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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: Cat On A Hot Tin Roof



This week I finally caught up with Cat On A Hot Tin Roof that has been playing for a while. Directed by Debbie Allen, the all-black cast in Tenessee William's play about Brick, a man who is sexually ambivalent about his wife Maggie, while visiting his family estate in Mississippi. Given that Brick is played by Adrian Lester and the show opens with him taking a shower you could appreciate why she is a little frustrated by this scenario. The audience the night I saw it became a little frisky after this opening scene as well...

It's not my favourite Tenessee William's play and there is way too much exposition and labouring on about Maggie being like a cat... On a tin roof... That was hot... It was hard to buy Lester as an alcoholic either mourning over the loss of his dead friend or on the down-low. More convincing was that he was pissed off rather than pissed with his moody looks and occasional throwing of his crutch...

Still it was an entertaining production, particularly with the sharp second act where Brick and Big Daddy (James Earl Jones) trade barbs and confront the truth. In the end though, particularly with an overlong third act it was hard to work out what the central message is. Maybe it is large tracts of land can conceal anything... It runs until April...

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Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

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