Dirty stop out: Dirty Great Love Story @ArtsTheatreLDN


Dirty Great Love Story at the Arts Theatre is casual sex described through poetry. After a one night stand two hopeless romantics then spend the next few years trying to avoid each other. While speaking mostly in rhyming verse.

The only problem with this premise is that if the rhyming isn't particular clever you have a bit of a problem what the point of it all is. Even Pam Ayres is funny. Here it is mostly perplexing and the verse gets in the way of everything else.


The drama and comedy is derived from their different perspectives on their first encounter. From her point of view, he is a mistake who keeps popping up at parties and generally being an irritant. For him, she is perfect.

Things pick up towards the end as the comedy reaches its inevitable conclusion but by this point you might have given up.

As the unlikely couple Felix Scott and Ayesha Antoine keep the momentum and manage to convey meaning out of the flimsiest of dialogue and rhyme.

This was a hit at Edinburgh in 2012, but today it feels dated. Hen nights and drinking in bars all night at clubs seems curious in the era of Tinder.

Perhaps it needs the smaller space (and a shorter running time) to make it feel more naturalistic. Or the theatre isn't the place for two-handed romantic comedies.

Written by Richard Marsh and Katie Bonna and directed by Pia Furtado, Dirty Great Love Story is at the Arts Theatre until 18 March.



⭐︎⭐︎

Photo credit: Richard Davenport for The Other Richard








Popular posts from this blog

Opera and full frontal nudity: Rigoletto

Image
David McVicar's oddly modern production of Rigoletto is back at the Royal Opera House . This modern and minimalist dark production has evolved over the years. It is better lit now but there is still an orgy and full frontal nudity within the first thirty minutes. This enables anyone not in the stalls an excellent view of a flaccid penis and a nicely shaved bush. But as time goes it seems more and more superfluous to the main focus of this tragedy of a court jester who seeks revenge. Here is hoping that the production continues to evolve... Conductor John Eliot Gardiner keeps the music well paced. Dimitri Platanias in the title role sounded great and received a rapturous applause for his interpretation of the role. You get a sense more of the doting father rather than the court jester or cursed man here. Vittorio Grigolo plays the Duke and sounds too lovely to be the cad the role calls for, but it is hard not to like when he is on stage anyway. And it is easier to understan
Read more...

The sweet smell of progress: The Sugar House @finborough

Image
Watching The Sugar House at the Finborough Theatre reminded me of the comment made by journalist  Evan Whitton that Sydney was the most corrupt city in the world. Except, of course, after Newark, New Jersey and Brisbane Queensland. But corrupt cops and underworld figures of the Sydney scene are only part of this epic family story that spans three generations of a working-class Sydney family. It's currently playing at the Finborough  Theatre. The story opens with Narelle (Jessica Zerlina Leafe) looking over a new conversion property on the former site of a sugar refinery in Sydney. It was near where she grew up. She's a lawyer now and could afford to buy one of these bland modern conversions. But all she can see are memories of the place where she grew up with her mother and grandparents.  What unfolds next focuses on the harsher side of the lucky country. Where jobs were precarious and poverty, poor health and crime were not too far away. The police were a force to be feared.
Read more...

Man not about town: Foxes @theatre503

Image
Upbringing, identity and family are at the heart of  Foxes , by Dexter Flanders, currently at Theatre 503. It’s a powerful and often funny piece, sensitively portrayed by the ensemble cast with a lively soundtrack. Daniel (Michael Fatogun) is a young black man trying to keep up with a life that is quickly racing away from him. He’s got study to do, he’s got his girlfriend, Meera (July Namir), pregnant, and he has a best friend, Leon (Anyebe Godwin), who wants to play more than just black ops with him. The foxes in Dexter Flander’s play aren’t the ones running about tearing apart rubbish bags on the street. They’re the men hiding in the shadows, fearing rejection and fearing ridicule. There’s too much at stake for them to be who they are, and so they hide behind alpha male stereotypes, family and religion to pretend to be something they are not.  I What makes this work so well is how it quickly immerses you into the world of the lives of this black B ritish family, creating a detailed p
Read more...