COMING HOME: Joaquin Pedro Valdes, about to open in Heathers at the Theatre Royal Haymarket

Pocket Size Theatre and Liza Heinrichs (Captured by Liz) have teamed up again and created our new series 'Coming Home'. In this new piece, we look at the reopening of Theatres in London and around the country and celebrate our industry coming back. We got together some performers who will be some of the first to return to theatres and created this piece to bring some positivity to the theatre industry which has been through one of the toughest years in our lifetime. Whilst it is important to acknowledge the hardships we've all gone through, it's important we pull together as a community and celebrate our beloved industry finally coming back! 

Theatres were some of the first things to completely shut down when the pandemic hit. After the news of Broadway closing, it wasn’t long before the West End and theatres up and down the country followed suit. Joaquin Pedro Valdes was appearing in the UK and International touring production of The King and I. The show had previously had a hugely successful run in America and had subsequently transferred to the London Palladium with this tour following. However, due to the pandemic, the production was shut down in March 2020. 

Joaquin was appearing in the ensemble of the show and was also covering Lun Tha and the Kralahome. After this amazing show being shut down, Joaquin was actually one of the first people to be employed again in a fully staged theatre production, as he appeared in ‘Fanny and Stella’ at the Garden Theatre in the summer of 2020. This was the first stage show to be fully mounted since the pandemic hit. The theatre continued with this success and opened productions of Pippin, Next Thing You Know and Naked Boys Singing, to name just a few! 

REVIEW: Great Britain at the Theatre Royal Haymarket

This play is a look at society and the media, its packed with laughs and clever humour but I left the theatre thinking how terrible of a person I am. We, as the public, are the ones buying the newspapers, looking at the articles online and scrolling on our twitter and facebook feeds to get the latest news. As said by Paige in the play, “That’s what we do, we destroy lives… but it’s on your behalf”. I can’t help but think that the play points out that its the publics fault that the media do so many terrible things for our benefit. The media thrive on attention from the public, this is particularly shown in the final scene where (after being arrested) Paige Britain gets her own TV show. So the real question that is being raised is, is it all our fault?

Its set at the office (amongst other locations) of ‘The Free Press’, a newspaper thats sold for 30p to the public. You have an insight to the cut throat industry who only care about how many people buy their paper. Paige Britain (See the link with the title?!) finds out how to hack phones and uses this to create exclusive content for their paper whilst also using it to blackmail people for scoops. 

One Man, Two Guvnors: Theatre Review

One Man, Two Guvnors is a play by Richard Bean which made its debut at the National Theatre in 2011. Following this it toured the UK and transferred to the West End’s Adelphi Theatre and then later at the Royal Haymarket Theatre. Since then the production has opened on Broadway and has launched its second tour which will make international stops. 

The play is a classic slapstick comedy, following the story of Francis Henshall who has been employed by two men, Roscoe Crabbe and Stanley Stubbers. Roscoe Crabbe was meant to have been killed by his twin sisters fiancé but he suddenly comes back to claim Pauline Crocker as his wife. Roscoe is of course his Twin Sister, Rachel Crabbe, in disguise. She is doing this so she can get money off Pauline’s father so she and Stanley (who killed her brother) can go to Australia and hide away from the police. 

I don’t personally like slapstick comedy as I get bored of it after two minutes however this play really brought it into the twenty first century and made it right for a modern audience, integrating audience interaction with the comedy. Richard Bean really knows who to write a comedy, he carried the humour throughout the whole show and he did it really well. At no point did I think ‘this is dragging on’ or ‘ok, next scene please’. A very talented writer.