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Showing posts with the label Alexandra Mardell

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Bear with me: Sun Bear @ParkTheatre

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If The Light House is an uplifting tale of survival, Sarah Richardson’s Sun Bear gives a contrasting take on this. Sarah plays Katy. We’re introduced to Katy as she runs through a list of pet office peeves with her endlessly perky coworkers, particularly about coworkers stealing her pens. It’s a hilarious opening monologue that would have you wishing you had her as a coworker to help relieve you from the boredom of petty office politics.  But something is not quite right in the perfect petty office, where people work together well. And that is her. And despite her protesting that she is fine, the pet peeves and the outbursts are becoming more frequent. As the piece progresses, maybe the problem lies in a past relationship, where Katy had to be home by a particular hour, not stay out late with office colleagues and not be drunk enough not to answer his calls. Perhaps the perky office colleagues are trying to help, and perhaps Katy is trying to reach out for help. It has simple staging

Love and Marriage: Mad As Hell @JSTheatre

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The life of Peter Finch is forever intertwined with his final film role in Network. Being ”mad as hell” is the topic of this play, Mad as Hell currently showing at the Jermyn Street Theatre .  In Network, Finch plays Howard Beale. He transforms from a mild mannered news anchor at a struggling television network to a modern day prophet. Tired of reporting the bullshit of the world he urgess his viewers to get “mad as hell”. The story has enough relevance today to warrant a exciting reimagining at the National Theatre. Here writers Adrian Hope and Cassie McFarlane, imagine the character Finch plays has many parallels with his own life. A hard living angry man tired of the bullshit that goes with being a celebrity. He finds solace with a woman who helps him escape and live a normal life. It’s also a sensitive tale about a mixed race marriage in a time of tremendous change.  McFarlane took inspiration from her mother’s retelling of the story. This includes the Jamaican reaction to Finch’s