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High anxiety: Collapse - Riverside Studios

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It’s a brave or maybe slightly provocative production to use Hammersmith Bridge on their artwork for a show called Collapse, which is about how everything collapses—poorly maintained bridges, relationships, and jobs. Nothing works. That’s probably too close to home for Hammersmith residents stuck with a magnificently listed and useless bridge on their front door. It gets even weirder when you realise the piece is staged in what looks like a meeting room with a bar. However, keeping things together in the most unlikely of circumstances is at the heart of Allison Moore's witty and engaging four-hander, which is currently having a limited engagement at Riverside Studios . The piece opens with Hannah (Emma Haines) about to get an injection from her husband (Keenan Heinzelmann). They’re struggling for a baby, and he’s struggling to get out of bed. But he managed to give her a shot of hormones before she started worrying about the rest of the day. She’s unsure she will keep her job with ...

Theatre: High Society

It was practically a full house on Thursday evening at High Society playing Upstairs at the Gatehouse. That meant that Johnnyfox and I had to sit in the front row to enjoy this high energy and high furniture moving production. It must be hard to work in these productions to dance and sing your heart out, and then have to move the sofas about. When you're not worrying that they will drop a lampshade on you or kick you in the face, the cast in this show are great. And since the music is Cole Porter it is fairly enjoyable stuff it makes it hard to not enjoy it at some level...

On another level it is just an awful musical with a dull book and vaguely appealing characters. It probably was a bad idea to see a show with Johnnyfox that has lines that mention something about stroking her pussy out the back as well. And it wasn't helped by the decision to transplant the setting to England, perhaps so we didn't have to cringe at English actors attempting American accents. The ladies around us in the audience apart from being sympathetic to our tittering also provided some added amusement with their reactions to what was going on onstage, particularly as the evening wore on as being a theatre pub you can bring your drinks into the theatre. They were looking suspiciously like hard core Gatehouse goers... And they had sat well away from where the furniture kept flying in and out. Sort of worth catching... if you steer clear of the exits. Also avoid Finsbury Park when heading home as the vomit matches the floor there and you can go for a bit of a slide... Although Johnnyfox thought that was a tad more entertaining than the show we saw...

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