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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 ...

Talking pictures: Reputation @TheOtherPalace

In the dog eat dog world of new musicals, a brand new one has arrived at the studio space of The Other Palace. It’s about the dog eat dog world of writers and plagiarism during the switch from silent pictures to talkies. A story about a small-time hoodlum who passes off scripts as his sounds like an excellent premise for a show. And some good parts make up the show. But probably not enough to take this show further in its current form.

The good parts include the cast, which often high kicks and dances across the small stage. There’s Maddy Banks who plays Michelle. A young girl at a finishing school in France who spends her time in between learning how to be a proper lady writing her first screenplay. And Jeremy Secomb playing Freddy Larceny. A small-time crook, who passes off scripts as his own to Hollywood studios. And there’s Ed Wade as Archie the lawyer trying to trap Freddy in between making eyes for Michelle. Each of them have their moments throughout the piece.


Alas, Freddy Larceny is no Max Bialystock from The Producers. It would have been much more fun if he owed his success to little old ladies and stories of dubious quality. Secomb seems wasted in this role, spending a lot of time with his back to the audience sitting in a chair.

Michelle hasn’t written Springtime For Hitler either but instead some “Oscar-worthy” script, so that’s not much fun either. The piece seems to miss the potential that during the switch between silent movies and talking pictures, the quality of the work dived. Afterall people found it more novel to hear people talking crap over the sophisticated dialogue-free stories that had been created up to that point.

The music is tuneful and catchy, but the songs don’t move the story forward. And there’s too much interest in the love story over the other elements of the piece. But this piece seems to be a labour of love has had a long gestation period by writer/composer Alick Glass. Perhaps there’s time to shape it further into something more substantial.

With direction, musical direction and arrangements by Warren Wills, Reputation the Musical concludes its run at The Other Palace on 14 November.

⭐️⭐️

Photos by Donato

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