Don't bother, they're here
Ambassador Theatre Group Productions announce the full cast for the world première of Theresa Rebeck’s new play Mad House. Joining the previously announced David Harbour and Bill Pullman are Hanako Footman, Akiya Henry, Sinead Matthews, Charlie Oscar and Stephen Wight.
Directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, the production opens on 26 June at the Ambassadors Theatre, with previews from 15 June, and runs until 4 September. Continue reading “News: Mad House reveals further casting”
“I’m not used to dead bodies”
Hmm. After the departure of both Clarissa and Thomas at the end of the last season, you’d’ve thought Series 24 of Silent Witness would naturally have something of the air of a reset about it. Instead, there’s a sense of throwing 100 big ideas up in the air and seeing what sticks which makes for an uneven but often entertaining watch.
Personnel-wise, there’s the introduction of Jason Wong’s highly qualified Dr Adam Yeun, and latterly Genesis Lynea’s forensic ecologist Dr Simone Tyler. But there’s also the swift killing-off of Adam in just his second story, having established him as a father of two young children this feels particularly harsh, almost as brutal as the way Nikki and Jack never, mention, him, again. Continue reading “TV Review: Silent Witness Series 24”
“What is it about men with watching eyes Alexander?”
I hadn’t clocked that there was a recording of McQueen: The Story of a Fashion Visionary floating around the ether, a sign perhaps how much I wanted to even think of such a thing. I saw the show twice – once in its original incarnation and then again at its West End transfer – and neither time did James Phillips’ play strike me as being much cop. But clearly there was enough of a push behind it to engineer the transfer and also make a professional recording so I thought why not, in the spirit of Advent let’s give it another go. I really shouldn’t have.
John Caird’s production is style over substance because Phillips provides him with none. And since we’re at the St James, we’re put through the rather wooden performance of Glee alumna Dianna Agron who can’t elevate such poor material in the way that Stephen Wight’s Lee is fitfully more able to. The prancing models schtick wears thin very quickly but in lieu of character development, narrative arcs, plot progression or psychological insight, there’s little else to do. Unless you’re a masochist, I’d avoid giving this a watch (bah humbug!).
“Just look in the mirror, you know what I mean? It’s really uncomfortable and unnerving for everyone”
Has ‘the grey area’ ever seemed so interesting? Probing into the complexities of real life and fully embracing the fact that there are rarely ever any simple answers, Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You has felt like a real breath of bracingly fresh air.
Sexual consent for straights and gays, dealing with trauma on a personal and institutional level, the perils of buying into social media hype, portraying the scale of casual sex and drug use whilst acknowledging its inherent pitfalls, examining how we bury memories from both the recent and distant past and that’s just scratching the surface. Continue reading “TV Review: I May Destroy You”
“How did last night end?”
I mean we knew I May Destroy You would be good but damn, it’s really good. Even on the evidence of episodes 1 & 2 which have just been released by the BBC, Michaela Coel – whose credits here include executive producer, co-director, star, and writer – looks set to thoroughly invigorate our TV screens as she breathlessly tackles, well, pretty much the whole of contemporary society.
At the top of it, I May Destroy You is a drama about consent, though it is immediately clear that Coel’s canvas and the scope of her ambition is much larger than that. It blends just as much comedy as tragedy into its playfully inventive structure. And though the hook is Coel’s Arabella – a 30-something London-based writer – trying to piece together the memories of a night where her drink was spiked and she was sexually assaulted, there’s so much more about the lives of young Black British people filled out along the way. Continue reading “TV Review: I May Destroy You, Episodes 1 & 2”
“You must be famished coming all the way from Wigan”
I’ve been a big fan of Mike Leigh’s film work, since discovering it in the last decade or so, and loved his last film Mr Turner. So news of his return to period drama, albeit through his idiosyncratic process, in Peterloo was a plus for me. The reality though is an epic that proved a real slog for me, even boring by the end. Continue reading “Film Review: Peterloo (2018)”
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”
“Am I going to make it?
‘You already know the answer to that question’”
One of the more surprising transfers of the year has to be McQueen’s journey from the St James to the Theatre Royal Haymarket, its commercial success over-riding a (largely) critical drubbing (here’s my original review). The play has been rejigged to insert an interval, rewritten to extend some scenes and add one whole new one, and recast to bring in fosterIAN award winner Carly Bawden for Glee’s Dianna Agron – this last change proving the most effective in altering the show for the better. My full 3 star review for Cheap Theatre TIckets can be read here.
“I came for a dress”
It has barely been five years since fashion designer Alexander McQueen’s death but 2015 has already seen Savage Beauty, a major retrospective of his work, open at the Victoria and Albert Museum and now McQueen, a biographical fantasia by James Phillips which is taking to the catwalk at the St James Theatre. And in keeping with the edgy energy of the runway shows for which he was renowned, this is no straight play but rather a highly theatrical production that tries to capture some of the imaginative artistry that characterised his work.
Model-like dancers strut their stuff on the stage in striking choreography by Christopher Marney, all made up ; fashionistas in exquisite headwear pose nonchalantly around them, a haunting pair of strange twins skip around the fringes and in the middle is Lee, a London lad done good but in serious danger of being overwhelmed by the empire he’s built around him. Into this mix, from the tree in his garden, comes the troubled Dahlia – maybe a girl, maybe a fairytale creature, either way she’s his companion on a night-time odyssey to get her a dress but which also forces them to confront the demons that haunt them both. Continue reading “Review: McQueen, St James Theatre”
“Do you know what would make me feel less old?”
Tom MacRae’s 2011 sitcom Threesome was the first original scripted comedy commissioned by British satellite channel Comedy Central. Starting off as a flatshare comedy about 3 college friends making the most of carefree living in their twenties, the big shift comes after a huge night out which ends up with them regretting a drunken threesome. And this being tv-land, it is not Amy’s boyfriend Mitch who impregnates her but rather their friend Richie, who just happens to be gay. And really being tv-land, they opt to have the baby altogether, raising it as a threesome.
Working their way through the tropes of pregnancy-based comedy, this offers a rather neat twist on the standard gags (Sylvestra Le Touzel makes a great ante-natal class leader), allowing for the complementary characteristics of the trio to make up just about enough maturity for one adult – at least at the beginning of the series – as they each come into their own, Stephen Wight’s Mitch doing the most obvious maturing as the father-to-be of a son who isn’t genetically his. Continue reading “DVD Review: Threesome (Series 1)”