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A night at the opera: That Bastard Puccini! (Park Theatre)

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It’s hard to imagine that it’s only been 130 years since Puccini first premiered La Boheme. Nowadays, it’s a revered classic, and guaranteed to be on any opera company's annual programme if it needs to stay afloat. It’s a crowd pleaser with its melodrama of poor, impoverished artists loving, starving and dying in Paris. But Puccini’s La Boheme had a less auspicious beginning, with one of his contemporaries accusing him of stealing his idea and being poorly received on its first outing. And that’s at the heart of That Bastard Puccini! Currently playing at Park Theatre , writer James Inverne uses the friendship and rivalry between the two composers, Puccini and Ruggero Leoncavallo, to weave a comic tale of creative frustration with an awful lot of facts and tidbits about the opera scene at the time. It’s part comedy, part music appreciation.  It opens with Leoncavallo (Alasdair Buchan) at home with his wife Berthe (Lisa-Anne Wood), cursing about Puccini’s latest work, which is drawn ...

Petty theft and other austerity measures: Spine @SohoTheatre

Spine, which is playing at the Soho Theatre until 2 November is a fascinating piece that looks into  the importance of knowledge in the age of apathy.

Written by Clara Brennan, it takes you on an unexpected journey. What starts out as a story of (potentially predictable) rebellious and troubled teenager builds to make some wry observations about generational divides, the loss of political leadership in modern Britain and the apathy of people, particularly in London, over things that were once valued. 
Funny and bittersweet, it is a powerhouse performance by Rosie Wyatt. She brings together two very different characters - the troubled and petty criminal teenager, and the elderly widow - in an emotional and at times explosive performance.

Over the piece, the characters bond over stories of petty theft and a large collection of books that the old woman has amassed in her house in Willesden.

Wyatt's intense performance won her a Stage Award for Acting Excellence for her performance of the piece in Edinburgh and it is easy to see why.

Even when she broke away from the script to tell someone in the audience to "get off (their) fucking phone, love", you half expected that if that person didn't obey she was going to beat the living daylights out of the recalcitrant. In character. 

From production company, Foolscap was set up in 2014 by Francesca Moody, Bethany Pitts and Clara Brennan to craft politically conscious new work with storytelling at its heart.

Foolscap are about galvanising audiences, through a combination of grit, wit and great theatre. You will be rushing out to your local library (if it isn't already closed and boarded up) to renew your library membership after seeing it.

Don't miss it. And put your phone on silent and out of sight.

****

Photo credits: Edinburgh production by Richard Davenport

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