Theater

[CONTAINS SPOILERS] Winner of the Soho Theatre’s biennial Verity Bargate award, Pastoral is a stark look at humanity, juxtaposing surreal comedy with an unsettling darkness that lingers for a long time after the company take their bow. A plant is growing through the carpet in Moll’s apartment. Voles are strutting out of Paperchase. It seems that nature is trying to reclaim its earth with wildly spreading weeds, fighting back against humans who have manipulated it for so long. A prevalent reminder that nature, that we find so inherently beautiful, can be destructive. Moll is told to prepare for a holiday, but soon she finds herself trapped with her two sons. A married couple are trying to evacuate as well, with their courageous 11-year-old son despite not having any food to survive. Thomas Eccleshare’s imaginative first play has a subtle power and strength behind it throughout. Moll’s shrewd commentary on the street action below her flat window was flawlessly delivered by Anna Calder-Marshall, evoking all the laughter she could in her hilarious rant about “the fat”. Calder-Marshall played Moll skillfully and naturally, fully developing her eccentricity, without allowing her to become a caricature. Moll finds a companion in Arthur, played by Polly Frame, whose boyish gestures and mannerisms capture the essence of childhood. However, she fails to match Calder-Marshall, allowing her performance to be slightly too exaggerated, perhaps reminiscent of pantomime, particularly in the over-the-top hunger mime accompanying an amusing tribute to doughnuts. The audience find themselves laughing at the absurdity Pastoral shows, drawing on the apparent humour of a fully-grown man struggling to capture a tiny hedgehog. But the laughs quickly die as a more frightening tone sets in. This is mirrored in the memorable deterioration of the set, including a collapsing floor, growing tree and daffodil darts falling from the sky: a clever touch by director Steve Marmion. The final image of Moll slow dancing and sharing a cigarette with Arthur, her young knight without shining armour, was strangely touching. Both were left abandoned by society, deemed too weak to escape. A bride-to-be appears in the auditorium fully equipped with fairy wings, tutu and personalised T-shirt, but this sight, which previously was laughed at, now instills a sense of grief as she delivers her powerful wedding speech. Pastoral’s black comedy has such force, making the entire play incredibly sobering. As the pressure begins to mount for the starving group, they turn on their visitor: along-awaited Ocado deliveryman who suffers as the group succumb to something of a Lord of the Flies mentality. It’s easy to shrug off the act of violence at first. But once you are reminded that these six people are stuck in the flat starving to death, the question is: what would you stoop to? Pastoral is playing at the Soho Theatre until June 8. For more information and tickets, see www.sohotheatre.com The post Review: Pastoral appeared first on A Younger Theatre.

Ever heard Grendel sing the blues? Seen an academic transform into a dragon? Or heard Beowulf describe himself as a sexy motherfucker? BBB’s unconventional Beowulf has all of this and more, as it rattles through one of the most famous epic poems of all time. It’s a riot of musical styles and silliness, managing to stage epic battles and tender moments with equal aplomb. Using the whole space of Bristol’s Trinity Arts Centre, we get monsters and men leaping about the hall, followed by musicians and creating nothing short of mayhem. Presented as an academic lecture on Beowulf (brandishing Seamus Heaney’s translation), BBB’s production swiftly descends into a rock-based song cycle telling the story of our eponymous hero. The talented band are as at home with the mellow ballads as with the storming numbers, although, as ever, the devil gets all the best tunes. Composer Dave Molloy offers us a nice mix of styles, although the big, brass-heavy numbers are the most fun. The band are fabulous, especially Mario Maggio on clarinet and Pete Wise on drums. Rod Hipskin’s Grendel is excellent – cocky as he nonchalently leaps about the Trinity Centre, taunting Jason Craig’s stolid Beowulf – and having some tender moments with his monstrous mum (Jessica Jelliffe). All of the cast have lovely voices, and the close-harmony work sends shivers down the spine. The sound levels aren’t always perfect which sometimes makes it difficult to hear all of the words – the singers are often drowned out by the drums, guitars and brass. We get the gist, though, thanks to Jason Craig’s witty script. I think there’s an assumption that the audience will know the rough story, but this sprint through Beowulf is as clear as it is unsubtle. Beowulf himself has something of Blackadder‘s Lord Flashheart about him – all bravado, swagger and stupidity. He is good at ripping the arms off monsters, though, and comes with his own pair of dancing girls as back-up (Anna Ishida and Shaye Troha). The construct, of three academics arguing about interpretations of the poem, is well done, and when the academics become part of the story it is done with a light touch. For all of its tricks and songs, at its heart this is a bunch of people telling us a story. The show touches on some deeper themes (do we create our own monsters? When is revenge OK?) but only fleetingly; mostly, what we have is riotous, raucous fun. Beowulf is at the Trinity Arts Centre in Bristol as part of Mayfest until 19 May. For more information and tickets, visit the Mayfest website.   The post Mayfest review: Beowulf appeared first on A Younger Theatre.

JJ Gatesman, come on down, cuz you won the tickets to ModROCK! And let those of us on the Right Coast know how it is.  I’m a big believer in LA’s theater scene sending more and more shows our way, so we need to keep our eyes and spies on what’s going on in H-Town. So, JJ (and the rest of you out there in La-La Land), we’re counting on you. (Got a comment? I love ‘em, so comment below! Email Subscribers, click here then scroll down to say what’s on your mind!) _ _ FUN STUFF: - Play our Tony Pool and you can win an iPad.  Click here to enter and win! - Only 50 performances of Macbeth remain!  Get tix.

We just released podcast #412 — and it was such fun to do.  We reunited with old friends from Retro Productions to learn all about their new production of A DAY IN THE DEATH OF JOE EGG.  Heather Cunningham is artistic director of the company and tells us a bit about the how and why of picking this play.  And she will have a leading role, too.  In addition we got to chat with two of her cast mates, Matthew Trumbull and Greg Oliver Bodine.  Both Matthew and Greg share their views on why they are so pleased to be part of the production and how they prepared for their roles.  Most interesting is to listen to Heather and Matthew talk about working to make their “marriage” appear real to the audience — they have a great rapport with each other having been friends and colleagues for many years. Greg and Matthew are also playwrights and their work can be found on Indie Theater Now.  Matthew debuted his solo play in FringeNYC last year and he tells us a bit about it.  Greg is working on a new play and talks a bit about this. For an interesting subway ride, listen to our latest podcast and get your tickets to what should be a great production.

Films films everywhere. Bed Trick The Young Vic have previously come up with a couple of films inspired by the plays they’ve put on – Nora was a spin-off from A Doll’s House and Epithet came from by Bingo – and now, although a little bit behind the times, comes Bed Trick, inspired by Joe Hill-Gibbins’ raucous adaptation of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s The Changeling which was a big success for the venue. Again taking a modern twist on a classic story, Hill-Gibbins has written and directed this short which plays on the idea of the ‘bed trick’, so integral to the plot of theatre of that time, and transplants into a modern home where Sinéad Matthews’ babysitter arrives at a plush home to be greeted by Monica Dolan’s grateful wife who is keen to offload her responsibilities for the evening. Quite what those responsibilities are is the subject of a little misunderstanding and that is the rather amusing meat of the story, which I won’t reveal, and though the whole thing may come across a wee bit slight in the end, it is undoubtedly entertaining to watch. Dolan and Matthews are both actors I could watch for days on end and neither disappoint, Matthews unleashing her gorgeously throaty giggle on more than one occasion and Dolan bringing her intense gaze with its almost hypnotic quality. It’s decent stuff, hardly essential, but worth the time. Stars Stars from Eoghan Kidney on Vimeo. For reasons I’m not entirely sure about, I have prejudices against animated film which I constantly have to try to overcome. I rarely choose to see it myself and so I have to be persuaded but I am coming to see how powerful an art-form it can be. Eoghan Kidney’s Stars managed to do that perfectly with a heart-rending tale of how a fatal degenerative disorder impacts upon the lives of Brian and Sophie as she is given six months to live. Animation actually proves a brilliant way to try and communicate how such a syndrome might play out, with hallucinatory synaesthetic episodes utterly disorientating Sophie as she slips away from real life. Ruth Negga voices Sophie with a tenderly hushed sensitivity, which is matched by the deeply understanding and unwavering presence of Domhnall Gleeson’s Brian, who never leaves her side. But the animation by Delicious 9 is the thing, finding a strange beauty in the way in which the side effects alter Sophie’s perception of the world around her, of her lover Brian, even of her own self. You probably already know how effective animation can be as a richly complex storytelling tool so you’ve no excuse not to watch it! In The Bathroom Venturini - In the Bathroom (short film) from RedMagmaMedia on Vimeo. Written by Howard Overman, In The Bathroom is a glossily enjoyable piece of film that tells a Mr and Mrs Smith-inspired story of a warring couple in the aftermath of a heist. In a hotel room, Enzo Cilenti’s Man and Sienna Guillory’s Woman are doing battle over a suitcase that contains their ill-gotten gains, each trying to outdo the other with in their devious ploys but both enjoying the thrill of their interplay as much as trying to better their adversary. French director Olivier Venturini brings a highly cinematic sheen to the film and it twists and turns most pleasingly even over the relatively short running time. The End of the Line The End of the Line from Max Pugh on Vimeo. Sometimes one is left in awe at the creative ideas of others, the way in which people come up with concepts and visions that step outside of the norm. Max Pugh’s short film The End of the Line may not be particularly ground-breaking stuff but its art direction is simply gorgeous, it looks stunning in unique way it portrays a tube journey through the eyes and minds of David Oyelowo’s commuter and Miriam Margolyes’ bag lady. The tale, written by Simon Miles and Max Pugh, is simply told and beautifully affecting and Margoyles is perfectly cast as the kind of person one all too easily avoids on the tube, regardless of w

“We want people who know what must change and why” The phrase ‘timely revival’ is one much abused by reviewers and theatre marketers alike but it is genuinely amazing how strongly the resonances of a piece of writing from 1882 chime in today’s world. Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, retitled here as Public Enemy in a terse new version by David Harrower, rails against government corruption, the treatment of whistle-blowers, unscrupulous clothing factory owners and foretells a world of growing ecological and environmental calamity. It is a powerfully compelling tale, cheekily updated to the 1970s here, and one which wriggles uncomfortably beneath the skin. Stockmann is a principled doctor in a provincial Norwegian town famed for its spa baths but when he discovers that the waters are poisonous and need to be shut down and announces this to the town at large, he is not met with the gratitude and acclaim he expects but rather is ostracised and demonised by the leaders of the town’s society. Chief among these in the mayor but as is often the way in small-town politics, he just happens to be Stockmann’s brother. The battle for public opinion that ensues is then bitterly fought as Stockmann, Ibsen thinly veiling his contempt for the frosty reception of his previous play Ghosts, reacts to becoming the enemy of the people. Over the course of an uninterrupted 100 minutes, Richard Jones’ production rattles through the play with a liberating sense of freshness, almost cartoon-like in its palette. Miriam Buether’s design is a Scandi-overdose of domestic wares; Nicky Gillibrand’s costumes are a riot of 70s colour and shape and Mimi Jordan Sherin’s lighting is inescapably searching, leaving nowhere to hide, not even for the audience in the crucial town hall debate. This is a commanding re-reading of this particular scene, Nick Fletcher’s doctor full of bristling indignance that one sympathises with but soon tipping over into arrogant presumption, and though there may not be quite the resounding sense of a town entirely against this man, instead Jones draws us directly into the debate and exposes our reactions to this deconstruction of democratic ideals. But the richness of Stockmann as a character and of Fletcher’s stellar interpretation here comes at the expense of a cast of effective supporting players. The other people in Stockmann’s life and in the play at large are just not fleshed out enough to really serve as useful dramatic counterweights, so it is to the credit of actors like Charlotte Randle as his wife, Beatrice Walker as his daughter (a notable debut) and Bryan Dick as a pernicious journalist that they bring a vividness to their performances that lingers in the mind, especially in the striking final image with its slightly terrifying intimation at the path ahead. After the huge success of A Doll’s House, the Young Vic have once again proved masters at interpreting Ibsen in innovative and interesting ways and bringing an immediacy to his work that ought to strike a note with many a modern audience. Running time: 100 minutes (without interval) Booking until 8th June Originally written for The Public Reviews

It’s another can’t-find-time-to-blog weekend for me but rather than turn the ghost light on yet again, I’m going to give a brief shout out to a new trend I've noticed: the fancy inserts producers are tucking into the Playbills for their shows. The one for The Testament of Mary, which closed after just 16 performances and 27 previews, was written by its playwright Colm Tóibín and reads like a mini dissertation on depictions of the Virgin Mary over the centuries. It even includes a list of additional readings for those who might have wanted to dig deeper after seeing Tóibín’s controversial portrayal of the mother of Jesus as a grief-stricken but angry woman who, years after the crucifixion, still questions the divinity of her son. Despite a powerful performance by Fiona Shaw, the production, over-directed by Deborah Warner and featuring a self-consciously arty set by Tom Pye, was off-putting. But this author’s note makes an elegant case for the play itself. The producers for Lucky Guy slipped two glossy inserts into the Playbill I got when my husband K and I saw this bio drama about the late columnist Mike McAlary and the heyday of tabloid journalism in the '80s and ‘90s. One of those cards has a note from director George C. Wolfe on one side and an excerpt from an essay called “Journalism: A Love Story” by the show’s late playwright Nora Ephron on the other. The second insert contains an illustrated note from set designer David Rockwell, detailing how he put together the collage of subway graffiti and other images from the period that decorate the curtain that greets theatergoers when they enter the Broadhurst Theatre. Getting these extras is like the theatrical equivalent of the bonus items on a DVD. They’re a nice treat and I hope the trend continues to catch on.

Jenna Watt’s delicate one-woman show kicked off Mayfest for me, offering up its bittersweet mix of hope and hate in a delightfully unselfconscious manner. Essentially, Flâneurs tells us the story of her friend Jeremy, who was the victim of a vicious assault. Except it’s so much more than that: it’s a musing on what it means to be safe, what it means to survive, and what it means to be home. Watt is a masterful storyteller – she has to be, given that the show is simply her on-stage, joined occasionally by a giraffe to represent Jeremy. The show begins with a pleasingly whimsical journey through Edinburgh, punctuated by anecdotes and maps, as Watt shows us (in Bristol) around her home city. It’s beautifully done with an overhead projector and a lot of conviction, meaning that although some of the material about home and recognition feels a little contrived, we’ve invested enough in Watt’s story not to care. This isn’t just Watt’s story, or Jeremy’s story, though. By making us see how random the attack on Jeremy was, and by interspersing her narrative with a policeman’s take on street violence, Watt invites us to go to a dark place where we are not safe. She invites us to remember every dark walk home, or every shock of reading about a violent act in a newspaper and realising it was local to us. She encourages us to think about whether we could defend ourselves, and whether we would step in to help someone else. It’s not preachy, though. Watt is an engaging and entertaining presence who keeps enough self-mockery in the piece to stop the occasional moralising being annoying. At its heart, Flâneurs is a love letter to Edinburgh, and to cities that make people feel at home everywhere. Watt urges us to reclaim our sense of safety, to feel secure and to enjoy our cities and our homes once again. She does not shy away from the violence in the world: “I’m afraid of being punched” – who isn’t? The parts where we hear Jeremy’s voice describing how his world shrank after his assault are particularly affecting – this is a piece that makes you think. Ultimately, though, it is celebratory. It’s a piece about the choices we make, and about survival. Aided by just a few props and her own body, Watt raises some interesting points about victims and perpetrators, about “them” and “us”, and about what we want from our environments. Well worth seeing. Flâneurs is playing at The Brewery in Bristol as part of Mayfest until 18 May. For more information see the Mayfest website. The post Mayfest review: Flâneurs appeared first on A Younger Theatre.

Kate Tempest is blazingly good. Everyone’s been telling me this for ages, and she won the Ted Hughes Award in March, but to see her take the stage and do her thing is mind-blowing. Using Greek myths as her starting point, Tempest elevates the everyday lives of a fictional group of South Londoners into the stuff of myth – never has it been clearer that we’re all the heroes of our own lives, and potentially the leading players in a tragedy. She does not shy away from the waste and hate and spite that poverty and neglect nurture, and yet the show is still uplifting, thanks to Tempest’s presence. She almost turns preacher at some points, urging us to take back some control from the false idols of capitalism and greed. Without ever stepping over the line into emotional manipulation or schmaltz, she has a gift for making you want to believe in the redemptive power of love. This is no naïve tale, though; love conquers some things but the ending is not happy for all of her characters. Alternating between full-on, heavily backed rap and a lyric spoken word style that soars round Bristol Old Vic, Brand New Ancients is a show like no other. Tempest takes the lives and hopes and foibles of normal, amazing, downtrodden people and illuminates them. She turns the stuff of everyday mundanity into poetry and screams it from the rooftops. And then she kicks up a gear. Backed by a stunning four-piece band (Kwake Bass on drums, Jo Gibson on tuba, Natasha Zielazinski on cello and Raven Bush on violin), the energy that emanates from Tempest is incredible. To carry off a one-woman show like this for over an hour, you need a passion for language, and Tempest has it in spades. By turns elegaic and celebratory, devastating and playful, Brand New Ancients will make you despair and then build you back up again, in one breath. Tempest’s grasp of language, her verbal dexterity, is mesmerising. When she preaches, implores or demands, you can feel the audience respond. She calls bullshit on almost everything that we hold dear, and we cry “Amen”. She says jump, and we jump. I’d tell you to go and experience Brand New Ancients for yourself, but based on the queue out the door of Bristol Old Vic tonight I think it’s a safe bet that tomorrow’s show is sold out, too. This is the beginning of a new tour, though, so I do urge you to catch this if you can. Kate Tempest is what theatre – and poetry – need. Brand New Ancients is part of Mayfest in Bristol. It’s on at Bristol Old Vic from 17-18 May, and then touring.  The post Mayfest review: Brand New Ancients appeared first on A Younger Theatre.

The Drama League celebrated the 2012-2013 Broadway and off-Broadway season with their 79th annual Drama League Awards lunche