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Showing posts with the label Stiles and Drewe

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Love is love: An Instinct - at The Old Red Lion Theatre

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What do you do when a pandemic breaks out and people start dying? In An Instinct, the answer is to escape to a remote cabin in the woods with your ex-boyfriend, leaving your current boyfriend behind. This is the premise behind Hugo Timbrell’s An Instinct, billed as a queer thriller that delivers a few shocks along the way. Yet, the real tension lies in the disturbing dynamics between the three characters—the mind games, gaslighting, and unhealthy dependencies. While the play is cleverly constructed, its underlying themes of domestic violence may not be everyone’s cup of tea. It's currently running at the Old Red Lion Theatre .  The play opens with Max (Conor Dumbrell) and Tom (Joe Walsham) arriving at Tom’s parents’ cabin in a remote part of England. A pandemic broke out, but not the kind where you have to pretend to practice social distancing or hand out government contracts to your mates for dodgy hospital gowns and face masks. This one is highly contagious and very deadly. But s...

Pig In A Poke: Betty Blue Eyes @TheUnionTheatre

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Twelve years after its West End premiere, Betty Blue Eyes seems topical. Back then, the parallels were only about a Royal Wedding, with William and Kate's marriage filling the headlines. Now a musical about conniving members of the establishment , illegal meat trades and shortages of decent food could be set in the present day. Even the Horse meat scandal would follow a few years after its closure. Now in a smaller-scale version at the Union Theatre, it's still funny and silly. And the illegal pigsty is right up close and under your nose in the smaller space of the Union Theatre .  Based on the Alan Bennet movie A Private Function, the story is set just after the Second World War when rationing and shortages meant times were tough. Gilbert and Joyce Chilvers (Sam Kipling and Amelia Atherton) move to a small Yorkshire Town and struggle to make ends meet and gain acceptance. Gilbert has to make do as a chiropodist making house calls to lonely housewives (in 1947, they were all ...