Featured Post

Bear with me: Sun Bear @ParkTheatre

Image
If The Light House is an uplifting tale of survival, Sarah Richardson’s Sun Bear gives a contrasting take on this. Sarah plays Katy. We’re introduced to Katy as she runs through a list of pet office peeves with her endlessly perky coworkers, particularly about coworkers stealing her pens. It’s a hilarious opening monologue that would have you wishing you had her as a coworker to help relieve you from the boredom of petty office politics.  But something is not quite right in the perfect petty office, where people work together well. And that is her. And despite her protesting that she is fine, the pet peeves and the outbursts are becoming more frequent. As the piece progresses, maybe the problem lies in a past relationship, where Katy had to be home by a particular hour, not stay out late with office colleagues and not be drunk enough not to answer his calls. Perhaps the perky office colleagues are trying to help, and perhaps Katy is trying to reach out for help. It has simple staging

Sketches and wit: Overruled

 The Wilmington Theatre Company's debut production of three short comic plays by George Bernard Shaw makes for a frightfully witty and enjoyable evening at the Old Red Lion Theatre. The acting and production values are quite high as infidelity, polygamy and morality are all explored. Often with hilarious results.

In the first piece, How He Lied To Her Husband, a wife loses poems written for her by her young admirer. They fall into her husband's hands and his response is not quite what the wife or lover expect. It is a three hander that plays well in the confines of the theatre space and with a focussed cast everyone was hooked. Well almost everyone as there was a couple in one corner that may have got carried away with Shaw's attempts to hold a mirror up to nature and were passionately making out.

The second piece, Overruled, covers two adulterous couples who are caught in the act on vacation. The source of the comedy here is the honesty of each of the couple's explaining what they are doing and why. Shaw felt that this was a clinical examination of polygamy and an understanding of why couples do what nobody wants to admit in polite society. But the frankness and sharp dialogue is what gives the show much of its humour, and the actors deftly handle the banter.

The final piece, Village wooing, is a sweet comic tale of a shop assistant who wins holiday cruise and meets a travel writer. The writer however is so interested in his own writing that he doesn't see what is happening around him at the moment. Musing afterwards with @johnnyfoxlondon (below), Shaw's observations seem as relevant today as they were in 1933. People still travel and live life through a camera lens and social media updates rather than the real world. Lucy Hough as the shop assistant with a plan and Jim Creighton as the bad tempered travel writer create a believable world that creates class divisions and distinctions between metropolitan and village life as a means to distract themselves from more basic instincts.

Together the three pieces make for an enjoyable evening of what feels at times to be the forerunner for today's sketch comedies. Polina Kalinina's direction keeps things moving along quickly and Emma Bailey's design captures the Edwardian splendour quite nicely.It is an impressive debut for the Wilmington Theatre Company, which was set up last year by Lucy Hough and Leo Wyndham.

Overruled continues at the Old Red Lion Theatre until 19 January. Tickets available from their website and the running time is just over two hours including interval. The theatre gets quite warm so dress for that and get a large cold glass of something from the pub downstairs to stay cool. And try not not to let the immorality get to you... Any attempts to make out with your companion can be seen by the audience. But it might be a show to take your best friend's wife to anyway...

listen to George Boonard Shaw: Overruled at the Old Red Lion; on Audioboo



Popular posts from this blog

Opera and full frontal nudity: Rigoletto

Image
David McVicar's oddly modern production of Rigoletto is back at the Royal Opera House . This modern and minimalist dark production has evolved over the years. It is better lit now but there is still an orgy and full frontal nudity within the first thirty minutes. This enables anyone not in the stalls an excellent view of a flaccid penis and a nicely shaved bush. But as time goes it seems more and more superfluous to the main focus of this tragedy of a court jester who seeks revenge. Here is hoping that the production continues to evolve... Conductor John Eliot Gardiner keeps the music well paced. Dimitri Platanias in the title role sounded great and received a rapturous applause for his interpretation of the role. You get a sense more of the doting father rather than the court jester or cursed man here. Vittorio Grigolo plays the Duke and sounds too lovely to be the cad the role calls for, but it is hard not to like when he is on stage anyway. And it is easier to understan
Read more...

Fantasies: Afterglow @Swkplay

Image
Nowadays no self-respecting gay play can be staged without full frontal nudity of some kind. It feels like the default response for the modern gay play now that gay rights are no longer an issue .   Afterglow, currently playing at Southwark Playhouse , serves it up in spades. From the beginning, three men are in a bed, naked. There’s what appears to be a very brief exhalation of ecstasy, before the obligatory rush to the shower. But the gratuitous nudity and excellent performances can’t conceal this is a pretty conventional and predictable story about a fantasy couple.  The three men in the simultaneous orgasm at the start of the piece are Josh, Alex and Darius. Josh and Alex seem to live in a New York world where they can afford a rooftop apartment in Manhattan while holding jobs as a theatre director and a grad student in chemistry. As writer S. Asher Gelman based it on his own experiences, perhaps gay plays with full frontal nudity are the way to achieve financial security
Read more...

Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

Image
Damn Yankees at the Landor Theatre is one hell of a fun, sexy show. A great cast of dancers and singers give this show about a man who sells his soul to get on his beloved baseball team (and give them a chance of winning) new legs and balls. It also helps to up the ante with the sexiness with some healthy doses of cleavage and legs (and that's just the men). The musical is a retelling of the Faust story set in the 1950s when the New York Yankees dominated the game.
Read more...