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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 ...

Just giving and taking away: Charity Case @draytonarmsSW5


I've often wondered if when someone dies after undertaking some impossible feat for a charity (like running the London Marathon), the charity exclaims, "Yes! We're going to make payroll!" Well, going by Charity Case, Jeff Page's look at the sector, they might do. Nobody dies in this brief look at the charity sector, but it's a hard graft constantly looking for money to survive while providing an essential service outsourced by the government. It's currently playing at Drayton Arms Theatre for this week. 

The focus here is on a fictitious charity called Number 93. Funds are down, and expenses are up. The race is on to find some emergency funding. But is it an expensive overhead with high paying charity executives draining the money, or is it impossible demands by the government to deliver essential services for vulnerable children and adults? 


Ahead of a deadline to confirm funds as a going concern, there are meetings with ministers, rock stars, cold-calling high net worth individuals for donations and interviews with the BBC. There's also a safeguarding issue at the school they run and a pesky intern to deal with who takes up way too much valuable time on what could be the last day of this organisation.

It's a short piece. Perhaps it could do with further expansion, fleshing out the story and sharpening the focus on the founders to explain how they ended up running such a large charitable organisation and their struggle to keep things afloat. You don't get a sense of the work or the character's motivations until the very end. 

The similarities to another charity with a colourful chief executive who had a 90k salary are there. But what's interesting is when the piece starts to explore how government grants and lottery funds keep things afloat. And push charities to the edge. There's a story there. Perhaps one that needs to be a little longer and pull no punches in the process. 

Directed by Manuel Bau, Charity Case is at the Drayton Arms theatre this week only until 20 November. 

⭐️⭐️⭐️



Production photos

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