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Showing posts with the label Isabella Van Braeckel

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The brown word: Death on the Throne @gatehouselondon

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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...
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Dog gone: The Dog Walker @JSTheatre

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In a city of strangers, two struggling eccentrics come together in Paul Minx’s The Dog Walker. The only trouble is that they’re not particularly likeable and it’s a pretty unconvincing story. Nevertheless, the two performers throw everything at it. And with terrifically trashy production design, it makes this piece interesting, if ultimately unsatisfying. It’s currently playing at the Jermyn Street Theatre . A tragicomedy of sorts, Keri (Victoria Yeates) doesn’t go out and awaits the arrival of a ghost. Her tiny New York flat is strewn with liquor bottles and dead plants. She shouts tirades at anyone from her window and seems to eke out a living by writing e-books. Her mother delivers casseroles, so she isn’t starving. But apart from that, she’s entirely alone. Except for her dog - an old Pekingese - that she hires a dog walker to take out from time to time. And so enters Herbert Doakes (Andrew Dennis), a devout Jamaican immigrant with an ethical streak who is holding down a few jo...
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Personal atrocities: Into The Numbers @finborough

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Into the Numbers is a haunting exploration into the mind of writer Iris Chang and her struggle with success and demons. Written by Christopher Chen, it’s having its European premiere at the Finborough Theatre . Iris Chang wrote a best selling book about the massacre of 300,000 civilians in Nanking at the hands of Japanese soldiers. The book, The Rape of Nanking , describes in graphic detail the way in which people were brutally murdered. Including an estimated 80,000 women and young girls were raped. Seven years later, Chang would kill herself at the age of 36, leaving a suicide note that was meticulously edited and rewritten. What’s fascinating about the piece is how Chen uses fragments from her personal and professional life to explain why this happened. In doing so, he not only explores the subject matter but also gets beneath the surface of mental illness. Opening as a lecture and an interview with Chang, the piece sets the scene and recounts facts from the book. But things begins ...
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