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Review: King Hedley II, Theatre Royal Stratford East

August Wilson’s King Hedley II is something of a flawed play but it receives a strong production from Nadia Fall here at Theatre Royal Stratford East

“As long as I draw a breath in my body I’m gonna do the right thing for me”

August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle – a series of 10 plays exploring the African American experience in each decade of the 20th century – has some superb plays within it, not least the incendiary Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Fences. As the ninth instalment in the sequence, King Hedley II doesn’t quite live up to those forebears  but Nadia Fall gives it an impressive production here.

Casting Director Lisa Makin was clearly on fire for this project as she gathered established names (Lenny Henry, Martina Laird) and younger talents (Cherelle Skeete – so good in Fun Home, Aaron Pierre) to give a ferocious account of this challenging play. Challenging not only in length at well over 3 hours but also thematically, as it sprawls over too many subjects to ever hope of doing them all justice. Continue reading “Review: King Hedley II, Theatre Royal Stratford East”

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Casting news aplenty!

I round up some of the recent casting news, including Queen Margaret at the Royal Exchange, Wasted at the Southwark Playhouse, Measure for Measure at the Donmar and The Woods at the Royal Court.

Shakespeare wrote more lines for Queen Margaret than he did for King Lear yet we know very little of her. Jeanie O’Hare re-acquaints us with one of Shakespeare’s major but rarely performed characters in her new play Queen Margaret. In a production that draws on original language from Shakespeare, director Elizabeth Freestone and Jade Anouka as Margaret, retell an iconic moment in British History through the eyes of the extraordinary Margaret of Anjou. This captivating exploration of The Wars of the Roses seen through the eyes of this astonishing, dangerous and thrilling woman opens the Royal Exchange’s Autumn Winter 2018/19 Season.

Anouka is joined by Islam Bouakkaz (Prince Edward/Rutland), Lorraine Bruce (York), Samuel Edward-Cook (Suffolk/Clifford), Dexter Flanders (Edward IV), Helena Lymbery (Hume), Lucy Mangan (Joan of Arc), Roger Morlidge (Gloucester), Kwami Odoom (Somerset/Richard), Bridgitta Roy (Warwick) and Max Runham (Henry VI). Continue reading “Casting news aplenty!”

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Review: A Streetcar Named Desire, NST City Southampton

Chelsea Walker helms a blistering update of A Streetcar Named Desire in a co-production between Nuffield Southampton Theatres, Theatr Clwyd and English Touring Theatre 

“You can’t beat on a woman and then call her back”

If Blanche DuBois were around today, then of course her go-to tunes would be the likes of Madonna and Blondie, and a glitterball would take the place of her colourful paper lantern. And as the strains of ‘Material Girl’ gets most everyone up and dancing at the end of a fateful poker night, Chelsea Walker’s contemporary take on this Tennessee Williams classic finds its happy place.

Of course, it’s A Streetcar Named Desire so that happy place lasts for a moment of seconds before Patrick Knowles’ brutish Stanley reasserts himself. And what Walker’s clever updating does is to not let itself get bogged down in minor textual incongruities, but to firmly locate its troubling sexual dynamics in the gender politics of right now.  Continue reading “Review: A Streetcar Named Desire, NST City Southampton”