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Still here: While They Were Waiting - Upstairs At The Gatehouse

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As the song goes, time heals everything. Or as another song says, it's time after time. Yet waiting—for a moment, a minute, or even a while—can feel like a chore. In Gary Wilmot’s slightly absurd and silly While They Were Waiting, the focus is on waiting and wordplay. No opportunity is missed to find more than one meaning in what is said. A debate arises about the difference between a smidge and a whisker. There's a playful riff on how you can be here and over there at the same time, depending on your standpoint. If this piece has a point at all, it depends on what you find funny. The concept of waiting-related language is, in itself, amusing, and there is plenty to laugh about in this show. It’s currently playing at Upstairs at the Gatehouse . The premise is simple: Mulbery (Steve Furst) arrives for an appointment and is kept waiting. What the appointment is for, we are not clear about but he is waiting for a yellow door to open. Nobody answers when he rings. He’s joined by th...

Eat it up: Mumburger @ORLTheatre


If barbecues and eating bring people together, Mumburger takes it to a new level in dealing with death and loss. Currently playing at the Old Red Lion Theatre  Sarah Kosar's take on death, family and meat is funny and thought-provoking. And a little off-putting if you're squeamish.

Mum's dead. She got hit by a truck on the M25. The two people she left behind - a father and daughter are grieving. There are the usual funeral plans and picking up relatives from the airport. But there is also the arrival of a brown package of meat patties to deal with.

Did their mum arrange for them to be delivered on her death, knowing full well that unlike her they were only part-time vegetarians? Or are they symbolic of something more? 

Rosie Wyatt and Andrew Frame as the grieving father and daughter make the surreal believable. She recites poetry and he reminisces about a film from the nineties. Both are lost but connect over a love for barbecued food. 

And there is some on-stage cooking. The smell of burnt meat wafts through the intimate space of the Old Red Lion Theatre. Two burgers are cooked with a blow torch. Vegans (or burger lovers who have come to the theatre on an empty stomach) beware.

The choice to have live blowtorched burgers tends to distract from the text. Instead of focussing on the action you keeping thinking, "Surely they aren't going to eat that?" 

Perhaps a more mundane setting such as a kitchen might have been better. But with observations on the ubiquity of social media, online footage and mass entertainment, there's enough food for thought here in Kosar's text, and combined with some slick projections, gives the piece its impact. 

Directed by Tommo Fowler, Mumburger is at the Old Red Lion Theatre until 22 July. 

⭐️⭐️⭐️



Photos by Lidia Crisafulli

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