When Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary in 1857, I'm not sure if he imagined a cast of four playing every character, bouncing around the stage, performing magic, and reacting to non-diagetic sound. I cannot overemphasise how silly this production is! It is a joyful explosion of madcap mayhem, with dozens of costume changes per minute, and a healthy disregard for the fourth wall. I'm unfamiliar with the original text, but I assume the horny nuns, dodgy rat-catchers, and squeaky-voiced pharmacists…
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Would you like to spend two hours with David Tennant whispering in your ears? You'd be a fool to say no! The stage is bare, the costumes are monochrome, Pepper's Ghost serves as a backdrop, the audience wears headphones. Is this style over substance? Almost. So let's talk about the schtick. Every actor is wearing a microphone which allows their merest whisper to be picked up. An impressive audio mix is created, with ravens flying o'erhead, along with other non-diegetic sounds. The music is…
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Greetings Comrades! Are you ready to begin your assessment? This immersive reworking of Orwell's 1984 holds so much promise, but the production is so sparse that it ends up feeling a little underwhelming. In theory, everything about this should work. It is set in Hackney Town Hall, an impressive venue for a play about the dangers of bureaucracy. On entering, we were each given an ID badge - red, green, or blue depending on which Ministry we'd been assigned to - and given strict instructions…
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What is the city but the people? What indeed? David Oyelowo is a powerhouse. His Coriolanus is a shitheel teetering somewhere between Trump and Mugabe. He isn't a noble character with a fatal flaw; his flaws are his character. The citizens celebrate him, turn on him, fear him. It isn't about power corrupting, it's about venal people abusing power structures. There are persistent theories about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. My personal favourite is that, in the absence of extant…
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After seeing one Doctor Who on stage, it was time for another! I was lucky enough to get preview tickets for Jodie Whittaker in "The Duchess [of Malfi]". The Duchess is… dark. No, darker than than you're imagining. I've seen plays with content warnings. This is the first I've seen where they cover both sides of a sheet of paper. Content and Sensory Warnings - Contains Spoilers The theatre provides these warnings: Themes of violence against women and sexual assault, scenes of rape and p…
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Oooh! This is an interesting play. It is dense, wordy, and tense. It isn't a play with a frenetic pace or a huge emotional roller-coaster. It is a series of subtle arguments and twisted relationships which slowly (very slowly) reveal themselves to the audience. It is actorly - with winding speeches and hefty subtext. The leisurely pace belies the deep and dark subject matter. Although only 80 minutes (without interval) it feels… whatever the positive version of "interminable" is. I was i…
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