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Showing posts with the label Donald Sage Mackay

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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 ...
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Washing the red pills down with the kool aid: Angry Alan @sohotheatre

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There's a warning at the start of Angry Alan.  It's to alert you that some of the videos used in the production are available on Youtube. The ever-reliable platform for pop culture references, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories and hate speech. All three come together here to show how effective social media is at radicalising and over-amplifying the darkest corners of the internet. It's currently playing at the Soho Theatre . We meet Roger (Donald Sage Mackay). He was a high powered executive once. But now he's working at part time at a supermarket,  bothered by his ex wife.  and his girlfriend is studying feminism at community college. But one day while wasting time on the internet with click bait he finds a video that points out how awesome men are. Published by a man by the name of Angry Alan.  Soon he's going down the rabbit hole of the Men Going Their Own Way movement (or MGTOW). A movement which argues marriage fails in the cost benefit analysis . N...
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Privileges and power: White Guy On The Bus @Finborough

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It’s always grim in Philadelphia in White Guy On The Bus. It’s a sharp, insightful and unsettling piece to remind us that race, power and inequality loom large over everything that happens in America. Or even here. It’s currently playing at the Finborough Theatre . It opens with what appears at first to be a series of lectures among two white couples about unconscious bias and latent racism. They’re on the lawn of a lovely house in Philadelphia. It seemed as topical as the aftermath of a recent Quentin Letts review . But that’s just a starter to what writer Bruce Graham really wants to tackle. The piece zeroes in on the divide in Philadelphia between low income blacks and the well-off white communities. The two remain separate and unequal. Philadelphia may be edgier than other parts of America, but it’s a story that applies anywhere. London too given the growing incidence of gang violence.   The play focuses around Ray (Donald Sage Mackay - in his London Theatrical debut). He works...
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