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The finalists of The Offies 2022

The Offies recognise and celebrate the excellence, innovation and ingenuity of independent, fringe and alternative theatres across London, helping to raise their profiles and rewarding the new talent that they nurture, which is essential for the future of the theatre industry.  

Though theatre has been slowly recovering from the Covid pandemic in 2021, there have been enough high-quality Offies nominations post lockdown, to enable the judging panel to select 86 finalists across nearly 30 Offies categories.  The winners will be announced at the Offies awards ceremony, to be held online this year on 20 February 2022. Continue reading “The finalists of The Offies 2022”

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TV Review: Silent Witness Series 12

Series 12 of Silent Witness, aka the one they are allowed to start getting jiggy with it, oh and they jet off to Zambia for a bit 

“You lot are expert arse coverers”

Expanded to six full-length stories and moving one of them to Southern Africa, Series 12 of Silent Witness ought to be something of a golden age for the show. And even if it doesn’t quite hit that highmark for me as the writers start to head increasingly to the personal lives of the team, it is still immensely watchable.

The series starts off well with a horny paramedic getting his arse out for Nikki and Leo’s sanctimony being punctured (briefly) by being done for drink driving. And as we move through London gangs and elite police units, vengeful Russian oligarchs and insular Hasidic Jews, a wide range of stories certainly challenges the team.    Continue reading “TV Review: Silent Witness Series 12”

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TV Review: The Other Boleyn Girl (2003)

A BBC adaptation of The Other Boleyn Girl is unforgivably shonky, even with Natascha McElhone and Jodhi May leading the cast 

“I believe beauty in a woman comes in many different forms”

Five years before Hollywood got their hands on The Other Boleyn Girl, writer and director Philippa Lowthorpe adapted a version of the Philippa Gregory’s novel for the BBC but I’d have to say it is best forgotten. Lowthorpe’s approach is admirable because or maybe in spite of its low budget, using handheld camera at times and confessional videos at others, it is clearly attempting to do something different for a period drama.

But it fudges it quite badly. Despite the atmospheric surroundings of Berkeley Castle where it was shot, the filming tricks are distracting rather than illuminating and sadly feel amateurish, leaving the whole production with an air of student shonkiness, particularly as it completely fails to conjure any sense of the royal court. Some shifts and adaptations of the story as written also feel a bit peculiar, the straightening of George and the excision of much political and religious context (which was already sparse in the book). Best avoided.

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TV Review: The Salisbury Poisonings

Deeply sensitive writing and direction mean that The Salisbury Poisonings proves a powerfully effective treatment of the story

“God knows what’s happened here”

Whodathunkit, a drama about a public health crisis in the middle of an actual public health crisis proving to be just the thing we needed. Anyone thinking about writing a Covid 19 drama would do well to examine writers Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn and director Saul Dibb’s deeply sensitive approach here in The Salisbury Poisonings.

What works particularly well is that they’ve determinedly gone for a fact-based telling of the story, which steadfastly refuses to indulge in overly dramatic or cinematic touches/ And their focus is on the human aspect of how this whole affair affected actual people rather than extrapolating to the whole of society or going dwon the wormhole of a spy thriller. Continue reading “TV Review: The Salisbury Poisonings”

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June theatre round-up

I might have taken a break from reviewing in June, but I didn’t stop going to the theatre – I had too many things already booked in. Here’s some brief thoughts on what I saw.

Betrayal, Harold Pinter
Shit-Faced Shakespeare – Hamlet, Barbican
The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Cheek By Jowl at the Barbican
Somnium, Sadler’s Wells
Les Damnés, Comédie-Française at the Barbican
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Theatre Royal Bath
Blithe Spirit, Theatre Royal Bath
The Hunt, Almeida
Present Laughter, Old Vic
Europe, Donmar Warehouse
The Deep Blue Sea, Minerva
Plenty, Chichester Festival Theatre
Pictures of Dorian Gray, Jermyn Street
The Light in the Piazza, Royal Festival Hall
J’Ouvert, Theatre503
Hair of the Dog, Tristan Bates Continue reading “June theatre round-up”

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TV Review: Chernobyl

In its exploration of the human stories around the nuclear accident, Craig Mazin’s mini-series Chernobyl is simply superb

“You are dealing with something that has never happened on the planet before”

Yeesh! TV dramas surely don’t have the right to be as good as Chernobyl, particularly when they’re ostensibly about such grimly horrific a topic as this,  But as creator, writer, and executive producer Craig Mazin has adroitly identified, the 1986 nuclear disaster – and the human impact it had on those closest to it – is relatively under-explored, in mainstream Western culture at least. 

Chernobyl seeks to explain what happened on that fateful day, and its terrible aftermath, on two distinct levels. Focusing in on the microlevel, we follow stories such as those of the power station workers, the first responders, the people who watched the fire burn up close. But it also takes a strategic look at the Soviet system at large, tracing the institutional problems that allowed it to happen.

Continue reading “TV Review: Chernobyl”

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Review: Pinter Six, Harold Pinter Theatre

A superbly cast double-bill of Party Time and Celebration makes up a sharp Pinter Six at the Harold Pinter Theatre

“My driver had to stop at a….what do you call it…roadblock.”

One of the benefits in producing such a wide-ranging festival as Pinter at the Pinter has been the flexibility in its programming, allowing for thematic evenings to emerge as opposed to a straight chronological trip through the canon. So here, Jamie Lloyd is able to bring together two plays set at gatherings, both conveniently cast for nine people.

The first social occasion is the most effective, 1991’s Party Time begins with the sepulchral chords of Handel’s Sarabande in D Minor processed through an electronic filter and its partygoers sat in a line facing the audience. They’re members of a private club and we slowly learn that as they sip champagne, the world outside has gone to shit. Continue reading “Review: Pinter Six, Harold Pinter Theatre”

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The Jamie Lloyd Company announces cast for charity gala to celebrate Harold Pinter’s birthday

– Tom Hiddleston, Kristin Scott Thomas, Kit Harington, Simon Russell Beale, Indira Varma, Zawe Ashton and many more announced

–   Happy Birthday, Harold will take place on what would have been the Nobel Prize winning playwright’s 88th birthday on October 10th

–   Charity event will raise money for Amnesty International and Chance to Shine

–   Tickets are on sale now

Continue reading “The Jamie Lloyd Company announces cast for charity gala to celebrate Harold Pinter’s birthday”

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Pinter at the Pinter

The Jamie Lloyd Company, Ambassador Theatre Group, Benjamin Lowy Productions, Gavin Kalin Productions and Glass Half Full Productions present an extraordinary season of Harold Pinter’s one-act plays on the tenth anniversary of the Nobel Prize winner’s death, performed in the theatre that bears his name.

Pinter at the Pinter is a unique event featuring all twenty short plays written by the greatest British playwright of the 20thCentury. They have never been performed together in a season of this kind. Continue reading “Pinter at the Pinter”