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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 ...

Bloody previews: Grand Guignol

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The Theatre Royal Plymouth's production of Carl Grose's Grand Guignol is to play in Plymouth and the Southwark Playhouse this October. A Grand Guignol play (which takes the name from the theatre in Montmartre that produced them), are designed to give you thrills and chills. Madness, murder and a healthy dose of gruesomeness prevail throughout. And no doubt it all looks delightful when offset against some white tiles or a red curtain. The piece plays with these conventions and centres on the original Parisian theatre company and its members, combining black comedy and blood spattering and psychological thriller. One to watch out for... Perhaps literally... Photo credit: 2009 Production by Manuel Harlan

Theatre: Revenge of The Grand Guignol

It was a bloody night at the Courtyard Theatre Hoxton where I finally managed to catch Theatre of the Damned's Revenge of the Grand Guignol. Well it is not all blood and gore, but these four stories all have enough thrills, laughs and shocks to have you and the ice within your favourite beverage all aquiver... So much so that when the lady in front of @johnnyfoxlondon and I blew her nose, we both jumped. Last year's show in Camden was great, but this year was even better with stories that are even more compelling and some great performances. There is a melodramatic story about a mad doctor, a pensioner with a buried secret, a long distance relationship gone wrong and a beautiful woman trapped in a munitions factory. All of the stories have in common the ability to turn something ordinary into the unusual. And through some rather clever lighting and sound effects, even when things seem fine, you were on the edge of your seat. The show is part of the London Horror Festi...