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Jul. 30th, 2010 @ 06:13 pm Flies and fighters
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A couple of Friday bits and pieces this week (look I always said this "things for Friday" theme would be erratic at best) starting with something [info]catnip25 tweeted a few days ago:



And on a completely different theme that's been lacking from this blog for a bit too long: I'm well behind the rest of "The Internet" with these but just in case any Americans and other aliens missed them, here's a few of the McFly photos from the current issue of Attitude. They're a boyband in case you didn't know, and if you were wondering why they're posing like this yes, their last album did do quite badly. (Actually that's a bit unfair, they've always had a reputation for losing their clothes at the slightest provocation.)


( A few of the rest )
Jul. 30th, 2010 @ 01:01 pm Book review: Apples
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I should probably call this a "not-review" as this book actually put me in a bad mood, to the extent that I probably can't give a fair critique of it. Richard Milward's Apples follows two teenagers in Middlesbrough, Adam, who has OCD, few friends, and is physically abused by his dad; and the distant object of his affection, Eve, who has a lot of friends but is constantly to be found drunk, on pills and/or sleeping around and whose mother is dying of lung cancer. It's described as tragicomic and while there's a few funny moments and Milward has a nice turn of phrase, I found it pretty unremittingly bleak. Even moments of whimsy, like a passage narrated by a butterfly, have a miserable edge (the butterfly gets eaten and ends its narration in screaming agony.) Overall it left me miserable every time I picked it up, so I don't feel I can give a fair account of the story or writing style.

Still, on the plus side: My own teenage years were very lonely, most of my time outside school being spent on my own with my nose in a book, and meant by the time I got to University I had no social skills whatsoever; but compared to the lives in this book they seemed halcyon in retrospect.
Jul. 29th, 2010 @ 10:01 pm Theatre review: The Great British Country Fête
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It may be the original pub theatre and a respected powerhouse of new writing, but every summer the Bush Theatre likes to let its hair down with a bit of fun, and this year it's found a blinder in stand-up comedian Russell Kane's play with songs by Michael Bruce. Arriving at the Bush as the last leg of a tour, The Great British Country Fête takes us to the Suffolk village of Upham, and designer Fly Davis has turned the room into a field on a sunny day - I liked funny little details like the clouds on the wall being made of doilies. Farmer Joe (Graham Lappin) has been approached by Tesco to sell Cameltowe Farm for a new supermarket. In resisting their offer, he's launched this country Fête to prove that the whole village is behind him in wanting to keep their unique country ways. That's pretty much all there is story-wise but this 75-minute show feels packed regardless.

Katie Brayben and Gabriel Vick play all the other characters, and the three actors also play all the instruments - including, sometimes, taking over the piano from each other mid-song. Their enthusiasm is infectious, and carry you through a slightly annoying first song that overuses the fact that the village has been named "Upham" so it can rhyme with "stick it up'em," a joke that just about works once, not as the basis for an entire song. Fortunately that was the only real niggle and things start going wrong for Farmer Joe when we meet the villagers who seem to prove all the worst things about the countryside, starting with the appearance of some racist jam (white grape a specialty; no blackcurrant under any circumstances.) There's also a female vicar who gets a bit too excited around young boys and a couple of trustafarians who haven't quite worked out that it's the female goat they should be milking. Bruce's songs are fun and energetically performed, the best probably being the coming-out song from Farmer Joe's gay son with a passion for hair-straighteners (a bit ironic considering it's the curly-haired Vick performing this) and this song also gets a disco remix as an encore. Anthea Williams' production is fast-paced, energetic and affectionate, and if you can't get swept up in something as silly and fun as this then there's no helping you.

The Great British Country Fête by Russell Kane and Michael Bruce is booking until the 14th of August at the Bush Theatre.
Jul. 28th, 2010 @ 12:54 pm Tweet and lowdown 19: Await instructions
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I know, I know, what your life's really been lacking is knowing what it would look like if I led a parade of my Twitter followers. Fortunately this can now be amended. As for the last week's tweets:

Rat-tail haircut? Is it the 80s? Next thing you know, Tiffany will be singing in shopping malls.
12:22 PM Jul 21st via txt

I could listen to "What Have I Done To Deserve This" indefinitely without getting sick of it.
3:12 PM Jul 23rd via txt

Well, so far tonight's show looks interesting: I've been given headphones & told to await instructions...
7:24 PM Jul 23rd via txt

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Jul. 27th, 2010 @ 10:46 pm Theatre review: Wolfboy the Musical (slight return)
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This is a "slight return" review because I actually saw one of the very early previews of this show last year - my original review. But somehow I managed to drag my carcass to it again for its West End run at Trafalgar 2.



Yes, Daniel Boys replaced LeeFromSteps as Christian, which doesn't hurt. And as an added bonus, Cherry is now played by the lovely Emma Rigby wot was Hannah in Hollyoaks. I have to admit to a chuckle reading her programme bio where it says her character had battled anorexia and bulimia - over on lowculture, the fact that the writers could never seem to decide which of the two eating disorders she had (it varied depending on what the plot required) led to her disease being christened Hannahrexia. To be honest though I'd booked before I'd heard about D-Boys' involvement, since the other half of the cast remains the same, which means another chance to see the ridiculously attractive Gregg Lowe's nipples.

It's over a year since I saw the preview, and I've seen nearly 200 other shows since so I can't easily compare, but my review from last year stands, more or less. I notice I said it was 75 minutes long, which means I was right to suspect it had been extended a bit for the West End (it now runs at 85 mins.) I wonder if that extra 10 minutes has mostly been added to the start? It definitely felt as if it took a hell of a long time for the two boys' relationship to get going. Maybe they expanded the role of Christian so as to attract a "name" like D-Boys to the show? Like I say, I can't really tell where the differences were but that was my instinct. The nurse also mentions Bernie should go for a swim, and I'm sure he did before but didn't here. Which leads to the bizarre possibility that one of the "improvements" made involved not putting Gregg Lowe in swimming trunks, but that can't possibly be true can it?

Anyway Daniel Boys' voice is as good as ever and Rigby gets what laughs there are as the world's most spectacularly unprofessional nurse. Although I think the original Christian, LeeFromSteps, made a more convincing plumber - no, think about it though, if you heard LeeFromSteps actually was a plumber now, you'd believe it wouldn't you?¹ Putting D-Boys in an endless succession of lumberjack shirts doesn't buy you that kind of authenticity. He does look better than the last time I saw him on stage though, which makes me think I was right to think he was just knackered during Painted Lady. The chest-hair situation appears to be currently "aggressively trimmed but not actually shaved," which I can live with. Elsewhere I'm still not convinced the musical element actually justifies itself, and Leon Parris' songs sound less like actual songs, more like the "in-between-songs" bits in musicals that are through-sung. Paul Holowaty's still the weakest singer but at least sounds like he's had a bit of vocal training since last year, or at least practice makes perfect because the difficult notes are just awkward rather than painful. And in the non-singing parts it has to be said his performance is great, believably but quite likeably demented. Meanwhile Gregg Lowe continues to be very good, and to own nipples. And there we have it.

Wolfboy the Musical by Russell Labey and Leon Parris, based on the play by Brad Fraser, is booking until the 31st of July at Trafalgar Studio 2.

¹he's actually a personal trainer
Jul. 26th, 2010 @ 10:29 pm Theatre review: Spur of the Moment
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A couple of years ago the Royal Court scored a big hit and a lot of publicity with Polly Stenham's precocious debut, That Face, so you might wonder if there's a cynical attempt to replicate some of that buzz in producing another play by a teenager. Fortunately Anya Reiss, who wrote Spur of the Moment at 17, justifies the theatre's faith in her with a solid, entertaining and interesting piece. There is another similarity with Stenham though, in that Reiss also focuses on a middle-class, nuclear family and shows them to be as spectacularly fucked up under the surface as any denizen of The Jeremy Kyle Show.

The central character is Delilah (an incredibly assured stage debut from Shannon Tarbet,) 12 years old going on 13, and lusting after the 21-year old lodger, Daniel (James McArdle, fresh from playing Malcolm in the Globe's recent Danteesque Macbeth.) When her parents' arguing gets too much for her, in the titular spur of the moment, Delilah kisses Daniel, to his horror. Then the next day, Daniel kisses back. It says a lot about the writing but also Tarbet and McArdle's performances that this setup doesn't put either character into a familiar box - Delilah isn't a Lolita, Daniel not a sleaze. You just get to follow the story on its own terms, and the story itself doesn't always go in the directions you think it might either. But despite all this the focus of the play lies elsewhere, as the parents (Kevin Doyle and Sharon Small) are so wrapped up in their constant squabbling and one-upmanship (which provides many of the play's funniest moments) that their daughter's crisis takes place right under their noses.

Elsewhere there's a small role (but with one big scene) for Yasmin Paige, formerly of The Sarah Jane Adventures, as one of Delilah's friends, and she's also good here. Director Jeremy Herrin does a good job of what could be quite a tonally difficult play (with much running in and out of different rooms, it borders on farce sometimes) and overall this is indeed impressive, although I think some of the 5-star reviews may be a bit much and (ironically considering this is such an unpardonable sin in the play) a touch patronising on account of the writer's age. Incidentally if you're planning on seeing this, Max Jones' (clever, with a witty little surprise hidden in it as well) set is on two levels, so while I'm normally happy to sit in the front row, I opted for about five rows back this time, and I'd recommend that if you get there in time (it's unreserved seating as always Upstairs) because quite a lot of the action does take place in the upper level.

Spur of the Moment by Anya Reiss is booking until the 21st of August at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs.
Jul. 26th, 2010 @ 01:09 pm Forking hell
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I remember quite a bit more of the dream I had last night, especially one sequence of it. This was one of the ones where I was actually doing something rather than watching, but it still felt like a movie - specifically a spooky ghost story. There was me as part of a group of other people - presumably people I know in real life but I can't remember who any of them were - and we were going through a number of setpieces involving this ghost or ghosts. There was a library involved, which I'm pretty sure was the library from my old University, so a 1960s blocky building, not an old-fashioned, traditionally creepy building. But other than that the dream didn't seem to be set in Exeter. There was also an annual marathon involved in some way, I think the ghost appeared in the library every year on marathon day. As I say there were a few vague scenes involving some kind of ghostly events, but then one sequence that I remember quite specifically, where we went to a restaurant. This was a bit of a gimmicky restaurant, the gimmick being that you waited for your group to be called out, but if they were busy instead of being called to a table, you would be called to act as waiters to another table. Anyone who got picked to help out, then got their own meal for free. Our group did have to wait on another group, who were already seated, and we had to lay the table. Each of us got given one kind of utensil, and I had the forks. I started going round the table laying them down, but the diner complained that I'd given him a spoon. I tried again - I definitely had a handful of forks - and every time, by the time it touched the table it was a spoon. This was the ghost's doing, and after a couple of attempts I actually watched the fork as I lowered it towards the table, and could see it morphing into a spoon. The customer also saw this happening so couldn't complain too much, there was clearly something freaky going on.

With this dream I had another rather unusual experience in that I could feel myself waking up (and may even have got as far as hitting the snooze button) but the dream kept dragging me back, wanting to finish. Not in the usual way of finding it hard to wake up, but very specifically as if the story wasn't over yet and I wasn't allowed to wake up until the solution. Which involved me working out that the ghost wasn't actually haunting the library at all, it had died somewhere else on the marathon route and would haunt the whole race every year, but was only visible in the library (I guess before the library was built the race ran a slightly different route.) Not the most astonishing of plot twists but evidently my brain was determined that I needed to get to it - maybe it was me watching Sherlock last night, my brain was in a mode not to be satisfied without a solution.
Jul. 25th, 2010 @ 02:36 pm (Una! Stubbs!)
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It's not often there's something worth me writing a lowculture preview of on a Sunday, but tonight we get the long-awaited reboot of Sherlock Holmes, which as well as having an interesting cast is also written by Doctor Who's Steven "The Moff" Moffat and Mark Gatiss. I'm not sure if we should be worried that a show as heavily plugged as Sherlock has turned up in the summer "dead" season, but I guess we'll find out tonight: Better Holmes and Gardens.
Jul. 24th, 2010 @ 12:33 pm Mother Bird
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I can hardly remember anything about what I dreamt last night except one tiny thing, but it was bizarre enough that I wanted to make a record of it: The dream included a wedding, Mother Teresa was getting married to Big Bird. Even within the dream, this seemed rather odd, but not because it was a dead nun marrying an enormous puppet from Sesame Street. No, it was simply the height difference that was weird. Apart from that it was, of course, a perfectly sensible pairing.
Jul. 23rd, 2010 @ 09:53 pm Theatre review: Domini Públic
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This week's show at the National Theatre's Square² comes from Spain. For Roger Bernat's Domini Públic (Public Domain) the area isn't actually fenced off, because what your ticket buys isn't so much seeing the show, as hearing it and participating in it. Everyone is given a set of headphones and asked to wait for instructions; the square is laid out with signs indicating Right and Left, and once the show starts we hear a comforting voice asking questions. Depending on our answers, we move to different parts of the square, or make gestures (arms in the air, hands over eyes, fingers on lips etc.) It's very much a show of two halves, the first being like a fun game in which you get to find out things about the people around you and what they're willing to admit to in public.

About halfway through there's a sharp change in tone as the piece gets darker and also takes on more of a narrative. Based on a few seemingly random questions posed earlier in the show, the audience are now in three separate groups, acting out a simple scenario that I won't give away here, and thanks to some unsubtle but effective music choices coming through the headphones we get a sense of danger and menace. This is where the fact that the show is in a public space was an important element for me, because passersby can't actually hear what the audience is being told to do, but would still have been able to work out the very simple story that was being acted out in mime, not knowing that who did what in the story was being regulated by utterly random things like what football team people supported. There's also a couple of brief moments where people's boundaries are tested, which is quite interesting but also uncomfortable (in a challenging sense, i.e. the effect is deliberate.) Basically this is a really tricky show to describe and get any kind of balance between giving an impression of what it's like, and giving everything away. At times it feels a bit self-important, as if it thinks it's saying more than it actually is, but it's certainly a unique experience and worth trying out if you can.

Domini Públic by Roger Bernat is booking until the 25th of July at the National Theatre's Square².
Jul. 23rd, 2010 @ 02:11 pm Book review: Sunnyside
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I remember loving Glen David Gold's first novel, Carter Beats the Devil, and since that came out in 2001 it's been a long wait for a follow-up. Fortunately Sunnyside lives up to the first book, and is another long, meandering historical novel that mixes up real events (most of the main characters actually existed) with fiction. This time Gold focuses on Hollywood during the First World War, and the figure linking everything together is Charlie Chaplin. The book opens with an eerie, fantasy-like opening chapter in which throughout America visions of Chaplin are seen on the same day, and it's all go from there. Knowing that truth is stranger than fiction, I wondered if that would turn out not to be one of Gold's inventions, and he does indeed claim in an afterword that there was a genuine case of Chaplin-related mass hysteria in 1916.

In Hollywood we follow Chaplin as he makes the film the book's named after, one of his rare flops, and as he embarks on his ill-fated first marriage. He and other early Hollywood superstars (Chaplin's curly-haired nemesis Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Sr) also get to experience the birth of celebrity culture, and the alien notion of strangers wanting to know every little detail about them. While they raise money for the war effort, we also follow a couple of US soldiers actually fighting in WWI, one in France and one in Russia (where the allies weren't even meant to be, since they weren't actually at war with Russia; the fear of Bolshevism is of course what made them come up with tenuous reasons to continue a presence there.) It's a sprawling novel full of fantastic characters and Gold manages to balance a number of different tones as well, from war novel to Hollywood soap opera to even a sort of dark fairytale in the Russian forests. While not all the threads come together in the end most do in surprising ways, and it's interesting to see the recurring theme of how much the US movie industry grew as a result of WWI (the European film studios were too busy being at war, so Hollywood was able to establish a monopoly that to all intents and purposes still exists a century later.) Recommended, especially if you're looking for a long book that'll keep you going for a while, but which has enough different strands and moods to it not to get monotonous.
Jul. 22nd, 2010 @ 11:39 pm Theatre review: The Tempest (The Bridge Project)
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I was unimpressed to say the least by the first leg of this year's Bridge Project at the Old Vic, so what would I think of the production it's been paired with? This time it's Shakespeare's final solo play, and although Sam Mendes maintains a rather sombre tone once more, at least The Tempest is a play that suits that treatment. I felt the sad, discordant music that overlays much of the action was a step too far, and found it irritating pretty quickly, but otherwise the way the action on Tom Piper's set revolves around a central sand circle conveys a nice sense of gentle, eerie magic.

While I didn't mind Mendes' approach, this time it was Stephen Dillane as Prospero who I couldn't warm to - his performance is downright soporific, which is especially a problem as we're barely into the play when he has a lengthy expositionary speech that's hard work at the best of times. It's a shame because there's hints of a particularly sinister Prospero here, a very manipulative one who was also clearly a terrible Duke of Milan, so uninterested in ruling that he didn't notice he was being usurped until after the event, so him regaining power at the end is surely a mixed blessing at best. Unfortunately Dillane doesn't make you care about the character enough to look into these more deeply.

Fortunately there's a lot of other good performances here. Juliet Rylance and the ever-reliable Edward Bennett make Miranda and Ferdinand instantly likeable and very funny, while the show's other laughs come of course from the drunks, Anthony O'Donnell a bumbling, very Welsh Trinculo, while Thomas Sadosky is much better cast here as Stephano, and brings the laughs his Touchstone was missing. Christopher and I disagreed a bit in our interpretation of Christian Camargo's androgynous Ariel; I found his subservience and robotic speech to almost have hints of him being mentally disabled - for once, instead of being an excuse for more exposition that shows Prospero as being rather patronising, it seemed as if him being told his own life story again because he forgets it every so often was actually the case. My theatre companion for the evening didn't see it this way though, but in any case it was an interesting portrayal. Christopher said he enjoyed it but did add that it reminded him how much he loves the play itself, and it was this rather than the specific production that made it a good night at the theatre for him. Oh and we both agreed that the projection of a home movie during the wedding scene was just baffling. I should note that the performance we went to happened to be the one with captioning for the deaf, and that this was actually relevant at times because diction was still sometimes an issue, so having the lines flash up on a screen was sometimes necessary, but obviously most audiences won't have that.

It's also worth knowing in advance that this production doesn't have an interval. There have been some cuts but it still runs for 2hrs 20 minutes straight. I was prepared and hadn't drunk much before the show but I noted a lot of people having to dash off to the loo once we neared the 2hr mark. So overall this was a decent but not outstanding show.

The Tempest by William Shakespeare is in repertory until the 21st of August at the Old Vic.
Jul. 21st, 2010 @ 10:49 pm Theatre review: Lingua Franca
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A strange little play, premiering at the Finborough, Lingua Franca is inspired by writer Peter Nichols' own experiences as a language teacher. It's 1955 and, wanting to see the world described in A Room With A View, Steven (Chris New) arrives in Florence to teach English, and almost gets himself sacked in his first lesson. There's something quite sitcom-like in the setup if not the tone, as we spend a lot of the time in the staff room among a ragtag bunch of teachers dealing with the post-War world - there's the elderly virgin Jestin (Ian Gelder,) melancholy Russian Jew Irena (Rula Lenska) and a new arrival, Natalie Walter as Heidi, the flirty new German teacher. I would have been more interested to see more about her background, as she comes from an unfortunate generation of Germans who were raised as Nazis and have known nothing else, but she's largely there as a romantic interest for Steven, thus getting in the way of the desperately lonely Peggy (Charlotte Randle.) The best comic moments come from Abigail McKern as Madge, an Australian who keeps getting asked to teach languages she doesn't actually speak. There's a lot of ideas flying around about culture's significance in people's lives, inherent prejudices and Britain's attempts to reinvent itself on the world stage post-Empire, but it never quite solidifies, and despite some good performances I couldn't quite engage with the play.

Lingua Franca by Peter Nichols is booking until the 7th of August at the Finborough Theatre.
Jul. 21st, 2010 @ 01:20 pm Tweet and lowdown 18: And the lord taketh away
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Clearly my tweets have special powers - this week's roundup includes me complaining about the Big Giant Head posters outside the Old Vic. On our way to the Union last night, we noticed that the scary, overly-high-definition portraits had been replaced by more traditional promo photos of the plays. (Now if only that could actually improve the shows they're advertising...)

I'm not convinced "The Remains of the Day: The Musical!" is a good idea...
5:08 PM Jul 14th via web

So I see Gillian McKeith has been shit-stirring again. I SAID...
5:30 PM Jul 14th via web

Sleb Spot: I got smiled at by Joe Armstrong *swoon*
7:32 PM Jul 14th via txt

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Jul. 20th, 2010 @ 11:41 pm Theatre review: Assassins
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Assassins was the first Sondheim musical I ever saw, 16 years ago (I can even be accurate about how long ago it was because it was at the first Edinburgh Festival I went to, in 1994.) I can remember absolutely loving it, and despite having heard a lot of comments about the tunes being unmemorable, a couple of them (especially "Everybody's Got The Right" and "The Ballad of Guiteau") have been stuck in my head ever since. So I was feeling some trepidation on revisiting it, whether it'd live up to expectations, especially as I had more theatre companions than usual for this trip: Vanessa was a given since it's Sondheim, but Andy and Richard had also been intrigued by the show's premise.

With a book by John Weidman, this is a pitch-black satire on the American Dream that follows the assassins, both successful and unsuccessful, of various US Presidents. It was a rare flop for Sondheim on Broadway, and I can see why America might have had trouble embracing it; not only for any perceived disrespect towards the dead Presidents, but because its main aim is to puncture that firmly-held belief, the American Dream - the language here is aspirational, after all the theory is that anyone can grow up to be President, but if not, why not be the man who killed the President instead? As the song says, everybody's got the right to be happy, and being immortalised as a presidential assassin might just be what makes some people happy. Michael Strassen's production sees the studly ensemble actors stalk the theatre before the show starts, dressed as bodyguards (prompting a classic Vanessa "d'oh!" comment as we took our seats of "oh that's why he was wearing sunglasses indoors!") There's no story as such, but after kicking off with Glyn Kerslake as John Wilkes Booth [Lincoln, successful,] a trailblazer of sorts in this context, we see pieces of the stories of some of the other assassins, sometimes what led up to the deed, sometimes what happened to them afterwards. (Spoiler: It tended not to be good.)

There's a lot of great performances here - the aforementioned Kerslake, plus John Barr as the incredibly odd little man, Charles Guiteau [Garfield, successful,] Adam Jarrell as a strangely sweet Leon Czolgosz [McKinley, successful,] and Nick Holder as a grotesque and terrifying Samuel Byck [Nixon, unsuccessful - Sean Penn played him in a film a few years ago.] The funniest scenes come from Alison Lardner and Leigh McDonald as Lynette Fromme and Sara Jane Moore [Ford, unsuccessful,] as they bungle their attempt. (Looking at the programme notes shows their collaboration is actually an invention for dramatic purposes - they made separate failed attempts within a couple of weeks of each other; clearly Ford was not popular among women.) The standout song is "Unworthy of Your Love," Lardner's duet with Paul Callen as John Hinckley [Reagan, unsuccessful although he did wound him.] Out of context a sweet love song, in fact they're singing to their respective objects of obsession, Charles Manson and Jodie Foster (I thought Strassen could have made it clearer who the latter was - Callen pinned a photo of Foster on a pillar near us, but if you couldn't see it and didn't know the story you wouldn't know who the "Jodie" in the song was meant to be.) This song's downright sick sense of humour says a lot about what I love about this show.

Nolan Frederick as the Baladeer is also excellent, but his role in the drama is a bit vague - sometimes a narrator figure, he disappears for long periods with Booth taking on a similar role. Dramatically there's actually quite a lot wrong with how the piece is put together: Excellent while Holder's performance is, Byck's long, angry monologues do completely bring the show to a halt, twice. The show does have an atmospheric ending as the lesser-known assassins rally behind the only successful one in living memory to sell him their version of the American Dream, but in this production Marc Joseph makes for an unfortunately camp Lee Harvey Oswald [Kennedy, successful] which takes away from the effect a bit. Still, although this isn't a rediscovered classic, I wasn't disappointed, and actually found the songs pretty strong even if the storytelling is dodgy. Of those of us who've seen both the obscure Sondheim revivals in recent months, Vanessa preferred this one and I tend to agree, while Andy thought Anyone Can Whistle had the edge. All of us thought that, while flawed, it was definitely worth seeing.

Assassins by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman is booking until the 24th of July at the Union Theatre.
Jul. 19th, 2010 @ 10:10 pm Theatre review: Sucker Punch
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You can't accuse the Royal Court of doing things by halves: For this boxing-themed show, not only did they send some members of the cast to full-time training for months before rehearsals even started, much like a big-budget movie might, but designer Miriam Buether has also gutted the stalls to rebuild the theatre in traverse, with a raised platform representing a run-down gym, and of course a boxing ring in the middle. The Royal Court did something similar when turning the stage into a catwalk for Wig Out! a couple of years ago, but here the transformation is even more impressive - if, like me, you're in the stalls, you need to cast your eyes up to the familiar brown seats in the circle to actually be sure you're in the Jerwood Downstairs.

Sucker Punch is Roy Williams' take on being black in Britain in the '80s, through the story of a young boxer, Leon (Daniel Kaluuya - understandably the publicity has referenced the fact that he had a recurring role in Skins, but I mainly recognise him as Tea Leaf from Psychoville.) In a series of short scenes spanning the decade, we see him arrive at a gym where Charlie (Nigel Lyndsey) spots his potential and becomes his trainer/manager; he starts a relationship with Charlie's daughter Becky (Sarah Ridgeway) behind his back; goes up against a racist rival (Jason Maza) and defeats him; and falls out with his best friend Troy (Anthony Welsh.) Troy ends up moving to America, and his return provides the play's climax as the two now-successful boxers have their biggest ever fight against each other. Sacha Wares directs and brings a clarity and energy to the play that never lets up. It all rides on Kaluuya and he has no problems carrying the play, he's a dynamic and charismatic leading man who can then turn on a sixpence to be pretty terrifying in the ring when it's called for - after an hour-and-a-half of being charming it's quite the transformation. He's backed up well by the rest of the cast but there's no question whose show this is.

The play paints a pretty bleak picture of race relations - Leon is derided by black boxing fans for what they see as him selling out to white men; despite him being the only boxer not to leave him behind when he hits the big time, Charlie still has less affection for him than for the white boxers; and the only relationship where race is not an issue, that of Leon and Becky, is easily discarded. Ultimately though the politics is a background to the central story, and that is where the play succeeds, and where the Royal Court's decision to go all out has paid off. Also, kudos to Williams and Buether respectively, for avoiding two boxing story clichès that almost every similar story succumbs to: At no point is Leon asked to throw a fight (in fact the very concept of throwing fights is barely alluded to) and, despite the story featuring a brash, black American boxing promoter (Gary Beadle,) he is not made up to look like Don King. A flawed play perhaps, but a spot-on production and a great central performance elevate this to something a bit more than it might have been.

Sucker Punch by Roy Williams is booking until the 31st of July at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs.
Jul. 18th, 2010 @ 02:16 pm Sharktopus vs. Sharkodile
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Cancel the Oscars, because clearly this has all the awards sewn up. (Warning: Theme song may cause irritation.)



And it's got Eric Roberts in it, so you know it's quality. *Ahem.*

It kinda reminds me of a dream I had years ago actually. I hardly ever remembered dreams before I started writing them down here (and even now it's been months since I recalled one) but this one seems to have stuck - only instead of a Sharktopus it was more of a Sharkodile, but like the Sharktopus it also didn't seem to want to keep its activities exclusively underwater. In fact I'm pretty sure Sharkodile could fly, but it restrained itself to flying around inside a log cabin in the woods. I have a feeling I might have been getting my B-movie horror genres mixed up there.

Isn't it SyFy who are doing the US version of Being Human? In which case I'm not feeling any more optimistic about it than I was before.
Jul. 16th, 2010 @ 10:57 pm Theatre review: Lifegame
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Well I got to the end of my 9-day theatre marathon. Not that there was any doubt, it's not like I was doing something horrible for nine consecutive days, but you do have to watch out that something you enjoy doesn't end up being a chore, and nine days is probably a good top limit for that (Ian from There Ought To Be Clowns did nearly twice that earlier this year, and by the end of it didn't want to see the inside of another theatre for love nor money. He's recovered now though.) I'm now happy to have a couple of rest days, although by Monday I'll probably be going into withdrawal. And at least it's been a fairly varied week - West End stuff, Shakespeare done both very well and not so much, a little bit of politics and some miners in drag, and to end another completely different direction, in what is essentially an improv show.

Lifegame sees a group of performers from theatre company Improbable wait on stage for a surprise guest to be announced - neither they nor the audience knows who it is. In the performance Andy and I saw, it was Sir William Atkinson, a headmaster who's turned around a number of failing inner-city schools. He is interviewed to one side, and when a possible cue for a sketch comes up, the other performers leap in and attempt to dramatise it. There's a few variations built in to keep the momentum up (in one scene the actors couldn't make up lines, only repeat what Atkinson whispered to them; elsewhere they acted out a family scene with him ringing a bell or honking a horn to indicate whether they were "hot or cold" in relation to how accurate the depiction was.) Clearly this show is going to vary from night to night depending on who the guest is, and unfortunately Atkinson took a long time to relax, and to start with seemed to be under the impression he was in a version of What's My Line, being deliberately evasive about what he'd done to earn his knighthood. It also meant the actors seemed unsure of how to deal with him - not having interviewed a KBE before, they asked what they should call him to his face, and he answered "Sir William;" it took them until the second half to clear up that he'd been joking.

We wondered if they'd use the interval to bond a bit with Sir William backstage, and he did seem a bit more at ease afterwards. While it never became a great show it did improve, and there were a couple of nice insights. I liked a scene where he was asked to play the teacher who'd inspired him, opposite Guy Dartnell playing his younger self, and that was an interesting moment as he clearly went from an impression of his own teacher, to showing the patient and canny teacher he in turn became. Elsewhere, there was a nice moment as they revisited his early teaching years - faced with an inspirational black teacher it was probably inevitable the actors, playing his students, would tease him about To Sir With Love; with a bit of obvious embarrassment Atkinson confessed he'd loved the film, and seen himself in Poitier. I think maybe this is why the show tonight felt like a missed opportunity - as Andy pointed out, they spent far too long (the entire first half and a bit of the second) dealing with his childhood years and teenage crush, which were all very well but nothing out of the ordinary, and not enough with the more recent years, the ones that after all earnt him his knighthood and in turn would have made him a candidate to be interviewed in the first place. As for the rest, it being improv it was bound to be hit-and-miss. Niall Ashdown, who I'm sure did a few Whose Line Is It Anyways years ago, was the most consistently funny.

In the spirit of the show, the Lyric have filled the cafe area with blackboards, postcards, exercise books etc, each area asking a question that visitors are invited to answer. It's a shame we only got to the theatre just before the show started, so only really had the interval to peruse what people had written, because there were some very witty comments made there - surely a potential spur to another improvisational show. In the end Lifegame wasn't a terrible show, we both found stuff to enjoy, but it lacked a little bit of spark.

Lifegame by Improbable is booking until the 17th of July at the Lyric Hammersmith.
Jul. 15th, 2010 @ 11:30 pm Theatre review: As You Like It (The Bridge Project)
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In last year's inaugural Bridge Project Sam Mendes directed The Winter's Tale, but apparently that didn't get the play off his chest as this year's As You Like It feels, for its first half at least, as if it's a production of the later play. And this production is, undoubtedly, a game of two halves. It should probably be noted in advance that As You Like It is rather dear to me as the first Shakespeare comedy I saw on stage, and so the one that made me realise that the plays were actually funny today, not just tragedies without the deaths, whose jokes had staled centuries ago. So I'm predisposed to have a problem with a version that, for its first 75 minutes or so, determinedly suppresses all the humour. Mendes focuses on the banishment of Duke Senior by his brother, and Oliver de Bois' malice, as his starting point for an incredibly melancholy take, punctuated by having the scene changes done slowly in darkness, with mournful music playing. The performances are all kept very low-key, and even when we move to the forest this is a wintery Arden full of skeletal trees, and Mendes even throws in an extra death to make sure we go into the interval with a spring in our step. It's awkward 'cause I'm all for being innovative but I just can't get behind this morose take; it also makes a bit of a nonsense of Jaques (Stephen Dillane) because why do the rest of the court tease him for being melancholy, when they're all walking around with faces like a cat's arse too? [info]vanessaw can confirm I was rather ranty in the interval about Mendes putting his midlife crisis on stage to depress everyone; she herself asked if I was sure it was meant to be a comedy. In fact during the first half I often heard that most depressing of sounds in a Shakespeare comedy: Audience members forcing themselves to chuckle because they were sure there were meant to be jokes here somewhere.

With the interval placed after Orlando arrives at the exiled Duke's court, Mendes' conceit is to have time pass, and for it to be spring when we rejoin them, for a mercifully cheerier conclusion to the story. Having been weirdly subdued in the opener, Juliet Rylance finally gets a chance to show why Rosalind is such a great character. Unfortunately I found Christian Camargo's Orlando rather mumbly throughout, and Thomas Sadoski not a particularly funny Touchstone. Vanessa said she was finding it tricky following the Americans' lines - I didn't think this was a general feature of the US half of the cast, with Michelle Beck's Celia and Alvin Epstein's Adam/Martext particularly clearly spoken and delivered with good timing. Edward Bennett, aka David Tennant's Hamlet understudy, uses the fact that he's such a good comic actor to get away with the tricky role of Oliver de Bois. His mouth-to-teeth ratio is still too unevenly balanced for him to be properly fanciable, but he does look quite good with his shirt off.

The second half, which might as well be an entirely different play, goes some way to redeeming this production and actually has the laughs that had been lacking, but even then I can't say there was a single performance that exceeded those I've seen in the past. Reading the programme notes on the way home, the essay (by James Shapiro) is rather sniffy about As You Like It, the barely-hidden subtext being that this is one of the lesser plays and oh well, let's do what we can with it. For my money, flaws though they may be, the thin plot, various characters having sudden and unexplained changes of heart, a bloody lion turning up in a French forest for some reason, all make up a rather demented fairytale, and don't detract from the fact that along the way there's one great comic sequence after another. I'm all in favour of finding the dark side to plays but to me there's something fundementally wrongheaded about sucking the joy out of something in the belief that it elevates it. Maybe Shakespeare just wrote a play that was a bit of bonkers fun.

As You Like It by William Shakespeare is in repertory until the 21st of August at the Old Vic.
Jul. 14th, 2010 @ 11:45 pm Theatre review: Women, Power and Politics Part 2: Now
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Bouncing backwards and forwards around London and it's back to Kilburn for the concluding part of the Women, Power and Politics season. Now covers UK politics from the 1990s to the present day, starting with Joy Wilkinson's Acting Leader, with Niamh Cusack as Margaret Beckett in the months after John Smith's death, when she was running the Labour Party while also campaigning to become its permanent leader. It's a rather sad piece, as it soon becomes obvious Beckett would be swept aside by Tony Blair's onslaught, and at the heart of it is the question of what would have happened if a Beckett win could have prevented New Labour and everything that went wrong with it. But there is humour to break things up, mainly as Lara Rossi is required to play all the other parts and delivers impressions of Clare Short, Tony Blair and others (Cusack herself has to pitch in and be Gordon) but probably Wilkinson's wittiest moment is in having Rossi utterly fail to do a Peter Mandelson impression, because who the hell does a Peter Mandelson impression?

Next up Zinnie Harris offers the only all-male story in The Panel, more of a sketch really, where five men on an interviewing panel are trying to find a suitable woman to give a high-profile job to (having been told they had to have an all-female shortlist) and managing to find fault with all of them. "Positive Discrimination" also crops up a lot in Gillian Slovo's interviews with real politicians, which are recreated in between the plays - Jacqui Smith was one of the "Blair Babes" in the 1997 election, who got their seats through all-women shortlists, while once again Kika Markham steals the show with her spot-on Ann Widdecombe, capturing the carefully cultivated no-nonsense persona of the woman who, of course, disapproves of some women being given this kind of leg-up. One male modern politician even gets a look-in, although I think John Hollingworth as an amusingly verbose Nick Clegg might be a late addition as he's not listed in the programme.

Playing the Game is a look at women politicians using image to succeed, and the people pulling the strings behind the scenes, told through the medium of a university student council election, and although well performed by Lara Rossi, Claire Cox and Amy Loughton, it went down like a lead balloon tonight. In the interval I got into a conversation with the people sitting near me and the general consensus was that it felt like something that had been improvised in the course of an afternoon. Things get better after the interval though as Sam Holcroft's offering gives Heather Craney and Stella Gonet a powerful confrontation - but I can't say too much about Pink because a lot of its impact comes from how cleverly Holcroft withholds information at the start, so the audience gradually puts the pieces together. I did think the play veered into slightly silly territory near the end but overall it's a good one.

The grand finale goes to Sue Townsend, whose You, Me and Wii sees a New Labour MP (Claire Cox) canvassing for re-election in her run-down Leicestershire constituency, when circumstances thrust her into the home of some of her constituents, a family who barely leave the house and have become disillusioned and disconnected from politics and the world. It's got a lot of great one-liners as you'd expect from Townsend, and a slightly chaotic tone that means it's a good note to finish on, and although at times I felt like it was trying to cram a few too many of New Labour's mistakes into its sitcom-ish conceit, it gets the job done. Overall Now has some interesting points to make, and director Indhu Rubasingham has done an excellent job marshalling everything together, but the first installment was definitely the stronger in my opinion; Moira Buffini's Handbagged the standout play in the season, with Rebecca Lenkiewicz's The Lioness a close second.

Women, Power and Politics Part 2: Now by Joy Wilkinson, Zinnie Harris, Bola Agbaje, Sam Holcroft, Sue Townsend and Gillian Slovo is in repertory until the 17th of July at the Tricycle Theatre.