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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 ...

In jokes: Jest End @Waterlooeast



It's only on until Sunday 5 December, but Jest End at the Waterloo East theatre is a bit of a guilty pleasure of fine singing and silly musical send ups.

Billed as London's answer to Forbidden Broadway, the show takes barbs at various successful (or not quite successful shows), social media obsessed actors and low pay. You don't need to be a musical theatre aficionado to enjoy the silliness of it all. But it probably helps... Particularly as many of the in-jokes are ripped from local news headlines, gossip and sending up themselves...


Still with Lizzy Connolly, Scott Garnham, Jodie Jacobs and Simon Bailey there is fine singing and some awfully complicated hand gestures (I dare not call it choreography as that was the point of a number in the show).

The show encourages you to live tweet and take pictures, so you get the feeling of what it is like when you are stuck in a West End show and someone next to you is trying to take a picture. This was @johnnyfoxlondon's effort.


Jest End is at Waterloo East until Sunday. See it if you can.

⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎

First impressions with @johnnyfoxlondon follow...

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