Featured Post

Somewhere that's green: Potty the Plant at Wiltons Music Hall

Image
"I'm Potty the Plant," sings a potted plant in this odd little fringe concept of a show. It's hard not to get the tune out of your head, even if the show is brief. It's an earworm for a show that features a worm-like plant as a puppet. And given the show's brevity, running at only an hour, it's hard to get too annoyed by a lack of a coherent story, even if it still seems like the show could use a bit more development (which is underway). It has made its London debut at Wilton's Music Hall. The premise is that Potty, the plant, lives in the hospital office of Dr Acula (geddit?) and dreams of a life with the cleaning lady Miss Lacey (Lucy Appleton). But Dr Acula might be responsible for why all these children are disappearing while trying to romance Miss Lacey for her family's money that she doesn't have. Three nurses are on the case, trying to solve the mystery.  If the show settled on a convincing plot, location and set of characters, it could ...

Love and marriage: Mrs Orwell @ORLTheatre


London in 1949 was a grim time with ration books and strange fish from South Africa. But it's amazing the lengths people will go to keep up morale. Or secure a future income. The business of marriage is explored in Mrs Orwell, currently playing at the Old Red Lion Theatre.

It opens shortly after the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four. George Orwell is dying of tuberculosis in hospital. But in his rage against the dying light he believes he has at three more novels in him. So to keep up his morale he proposes to his friend Sonia Brownell, an assistant magazine editor.

Brownell is clear that she is not in love with him, but she does care for him. And she realises she could be his only hope to keep him going. Her heart is with a French Philospher and her body is often with Lucien Freud. Well, such is the glamorous life living with artists.

A terrific cast has been assembled here. Cressida Bonas as Sonia is cool and conflicted as the great beauty and potential saviour. Peter Hamilton Dyer as Orwell captures his obsessions and contradictions as he struggles to live to write that next novel. And Edmund Digby Jones is a delight as a Lucian Freud, presented here as a provocative sexual predator.

Robert Stocks as his publisher and Rosie Ede as his Nurse also serve to create further context of his life and the time.

It is a great looking production too. Rebecca Brower's fantastically plain looking hospital room sets the right mood.

Tony Cox's script brings together the intrigue and gossip of the time to create a simple story about art and compromises. It also gives a different take to the view Brownell was a gold digger. Considering she died penniless in 1980 she wasn't a very good one if she was.

Directed by Jimmy Walters, this production by Proud Haddock deserves to be around longer. But for now Mrs Orwell is at the Old Red Lion Theatre until 26 August.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️



Photos by Samuel Taylor

Popular posts from this blog

Opera and full frontal nudity: Rigoletto

Fantasies: Afterglow @Swkplay

Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre