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Eyes, hair, mouth: Darkie Armo Girl at Finborough Theatre

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Darkie Armo Girl, Karine Bedrossian’s electrifying one-woman show, commands attention from the moment it begins. First performed in 2022 and revived last year, it now returns for extra performance and it's an event not to miss. The show takes you through the thrills and horrors of a hectic life. She struts, shimmies, and taunts while revealing some horrific truths. She is such an irresistible storyteller that you find yourself hooked. The story is one of fame, glamour, abuse, self-harm, and suicide. If that subject matter doesn't sound like your cup of tea, you haven't seen it delivered with such high energy and provocation. It's currently at the Finborough Theatre . The show's title refers to a slur a popular girl at school once called her. Her ancestry is Armenian, and her parents were from Cyprus, where they fled the civil war and arrived in the UK with nothing. Shortly after she was born in Roehampton. The birth was an emergency C-section that left the baby and ...

Boots and all: Man to Man @ParkTheatre

Man to Man, which concluded its run at the Park Theatre Sunday allowed for Tricia Kelly to inhabit a character that is filled with desperation for survival.

The hardship comes after a series of calamitous events. The first after losing her husband (and source of income) to cancer, then to survive war time Germany and again in the post-war socialist order of East Germany.

Kelly moves about the stage, drinking, screaming, throwing dirt and all the time evoking the tumultuous period with a wry sense of ingenuity and a little bit of humour. It must be a hell of a part to play and to watch her perform is fascinating and evocative.
The work explores what it is like to survive in harsh circumstances. What is fascinating is how the challenges for each period, while unique, are also pretty grim. And against the historical backdrop emerges a resourceful character and a story of survival.

This piece has been rarely performed in the UK with its last performance in 1988 giving Tilda Swinton her big break. This time around the version also includes a new section that updates the story in the light of the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification.

It ends with her with a boot on one foot and a woman shoe on the other. A fitting visual image for a work about a person with a foot in both camps.

Perhaps it will again be seen soon (or elsewhere). Presented by Danielle Tarento following a sell-out run at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester. Directed by Tilly Branson.

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