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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 ...

Games: The Show Must Go On


 Thursday evening I found myself at the launch event for The Show Must Go On, which is a rather nifty little game that brings together opera, cheap laughs and the iOS platform. Given all three are favourites of mine I downloaded it.

It is very cute and quite amusing little game, recreating Covent Garden and backstage at the Royal Opera when everything goes wrong. The game puts you in the shoes of a stage manager and includes a series of mini games. Within these you have to undertake a variety of back stage tasks in order for the show to go on. I particularly liked running over the rooftops of Covent Garden chasing sheet music and dodging pigeons. Depending on how well you do, depends on how good the show is. So far I have only created rubbish shows... The game might be trying to tell me something but I will ignore that for now and keep practicing...

An interesting collaboration between the Royal Opera, including its sound technicians singers from the Jette Parker Young Artist programme and musicians of the Orchestra, EMI and Hide and Seek. Very funky cool stuff... Go play...

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