Posts

Showing posts with the label Martin McDonagh

Featured Post

More sex and violence: Playfight @sohotheatre

Image
The funny thing about three girls growing up under a tree is that you never quite know when they're being serious or just messing about. One time, they might be talking about giving blow jobs on a tennis court at school and another, they might be yearning for a connection that they can't quite explain. That's what happens in Playfight, an Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2024 hit currently showing at Soho Theatre .  Writer Julia Grogan doesn't give us much time to dwell on the lives of these three young teenage girls. One minute, they're fifteen and giggling, and then the next thing, they're off getting married or going to University. But underneath all the smutty talk, humour, and quick scene changes, there is a darker underbelly about relationships, power, and consent. It's about finding your way in a complex world that can dehumanise and degrade you. But as things move so quickly, you could blink and miss it. This is too bad as the performances capturing this co...

Trolling: A Very, Very, Very Dark Matter @_BridgeTheatre

Image
Trolling, the art of making random, unfounded and controversial comments to provoke an immediate emotional reaction is the backbone of today’s social media. But in A Very, Very, Very Dark Matter, Martin McDonagh has decided to extend it to the theatre. Daring you to walk out in disgust with his twist on the lives of Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen. He’s out to knock these men off their pedestals. Just in time for Christmas. But the show does what it says on the tin. Those who can stomach this grim stuff might walk away with something to think about. It’s having its world premiere at The Bridge Theatre . The premise is that Hans Christian Andersen has been keeping a captured Pygmy woman he calls Marjory from the Congo in his attic. She writes his stories. He isn’t particularly talented in his own right. Hans as played by Jim Broadbent also comes across as a Jimmy Saville-like entertainer. With only a passing interest in humanity. Marjory‘s played by Johnetta Eula’Mae Ackles....

It’s grim up there: Hangman

Image
Hangmen is Martin McDonagh's first new work on the London stage in a decade. But something is unsettling about this commentary on mob mentality and nostalgia. It’s grim world where the hero is the second best hangman in the country. And the smell of cigarette smoke and stale beer permeates the air. Well you don’t smell the beer but there is so much smoking on stage it wafts into the audience. It is 1963 when the show opens. A prisoner is desperate to delay his execution by any means possible. But Harry Wade, the resourceful and efficient hangman, keeps things on track. The scene is hilarious right up to the moment when the trapdoor opens and you hear his neck snap. Fast forward two years and Harry is running a pub in Oldham. Capital punishment has been abolished. A cub reporter from the local paper is chasing him for an interview. Still, he has his regulars at the pub. They are like his fans, clinging on to stories from the old days as if capital punishment was a sport....