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

Flapping about: Incognito

A series of stories about the brain are the focus of Nick Payne's Incognito, currently playing at the Bush Theatre.

While the stories are interwoven and mildly interesting, what keeps the piece together are the strong  performances by the leads who manage to change roles mid-sentence without skipping a beat.

The piece is about how the role the brain and memory plays in who we are.

But the three stories are a mix of facts, mild soap opera and pseudo intellectual sensationalism (potentially inspired by a lowbrow documentary about the "theft" of Einstein's brain).


The first story revolves around Thomas Stoltz Harvey who performs the autopsy on the recently deceased Albert Einstein. He allegedly steals his brain and then spends the rest of his life failing to prove anything meaningful from it analysis. The second is around Henry who undergoes pioneering brain surgery. The surgery changes Henry’s life and stops his seizures, but means that he only ever lives in the present day. The final piece is set in present day London where Martha is a clinical neuropsychologist (and a tad neurotic). When her marriage breaks down she starts to see another woman.

It is a bit of a do it yourself play where you are left to construct it in your own mind if you are to make any sense of it. It is almost as if the play is making a joke of itself by pointing out that it, like everything else, is merely something constructed by your mind.

Intellectually amusing perhaps, but whether it makes for great theatre, I am not so sure. The piece switches between the three stories so briskly at times that the only indication you get is a change in lighting and some loud pigeon flapping sound effects.

But the wonderful production design made up of steel tubes, and the intense and interchangeable performances from the cast of four keep things of interest. If only they had something worthwhile to say.

***

Incognito runs at the Bush Theatre through to 21 June. Evening performances have sold out but there are tickets available for matinees.

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...