolved over the years. It is better lit now but there is still an orgy and full frontal nudity within the first thirty minutes. This enables anyone not in the stalls an excellent view of a flaccid penis and a nicely shaved bush. But as time goes it seems more and more superfluous to the main focus of this tragedy of a court jester who seeks revenge. Here is hoping that the production continues to evolve... Conductor John Eliot Gardiner keeps the music well paced. Dimitri Platanias in the title role sounded great and received a rapturous applause for his interpretation of the role. You get a sense more of the doting father rather than the court jester or cursed man here. Vittorio Grigolo plays the Duke and sounds too lovely to be the cad the role calls for, but it is hard not to like when he is on stage anyway. And it is easier to understan...
Read more...

Fantasies: Afterglow @Swkplay

Image
Nowadays no self-respecting gay play can be staged without full frontal nudity of some kind. It feels like the default response for the modern gay play now that gay rights are no longer an issue .   Afterglow, currently playing at Southwark Playhouse , serves it up in spades. From the beginning, three men are in a bed, naked. There’s what appears to be a very brief exhalation of ecstasy, before the obligatory rush to the shower. But the gratuitous nudity and excellent performances can’t conceal this is a pretty conventional and predictable story about a fantasy couple.  The three men in the simultaneous orgasm at the start of the piece are Josh, Alex and Darius. Josh and Alex seem to live in a New York world where they can afford a rooftop apartment in Manhattan while holding jobs as a theatre director and a grad student in chemistry. As writer S. Asher Gelman based it on his own experiences, perhaps gay plays with full frontal nudity are the way to achieve financial ...
Read more...

Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

Image
Damn Yankees at the Landor Theatre is one hell of a fun, sexy show. A great cast of dancers and singers give this show about a man who sells his soul to get on his beloved baseball team (and give them a chance of winning) new legs and balls. It also helps to up the ante with the sexiness with some healthy doses of cleavage and legs (and that's just the men). The musical is a retelling of the Faust story set in the 1950s when the New York Yankees dominated the game.
Read more...