REVIEW: Romeo and Juliet at Greenwich Theatre

What a wonderful exercise Merely Theatre has created for actors, in that five out of ten in the company are picked out randomly for a new show every night. In their second year of rep theatre, they are presenting Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night. I had the joy of witnessing the former, a highly energetic 90-minute production with laughs, high energy and heartbreak.

Merely Theatre are not only bringing repertory theatre back, they also employ men and women equally, meaning that an actor from any gender could be playing any character. With the help of costumes and of course imagination, gender falls away, leaving even more space for the characters.

REVIEW: Posh at the Pleasance Theatre

You love us, you want to be us, states Alistair Ryle in Posh to the owner of the pub where he and his mates are having dinner, before kicking him unconscious. This kind of phrase is often heard in plays or films in which a disgusting human being is also charismatic and intriguing.

Posh, the play by Laura Wade, is a guilty pleasure. While the characters are virtually insulting the audience, as was the case in Richard Bean’s Great Britain which portrayed the British journalists involved in hacking people’s phones for headlines, we laugh and this makes us feel like we are connected to the plot while it is actually disrespectful. 

REVIEW: The Bad Seed at the Jack Studio Theatre

Why does one revive a play? I’ve attended quite a few revivals in the past months, with Hedda Gabler or Buried Child. The former is revived every year, it seems, with a new female actress taking on the classic role each time. When it comes to the former, or The Bad Seed currently running at the Brockley Jack Theatre, a few more years go by before we see them again. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that they are more recent American Pulitzer Prize winning plays, or because they are so distinctively from a certain decade in the last century.

In any case, to me, what makes a revival stand out is when a director turns its words into something contemporary, or at least steers clear from a naturalistic stage setting.

REVIEW: Frankenstein at Wilton's Music Hall

My way of closing International Women’s Day this week was attending a show inspired by Mary Shelley’s classic gothic tale, written by Tristan Bernays and directed by Eleanor Rhode: Frankenstein. The show lasts a little over an hour and is explosive in its compactness and detail.

Personal anecdote: my family’s nickname for my brother Frank is Frankenstein. I think that when a lot of people picture Frankenstein, they think of the Creature when in fact, it is the Creator who is named that way! As you must have noticed, the words Creator and Creature are very close – something that was used in Rhode’s production. 

This was my first time at Wilton Music Hall, tucked into a small pedestrian street in the old Whitechapel area. The venue is no too big, and lends itself very well to this kind of intimate dark story while still welcoming quite a few audience members. 

REVIEW: The Lock in at the Vaults Festival

London really is a place where you can travel anywhere in the world without actually leaving the city. I was reminded of that this week at the Vault Festival during the Celtic season, with the musical play The Lock In, written by Joseph Cullen. It attracted a large crowd eager to sing and banter along to its Irish story.

Part of the Over the Limit trilogy, this show taking place in The Pit took us back to the Irish tale of Niall of the Nine Hostages (or were they eight?!), the legendary High King of Ulster who, because he was such a womaniser, could possibly have three million descendants today!

One of the great things about this show for me was the music. The cast was talented and versatile, and switched between the storytelling and their instruments. Emmy Stonelake played the accordion and the flute, Eddy Massarella and Rory Quinn played the guitar, as well as Ian Horgan, and Andy Burse was at the Cajon. The whole cast also sang beautifully.

REVIEW: The Convert at the Gate Theatre

Assimilation: “the absorption and integration of people, ideas, or culture into a wider society or culture.”

Conversion: “the fact of changing one's religion or beliefs or the action of persuading someone else to change theirs.”

These two words come into play in The Convert, written by Danai Gurira, directed by Christopher Haydon and playing at the Gate Theatre in Notting Hill until 11 February. We are in Rhodesia, in today’s Zimbabwe, in 1896, then under British colonial rule.

REVIEW: EMERGE at the Tristan Bates Theatre

Last Sunday was the first EMERGE event, a new writing night organised by Flux Theatre at the Tristan Bates in Soho. EMERGE is a workshop in which 4 short pieces of 'work in progress' are performed to an audience and a professional industry panel, which then offer feedback to the artists in the second half of the event. 

I stayed for both the plays and the talk afterwards, which proved to be a great treat.

The first piece was “The Phlebotomist” by Ella Road that presented two women, a patient and a nurse. The scene was set in the future, and the patient had just found out that she had a low health score (due to her history of risky health conditions in her family) which made her undesirable to future employers. In a time when we feel like everything about us, including our health, is part of the economy, this was a strong opening piece.  

The talk after the show revealed not only that this was part of a full play, but that the nurse was the character whose life we will follow. The performances were very good, however the two actresses Nicola Taylor and Amy Cotter were of approximately the same age, which did not work for me: I would have wanted the nurse to be older, and show more authority, especially due to the patient showing she will do anything to avoid her score being published. I actually thought this was a standalone piece, with a clear beginning and end and thought it was nicely crafted.

REVIEW: Charming Dick at the Cockpit Theatre

Nothing quite compares to a British panto. I did not grow up here, but in my first year studying in the UK a few years back, I joined my university’s theatre society. Traditionally, in December, the programme included a panto and I was thrown into its unique and bonkers genre.

This week, I attended my first panto in quite a while, and what a show it was! Charming Dick, written by Paul Emelion Daly and which is playing until 23 December at the Cockpit Theatre, is an adult LGBTQ show from the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.

It follows Dick coming to London to seek fame, fortune and the big time, but instead ending up working in a launderette with his Aunt Twankey (the T is silent). But the Wicked Witch is determined to get her evil hands on the launderette and steal poor Twanky’s magic lamp, which can turn gay bars into gold, whilst the Witch’s sexually confused son Prince Charming is being pursued by Eurovision wannabe Babe.

REVIEW: Kafka’s The Trial at the Jack StudioTheatre

When it comes to fringe theatres, there are so many more to be found North of the river Thames than South of it. As a South East Londoner, going to the Brockley Jack Theatre and witnessing a lovely piece of theatre is even more enjoyable as it’s in my neighbourhood. This week, Howard Coyler’s adaptation of Franz Kafka’s most famous novel, The Trial, was staged. I had seen The Trial on stage twice before, but this was particular as it was a monologue, performed by Brendan O’Rourke.

REVIEW: Romeo and Juliet at Sadler's Wells

I’m a big theatre fan, which means that I mostly look out for what plays are showing in London. Recently however, I’ve started to notice dance shows as well, and for example the exciting dance companies coming to Sadler’s Wells in the next few months.

The latest show to open at the Peacock Theatre is Romeo and Juliet, directed by Rasta Thomas and choreographed by Adrienne Canterna, creators of the dance sensation Rock the Ballet. What is unique is that they’ve used their innovative style to tell the timeless tale of star crossed lovers. The all-American company invites us to an evening of fun filled with classical (Vivaldi) and contemporary pop tunes that make you transition from tears to laughs.

REVIEW: New Atlantis at The Crystal

When the weather is as cold as it has been these past few days, it’s a great surprise and pleasure when you have a chance to discover a new immersive theatre show which not only involves each audience member, but also opens a debate about what we are doing to our planet.

LASTheatre’s latest immersive production, New Atlantis, explores humanity’s relationship      with water in the year 2050. The location is perfectly chosen: The Crystal is a gorgeous futuristic building near Canary Wharf which, positioned between the London cable cars and the O2, makes you think it could fly away into space.

REVIEW: Shoot, I didn't mean that/The Last Days of Mankind at The Tristan Bates theatre

The Tristan Bates theatre has opened its autumn season with a double-bill of plays that echo each other with stories going from after World War I to today.  These are Shoot, I didn’t mean that by Catriona Kerridge and The Last Days of Mankind: The Last Night by the Austrian Karl Kraus. What originally inspired this production is Time Zone Theatre and Austrian director Pamela Schermann, who invited British playwrights to respond to Kraus’s The Last Days of Mankind and is now presenting the winning playwright’s work. The result is tense and controversial.

Shoot, I didn’t mean that presents us with four very different girls and women who are in some way connected to the cynicism behind wars and politics. 

Firstly, two schoolgirls are struggling to stay still during two minutes of silence on Remembrance Day. “I really want to see War Horse”, one of them says. We ask ourselves: is that really all she can associate with World War I? And is it her fault, actually? Later, she and her friend plan to travel to Syria, or Iran, or Irak ("same thing") in order to witness something big. While they are used to watching war zones on the news, they don't realise that these do not represent the entire geographic area. 

REVIEW: Ghosts from a Perfect Place at the Arcola Theatre

This month, and until 11 October, the innovative Arcola Theatre in Dalston presents Sarah Stribley’s production of Philip Ridley’s Ghosts from a Perfect Place. This is quite literally an explosive new production, as the playwright from East London gives us a story of fire, flames, and the burning scars that ghosts from the past can leave behind.

The two acts are incredibly different, which makes this play very exciting. In the calm Act I, we are introduced to Torchie, who’s lived in London’s East End all her life and is waiting for her granddaughter Rio to come home, and Travis, who is about the same age as Torchie. Behind his glamorous appearance and stories, he makes us uneasily wonder why he is also waiting for Rio in this old deteriorated kitchen. Later, the explosive Act II reveals that Travis, who was a feared gang leader over 30 years ago, finds himself threatened by a whole new gang breed and faced with his ghosts. Rio, a beautiful blonde gang leader dressed in gold and obsessed with fire, as well as her two “Disciples”, will try to make sure he regrets those he hurt.