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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Keeping up with Theatre

  
 
wembley can change in 28 days
07:49 / 29.07.04
Well, it's summer, and much of the mainstream theatre scene is on holiday in Europe at least. I was poking around the edfringe site and realized I hadn't a clue what would be worth a go. I'm also now in a financial situation where I can travel for theatre, and I find it's really hard to keep up with what's going on where. So: what's upcoming in New York? London? Berlin? Tokyo? What's touring? What festival looks exciting?

What I'm currently hyped about:
* Kevin Spacey in "The Philadelphia Story" in London, spring 2005. Tickets onsale to the general public October 30, 2004.
* At the Helsinki Festival this year: Peter Stein's production of The Seagull (with a cast from Riga), and "Circle Invisible" by Jean-Baptiste Thieree and Victoria Chaplin (the youngest daughter of that other Chaplin)
 
 
Whisky Priestess
07:54 / 29.07.04
Good Lord, it's like this thread was created for us. Please allow me to plug myself and Orr, who will be appearing as Beauty and the Bitch at venue 202 (C o2) at the Edinburgh Fringe from 4-30 August at 11pm.

We are cabaret and we sing funny songs.

Our website is here:

Beauty and the Bitch!
 
 
Alex's Grandma
19:55 / 29.10.06
My, this is an old one. However, not really worth starting a new thread just for plugging purposes. Myself and Whisky P have written two short plays which will be performed on Thursday November 9th at the RADA Foyer in London - Gathering thread here.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
06:18 / 30.10.06
I can thoroughly, thoroughly recommend the National Theatre's production of Ben Jonson's The Alchemist. It's done in modern dress and the acting is superb from everyone. My favourite part is the use of accents, so when Subtle is playing 'the alchemist' he's a west coast Tim Leary hippy, when he's teaching Surly to argue he's a yardie, Iain Richardson as Sir Epicure Mammon is having a blast with long speeches on the 'good works' he intends to do.

It's only on until the 21st of November (Simon Russell Beale is going to play King Arthur in Spamalot in the West End next Spring), even if you don't know anything about Jonson it's slapstick enough that you'll still enjoy it. Go! Go now!
 
 
Whisky Priestess
15:49 / 30.10.06
I have a slight allergy to Simon Russell Beale and his Amazing Mannered Performances, so I've avoided it so far - but I've never seen the play so if I can get standbys or standing tickets I'll try to stumble along. Thanks for the tip ...
 
 
Grendix
16:25 / 30.10.06
There's a fab production of REEFER MADNESS at Dad's Garage Theatre in Atlanta. It runs 'til November 4th Th-Sat at 8 pm.
There's a Pay What You Can performance tonight (the 30th) at 8 pm as well.

go to the website at w w w dadsgarage dot com for info.

it's a nicely subversive piece and it even includes a book burning with George Washington, Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty the end!
How cool is that?

Grendix
 
 
Whisky Priestess
16:46 / 30.10.06
Also, Bent at the Trafalgar Studios is not-so-great. Alan Cumming's always watchable but the director seems to have had the cast on laughing gas for the death camp scenes, which is an odd choice. The play itself stands up on the whole, but seems a little ... dated? And the ending's particularly quixotic. I'd forgotten about that.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
20:29 / 22.11.06
Saw Spamalot. It's by no means bad but I think it shows why Eric Idle has done very little of any consequence but move to America with his guitar since the last Monty Python film.

It's a mix of sketches from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (and it's quite clever how they've staged some of the scenes such as the attack on the French castle or the knight who gets his limbs cut off) rejigged (the two main characters from the 'I'm not quite dead' scene turn out to be knights, Dennis the Communist Peasant turns out to Kevin Galahad) but not everything works, the new stuff in the second half of the second half, in order to allow the show to have a more definite end than the film doesn't really work.

Oh, and it has the pepperpots, the gorgeous women who don't speak and the outrageous gays. It wouldn't be Monty Python if it didn't would it? There's also the question of a main plot point that you can't stage a succesful play if you don't have the involvement of Jews. Now, I know next to nothing about the theatre scene in the UK but if all productions are bankrolled by Jews in the sameway as Broadway shows often are then I don't think it's widely known and so the joke doesn't really have the same effect over here that it apparently received on Broadway. It's not shocking, it's not intended to be offensive, but it seems a bit like asserting the sky is green. It just isn't, you know?

I'd be interested to know if any non-Python fans have seen the play and what they thought of it.
 
 
Mourne Kransky
22:11 / 24.11.06
Definite Python fan here, so can only concur with your fine review. It's mediocre and I found the "Jews" stuff very uncomfortable, as did half the audience. The other half pissed themselves laughing. I did laugh ninety per cent of the time, however, so can't complain. Haven't been in that theatre before either and it's much smaller than I expected, though prettier.

Saw Amy Lamé's Mama Cass Family Singers one woman show at the Soho Theatre. It was weirdly compelling, although could have been cranked up a notch by a better writer. She performs it well, and dispenses free sandwiches, but it needed to dig deeper for buttons to push.

Also saw Wicked at the Apollo Victoria. Lots of good things about it - costumes are great, set's wonderful, Adam Garcia is cute and eurythmic, but the music is banal. Few memorable melodies. Bit of a handicap for a musical, that. They handle the whole intersection with Dorothy's arrival in Oz imaginatively in the last act.

Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll at the New Ambassadors was good. Not great, but Rufus Sewell is very good in it and Sinead Cusack is good too, playing a mother and also her grown up daughter. Seemed there were lots of Czechs in the audience, enjoying this retelling of a generation of their history. I liked the conceit of Syd Barrett as the Great God Pan but other musical cues didn't work so well.

The revival of Evita at the Adelphi on The Strand is fun. Elena Roger is outstanding in the title role and the tunes still pack a punch despite my basic aversion to Lloyd Webber. The guy (Philip Quast) who plays Peron, very well too, is the guy who played the leukaemic priest in Ultraviolet.

But the best things I've seen of late have been:

1 - Rufus Norris'Cabaret at the Lyric, Shaftesbury Avenue, which does a brilliant job of reinventing the piece for a whole different Sally Bowles (Anna Maxwell Martin) to inhabit, an inadequate and shallow Sally who doesn't try to mimic Liza. And the nude gymnasts summon up the ghost of Leni Riefenstahl, to shiver your spine. Particularly at the close of play.

And 2 - Michael Sheen and Frank Langella did a marvellous job in Frost/Nixon at the Donmar Warehouse. That has now transferred to the Gielgud, till next Spring. I think I enjoyed it more than Ganesh because I remember it all very vividly, the excitement of seeing the mighty brought low. G was still enthralled though, but that might have been, partly, seeing Mark Gatiss in the bar. Sheen is great and so is Langella. They could both have gone for verisimilitude and impersonation but they do much more. I kept catching myself feeling sympathy for Nixon and then had to sharply draw myself up short by remembering the sights of Cambodia after his illegal secret war there.

Those last two are definitely worth the effort but all of the above had charm.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
14:12 / 08.12.06
I had the dubious pleasure of seeing Caryl Churchill's Drunk Enough to say I Love You at the Royal Court on Saturday night, and I can't really register any surprise that the front row remained unfilled and the theatre itself was not sold out.

Although stuffed with a respectable number of respectable punters of the usual Court type (middle-aged, middle-class, well-off white people) the performance failed to impress, or indeed make much of an impression. It's all part of the Court at 50 thing, which celebrates the writers who got their breaks there and were championed by the Court back in the day. So new works have been commissioned from old playwrights, essentially, of whom Churchill is one.

I have never seen Churchill's work before, but I've read a few of her plays (Top Girls, Vinegar Tom, another one I can't remember) and enjoyed them. Actually, maybe I have seen Top Girls? Anyway. She's got a distinctive way of making characters trail off and interrupt each other, informally nicknamed the "Churchill slash" like this / and in her excessive use of this verbal device she really manages to descend into lazy self-parody.

I would complain it's too short, except that 45 minutes of this clunking allegory is really all I could have taken (the food was terrible - and such small portions!)

Basically, there's a young American called Sam (GEDDIT) and his infatuated English lover, Jack (DO YOU SEE???) and they sit on a floating sofa discussing - brokenly - American foreign policy for three-quarters of an hour.

They are not even characters (and who knows if they are meant to be?) they are merely mouthpieces, and as one who is regularly bored by war on the news, regurgitation of weaponry statistics is the last thing I want to hear, really, when I go to the theatre, especially stripped of any dramatic or emotional context.

The best thing about this idle, unfulfilling, poorly-written, self-indulgent, portentous, pretentious and ultimately pointless nonsense is the set, which is lovely. The actors (Ty someone and Stephen Dillane) struggle manfully and do the best job they can, but in the end, to paraphrase Harrison Ford to George Lucas, "You can type this shit, Caryl, but you sure can't say it."

Next!
 
 
Whisky Priestess
10:29 / 15.12.06
A friend of mine is in this, and reckons he can get me some free tickets. Anyone up for it? It runs till the 31st.
 
 
Hydra vs Leviathan
18:59 / 26.01.07
Have just been told about this, which has been running since 16th Jan but which i am hopefully going to London to see with a friend who has bought tickets for its last night (3rd February) - as a massive Sarah Kane fan (i was utterly blown away by a performance of 4:48 Psychosis, so much so that i count it as one of the most important emotional experiences of my life), and as a disabled person with a strong identification with disability activism and culture, i'm incredibly fucking hyped for this...

Graeae Theatre Company

Does Barbelith have a Sarah Kane thread?
 
 
Tsuga
20:42 / 26.01.07
'I do not think I have yet seen a play that can beat Sarah Kane’s sustained onslaught on the sensibilities for sheer, unadulterated brutalism'
Good god, that sounds frightening. It actually looks really interesting, if you can get past the fear of all the adjectives used to describe it (especially out of context), "Be warned...shocking, divisive...petty cruelty...shattering abuse...disgusting feast of filth...harsh love’s bleakest battlegrounds." Let us know how it is if you get to see it.

I'd encourage anyone in or going to NYC to see Grey Gardens.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
12:32 / 17.08.07
Recent theatrical experiences include:

Absurdia at the Donmar
If you like absurdism in any form (Monty Python, Vic Reeves, Ionesco) you really can't go wrong what with standing tickets for this show at a mere tenner. Actually three short plays in 90 minutes, there's even a new piece (The Red Hotel) by Michael Frayn as well as two excellent revivals. It was just an interesting, funny evening in the theatre. Highly recommended.

Humble Boy at the Gatehouse Theatre (Highgate)
I was expecting to hate the play but although every single possible aspect of it is derivative (I spotted Copenhagen, Hamlet and lashings of Stoppard, anything and everything but especially Arcadia), Charlotte Jones is at least nicking from and imitating the best, so I actually enjoyed this quite a lot.
The two leads (Felix and Flora Humble) are very good and the set's fab. Some manipulative music over the big emotional reveal at the end, but otherwise a really good quality Fringe production that gives hope to us all.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
22:37 / 17.08.07
All of us who regularly watch Fringe productions, that is ...
 
 
Blake Head
00:08 / 27.08.07
Alan Cumming is God! No really, he’s playing Dionysus in The Bacchae at the International Festival. And… well it’s entertaining certainly. The effects are spectacular, not any less so for wondering how Health & Safety let them get away with some of it. Cumming is roguish, sly, cheeky, camp. But, and I’ll admit to not being any kind of Classics scholar, it seemed to me that the production had taken a wrong turn by turning a drama about the disproportionate punishment of the gods into a light comedy. Which isn’t to say it was unamusing, and individual scenes often work quite well, and the full-on Dionysus as rock idol leading the chorus of adoring fans is fine if that’s your thing, although personally I think some scenes rely too much on the audience’s goodwill for some fairly forgettable and at times not even very polished seeming performances. But where the play really starts to flag is in the later stages where we seem to have to suddenly shift our understanding of Dionysus as a cheeky, innuendo wielding scamp into a vengeful god, and furthermore, to appreciate the tragedy of the royal house of Cadmus, previously pretty much ignored, which is a bit of a stretch. I think it might have been possible to dramatise that transition in Dionysus, from playful but forceful warnings to consequences, but for the first two thirds of the play you’re really asked not to take his character seriously, so by the time his anger is unleashed it doesn’t seem any more significant than the cruel and unusual lashing out of a petulant, attention-seeking teenager. Which might have been the point (about the nature of divinity) I suppose, though in either case the scene between Agave and Cadmus drags mightily.

I’m afraid, Whisky, that the only Fringe production we managed to (not quite) see was a “promenade performance” of Gormenghast which at a glance seemed to be performed by a troupe of teenage girls in wigs and, um, cat masks. It could have been fabulous, but sadly by nature of the performance it didn’t seem like there would be anywhere to sit, so, because that was really required for our small group, we left just as the first screams pierced the air. Maybe for the best then.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
12:22 / 10.04.08
Yet more recent theatrical experiences:

GOD OF CARNAGE
at the Gielgud Theatre
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Tamsin Grieg, some famous woman and Ken Stott

I got a freebie to the press night of this from a friend's sister and it was terribly exciting, because about half way through there was a power cut and they had to stop the performance. But the show must go on (of course!) and they eventually rigged up a massive spot and trained it on the sofa (where most of the action took place) and everybody cheered.

I think that this incident may have led reviewers to be more fulsome than they otherwise would - because having seen all three of Yasmina Reza's plays which have been mounted in the West End (the other two are Life x 3 and Art, fact fans), I was a leetle bit bored - although hardly surprised - that the play dealt with the microscopic moral concerns of upper-middle-class Parisians, with four characters, a single set and no interval.

I mean, there's nothing especially wrong with fluffy chamber comedies (although apparently Reza views her pieces as tragedies, and dammit! there's a Darfur reference in there just to make sure we know it) but I really though the audience was being pretty indulgent (and star-struck) in laughing at every single sodding line.

The acting was flawless - and who knew Ralph Fiennes could be funny? - but it got a studied "meuh" from me. I'm a bit of an escapist when it comes to my theatregoing and I find this sort of drawing-room stuff a bit smug and dull: to me that's sitcom territory and I'd rather see something a bit more challenging when I'm sitting in the stalls.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
12:24 / 10.04.08
Watch this space for:

AROUND THE HOUSE
at the Oval House theatre

THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH
at the BAC

AVENUE Q
At ... oh, somewhere in the West End
 
 
Whisky Priestess
10:50 / 11.04.08
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH
at the BAC

Another freebie, whoop-ti-do, courtesy of Twice Five Toes whom I can't thank enough. I was a bit late because of mistakenly getting off at Clapham North, not Common, and having to walk the TWO MILES (or something) to the BAC - their map is VERY misleading - but thank God it didn't matter.

I was given a mask along with another latecomer and the Victorian spiel from an assistant actor. Then we were sent off down a corridor, which appeared to be a dead end. We came back and were sent down again. Finally the door on the other side of the curtain opened. I'm not sure if this was deliberate disorientation or a stiff door (they are MESSING with my MIND!!!) but then we got into a main bit.

I split off early and frightened the life out of a trio of girls, in my ghostly white dress and white mask, then slipped down to explore a (slightly set-dressed) underground archive which was totally scary and totally empty, though I would have shat myself had anyone jumped out.

Then I went upstairs, which is where the main action happens as far as I'm aware, and stumbled across various empty rooms and other explorers, and a LOT of dead-end corridors. I found the big stairs where a lot of the action happens and walked through the artificial trees (beautifully done and very detailed) to the feast room (usually the BAC bar), which was empty.

Here I mooched and examined the weird things in jar, opened all the drawers (very Crystal Maze) and sat at the desk and read a bit of diary which was about some brain experiment going horribly wrong, and would have been better had it not been written in biro.

Then I got bored and heard a commotion on the main stairs so slipped out to watch a few couples dancing silently which turned into the end of Ligeia (I know this because the bearded guy whispered "Ligeia" as she passed). Then there was some amazing physical stuff on the stairs - Ligeia - shaven-headed Amazon - writhed up 'em like a snake and there was a sort of dance-fight with beardy man, who then showed exceptional agility and stuntmanship by sliding down the stairs, writhing.

Sidebar: One thing about this performance I had been totally unprepared for was the dance/physical theatre aspect of it: much of what dialogue there was was mumbled or in a foreign language (Latin?) and you had to pretty much guess what was going on. It was very impressionistic and collage-y. On the plus side physical theatre is one of those things I never actively seek out, but I love it when I see it. The style of the actor-dancers reminded me a little of capoeira or contact improvisation and it was amazing to watch.

Coming attractions in this thread:

THE ORGY AT THE FEAST!

THE WINE CELLAR ENCOUNTER!

THE APOTHECARY'S SHOP!

THE DRESSING ROOM!

THE MECHANICAL BRIDE!

REALLY A LOT OF TUMBLING ABOUT ON THE MAIN STAIRS BY A BLONDE CHAP WHO MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE BEEN RODERICK USHER BUT I DON'T THINK SO!
(HE MIGHT HAVE BEEN CALLED WILLIAM)
 
 
Whisky Priestess
14:32 / 11.04.08
While I'm on a short break I might as well remark on the sort of things the Masque reminded me of, which included:

- A Choose Your Own Adventure book
- A themed college ball such as those in my dim and distant university days
- A theme park "experience" or the historical reconstruction galleries you can find at the Museum in Docklands and the Museum of London - which are an 1800s wharf and a Victorian shopping arcade respectively.

(The following are in no particular order, as in the show)

THE OPIUM DEN
Walk upstairs to a dark corridor lit by a row of red Chinese lanterns on the left-hand wall (I swear this is getting more and more like a PS2 walkthrough ...). In front of you is a black door. Open it to enter the Opium Den.

The den is a red-hung, low-lit room (well, they all are really) with a number of little booths arranged around a central space containing a low Chinese table and tea paraphernalia. To the East (hee) is a bar staffed by a tall blonde young man in a waistcoat. A dapper gent in late middle age rises from one of the booths as an attractive Chinese woman enters. She offers him tea and he accepts: as the barman serves them Dupin speaks to "Miss (Something) Sassefrasse" (? I think) about a letter she has sent him. He thinks they can be of help to one another.

She agrees and gives him a pipe which knocks him out; he retires to a couch and she picks up the letter, goes to the bar, writes something else on it and leaves the room. Your humble correspondent is not cornered by a handsome personal-space-invading actor, alas, as has happened to others in the Den. I leave.

THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO
On exiting the Den Dupin bumps into a very large bearded older gentleman (also appearing in the Orgy at the Feast and the Wine Cellar, see below), whom he entreats to come downstairs to take a look at his etchings. Sorry, Cask of Amontillado. Or even Masque of Amontillado. Who knows?

The large gent expresses great interest and Dupin leads him (and us) down several flights to the cellar, which is done up brilliantly with pretend skull friezes on the walls and "skulls" and "bones" lying in the corners. Really top stuff, very spooky and not lame ghost train at all.

The large gent asks about the cask and Dupin shows him a low aperture in the wall.
"It's in there,"
"Oho!" we all think. "Large Gent might as well be wearing a red jumper!"
Indeed he might - Dupin wrestles him into some chains (due to crowding I didn't see this - BOO!) amd then starts boarding the bugger up in the cellar - which I found very reminiscent of the Tell Tale Heart (they probably do that one later). Dupin skips off up a different set of stairs.

This is interesting generally because it just now occurs to me how many of Poe's creepier works involve live burial - Usher, Amontillado and Tell Tale Heart off the top of my head but probably more.
 
 
Tsuga
11:06 / 12.04.08
WP, did you see Avenue Q yet? I read this news the other day:
"Tales of the City," Armistead Maupin's beloved depiction of life on San Francisco's fictional Barbary Lane in the 1970s, is coming back to life as a Broadway musical. The writer-director team of "Avenue Q" will join forces with composer John Garden and composer/lyricist Jason Sellards (a.k.a. Jake Shears) of the glam and disco-infused band Scissor Sisters.

This sounds really interesting, though I don't know how they'd condense the story for the stage.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
14:33 / 14.04.08
Yes, I did indeed.

Avenue Q
(Something Theatre, St. Martin's Lane)

Avenue Q is like the musical version of the most twisted children's show evah, but with enough cheery optimisim and bouncy, hummable tunes to make it thoroughly enjoyable and deftly inoffensive despite songs such as "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist".

Having been on for months, the opening time has been pushed back to 8.30 to catch the oh-God-the-show-we-wanted-is-sold-out-what-shall-we-watch crowd - still, Saturday night is packed out. The cast of seven (three humans playing themselves and four singing puppeteers) are practically incandescent with energy and the puppeteers especially are incredibly versatile. I didn't cotton on that ALL of them were playing at least two parts until about halfway through because after the first five minutes you stop watching the people and focus on the puppets.

I would insert the obligatory "Sesame Street on crack" gag here but I think everyone who wants to pretty much knows what Avenue Q is like by now. It is very funny though - the songs are clever and catchy and they have a fantastic pair of anti-Jiminy Cricket puppets called the Bad Idea Bears which encourage the chracters to get drunk, shag one another, stay out late on a school night etc. and are a great concept as well as extremely well deployed.

There are also TV screens dotted around which play little kids' TV cartoon stings at crucial plot moments - such as when Princeton, the junior lead, is trying to find his purpose in life, and when the "Gary Coleman" character sings the Schadenfreude song (oh yes, there is also a song called "Schadenfreude" which is another thing about Avenue Q that rocks).

Holding all this up is a fairly conventional romantic comedy structure, with a burgeoning relationship between Princeton and Katie Monster temporarily screwed up by the wonderfully named Lucy the Slut, and a unrequited gay romance subplot (with the Bert and Ernie chracters, Rod and Nicky) - but the new tricks they make this old dog of a plot perform are genuinely clever, original and funny.

Hooray for them - even people who hate musicals (um, my Dad) loved this one.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
11:08 / 15.04.08
More while I can still remember it.

THE CORPSE ON THE STAIRS AND THE GIRL IN THE BOX!
This came right after the Cask of Amontillado; when Dupin fucked off and we got bored watching the boarded-up cellar we all headed down the crypt corridor to the right, where there was a cubbyhole (more of that later) and a flight of stairs.

On the stairs a short shaven-headed bloke seemed to be trying to fold up and then transport a girl who was unconscious or else dead; she was a lot bigger than him and so he struggled for a bit before heaving her over his shoulders and marching down and back to the crypt, where he rather cleverly fitted her into a tin trunk that looked far too small to hold her.

Then he crouched on the "stone" ledge above her, knackered. Then her arm flopped out of the box and we all realised she wasn't dead, she was coming to get him. Eeee! He ran away and she emerged slowly. I didn't follow, but on the theme of dead girls in basements ...

MADELEINE USHER RESURRECTED
This was one of the occasions when I saw a bunch of people and tagged on the end to see what was going on. I was a total lemming after a while because when I wandered into empty rooms on my own nothing much seemed to happen so I decided to follow the action. I followed them downstairs into a cellar under the main steps and literally couldn't see what was going on, the crowd was so thick, although a bloke burst past me and up the stairs and a man's voice cried after him.

I heard rather than saw some convincing nutso emoting over Madeline's corpse/unconscious body, before I left the "tomb" and climbed up the main stairs to see what I could see. There, lightning was crashing and flashing, tons of whitemasks were gathered, and I didn't have to wait long before Roderick Usher was literally climbing the walls in a highly impressive manner. He and the unnamed friend had a shouted, nearly incomprehensible dialogue over the cracks and booms of the thunderstorm, of which I could only make out one line:

"We have put her living in the tomb!"

Shivers!
And of course while we are all watching Roberick go mental, who should glide up the stairs in burial weeds but Madeleine herself? Thunder! Lightning! And then they pretty much wrestle one another to death and we are all ushered (ba-dum-tish) off to the Palace of Varieties for the grand finale ...
 
  
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