thriftycritic
Thrifty Critic
Finely sculpted news and reviews for the click and swipe age.
19 posts
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
Text
The Dresser: Malvern Festival Theatres
with Julian Clary and Matthew Kelly
A play about plays in which fear flickers perpetually at the edges
Whether or not Harwood’s opinion of the critical fraternity accords with that of his character’s (“Hate the critics?” says Sir. “I have nothing but compassion for them. How can one hate the crippled, the mentally deficient, and the dead?”), The Dresser has always been well regarded and stands as a classic within his oeuvre. It was captured on celluloid in 1983 with Albert Finney and Edward Fox, later in a televised version with Anthony Hopkins and Ian McKellen (2015), while theatrical reprisals have involved some interesting pairings too, including Reece Shearsmith opposite Ken Stott (2016) and Nicholas Lyndhurst opposite Julian Glover (2005).
Set in wartime London, as the bombs are dropping around them, the play depicts the decline of one of the remaining great actor-managers of the day, desperately propped up by Norman, his long-time dresser and devotee. The principle actor, known only as Sir, a grandee of the fading repertory tradition, is in the grip of a lachrymose breakdown, with less than an hour to go before the curtain goes up. He can’t remember his lines, even as he applies his make-up. Norman, his fey and affectionate defender of twenty years, must disentangle his scrambled Shakespeare and urge him to remove his black face paint, for tonight he is playing, not Othello as he had assumed, but King Lear.
There is a sense of mildew and decay to Tim Shortall’s set design: the dressing room captures sharply the Learesque theme of decline – of repertory theatre, of the actor-manager tradition, of the ageing man himself, as well as, of course, the old social structures of the twentieth century.
Matthew Kelly is excellent as Sir, the crumbling, narcissistic thespian ‘tottering between confusion and chaos’. At various times he is slumped motionless on his chaise longue, at others he is fully erect and gesturing towards the heavens, vacillating as he does between moribund despair and theatrical grandiosity. Despite the shakiest of starts (his entrance his painfully mistimed), Sir comes through in the end. His spirits are high and he launches a bombastic rant at the crew for not generating a loud enough storm during the famous tempest scene. Norman – long inured to these off-stage outbursts – punctures his pomposity with the sarcastic putdown: ‘I’m pleased that you're pleased.’
Julian Clary’s dresser is likeable, vulnerable, catty and loquacious. He has a habit of proffering anecdotes about his various male friends, who we imagine might have been more than simply his friends. To Madge (Rebecca Charles), the starch stiff, buttoned up, stage manager who has long held a flame for the decaying actor, he says tartly: “We all have our little sorrows, ducky, you’re not the only one. The littler you are, the larger the sorrow. You think you loved him? What about me?”
For Julian Clary, Norman’s veiled sexuality is a departure from the unapologetic exuberance of his popular onscreen persona – for this is the 1940s after all, and imprisonment a real possibility. Clary may be an accomplished performer, and as you would expect he tickles the laughter out of the play’s lacerating humour, but he doesn’t quite flex the full emotional range of his character, or tap into the terrible poignancy of the plays closing moments.
The show must go on, as the old adage goes, even in the midst of war, even in the midst of a nervous breakdown, even as the city is blitzed. But what happens when the lights come down and the performance comes to an end?
'For the first time in my life', confides Sir, 'the future is hidden from me. I am frightened of what is to come.' This is the fear flickering at the edges of a play that is ultimately about endings and the uncertainly that lies beyond.
January 18th - January 22nd
Directed by Terry Johnson
Written by Ronald Harwood
Cast includes Emma Amos, Stephen Cavanagh, Samuel Holmes.
1 note
·
View note
Text
An interview with The Racist: Geoff Mills talks to Trevor Noah
(republished from an old interview for UK Theatre Network in advance of his 2013 tour The Racist )
(image attribution: slgckgc)
Six years ago Trevor Noah had never graced a stage. Now he finds himself on some of the most high profile stages in the world. Here in the UK you may have seen him seducing Stephen Fry and Sandy Toksvik in QI, or else firmly slapping down his credentials as a slick, intelligent performer on Live at the Apollo. On the other side of the Atlantic he has appeared on some of the biggest shows around, including The Tonight Show and The David Letterman Show. Still only 29, there are currently rumours proliferating over the web that he is to star in his own US sitcom, which will draw (if the rumours are true) from the circumstances of Noah’s extraordinary life.
As the child of a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa woman in apartheid South Africa, he was, as he puts it, “born a crime”. In the Johannesburg township of Soweto, where he was brought up, the law required him to walk on the opposite side of the road to his father. If a police car approached when he was out walking with his mother, she would drop his hand and temporarily disown him, a response that made him feel, as he says in one of his sets, "like a bag of weed". Of that brand of racism, in that time and place, he reflects with mock wistfulness: “They don’t make it like that anymore…No dogs, no tear-gas.”
His mixed race status and unique biography supply him with a parapet from which to fire at both casual, unknowing racism at one end of the scale (“If you’re, like, from Africa,’ he was once asked by a cerebrally challenged American surfer girl, “have you, like, ever had Aids?”), and at the other side the kind of tight lipped, racial trepidation we are so good at in the UK. Even the title of his current tour, The Racist, is a challenge to those who are unable or unwilling to think beyond the parameters of political correctness. “I chose that provocative title because I knew that that’s what the show isn’t. I also knew that anyone brave enough to come to a show with that title would be the sort of people I’d want in the audience.”
I spoke to Noah just before he was due to appear at the Cambridge Junction, and a day before he ventures into the Midlands. He is laidback and friendly, articulate and insightful, but behind the apparent casualness I sense great purpose and drive. For a man poised on the edge of global stardom, he is impeccably polite.
Can you start off by telling us a little bit about your tour, The Racist?
The tour is really me doing a show I basically made in Edinburgh. The first time I went to Edinburgh in 2012, I had no clue what it was about and I had no clue what I was going to do there, so I just went there and basically started talking, every day talk a little bit more, and people would laugh a little bit more, and slowly created was has now become a show. I then had the pleasure of taking the show to the Soho in London, did that for a month, and then now I’ve come back and I’m doing other cities, other places, everywhere in the UK, which is great.
That was the longest ever run the Soho Theatre’s had, right?
Yeah, that was fantastic. It was a wonderful thing to have done.
You talk a lot about your background and race relations. How much of your material is consciously political and how much is instinct?
I think its instinct to be honest, because it’s something I notice all the time, something that I always see, that’s always in our world, if that makes sense. As much as people try and turn a blind eye to it, it always rears its end in some shape and form. So it’s always something I’ve noticed, and subconsciously, because of the world I’ve grown up in, I’m always very aware of it.
I was watching an excerpt from one of your documentaries, and you said that you come from a background of poverty. How much of that actually drove you to where you are now? Or is that just incidental?
Oh no, I think that’s incidental. In South Africa most people of colour grew up in poverty, that was our reality, so if anything it’s just part of me, it’s my life, it’s what I’ve lived. And I’m glad I shared it with many people because I didn’t suffer alone. I didn’t think it was suffering at the time, I thought that was normal. Now when I look back I go, ‘Oh we were poor,’ but before I was like, ‘yep, this is life!’ So it’s just part of me, but it’s not what defines me.
Do you find there was a noticeable difference between audiences in the UK and in America?
Oh definitely. American audience want jokes, they don’t have time for you to be coming and giving them your opinion on life, just come up with the jokes or go home. They’re much quicker to want the punch line, they want that, they want it to be delivered; it’s a fast food world, whereas in the UK people are a lot smarter. UK audiences are some of the smartest in the world, they’ve seen comedy for a long time, they have a different approach to it, they want to listen, they want to take something away from the show. American audience don’t mess around when it comes to that. They’ll think you’re preaching if you’re not careful.
I watched you on QI, and you managed to seduce both Stephen Fry and Sandy Toksvik. (see clip below) Do you have that effect on everyone?
No (laughs), I don’t think I do. It was just a fleeting moment in time - that I’ll get to look back on fondly. That was a fantastic moment.
I don’t know if this is so much a question as an observation, but you made the comment at one point that we don’t tell each other how we really feel when it comes to race relations. Certainly in the UK we’re almost afraid to broach the topic, and I think your comedy goes some way towards breaking that down. I think if people were more open, more honest, even if they were expressing slightly dangerous opinions, at least people have a way of arguing back, opening up a discourse...
I always feel the most dangerous thing is to bury it, the most dangerous thing is to act like it’s not there. It starts with very small things, a nodding of the head there, a shaking of the head there, just grows from that. I always feel an open fight is better because you can clear the air and you can move forward from there, and so I guess that’s where I’ve come from, a world where I go, ‘Let’s just talk about things.’ It doesn’t really have to be heavy, it doesn’t even have to be taken seriously, but at least let’s talk about it.
Have you got a career plan? Or are you going to see where life takes you?
Oh no, I’ve never had a plan. I always think plans just set you up for frustration and disappointment. I plan to enjoy myself and I plan to do the best I can at what I’m doing, and then everything else falls into place.
Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time, and having discovered what you’ve done I’m going to be one of your biggest devotees now.
Thank you, that’s an honour. Thank you very much. Have a great weekend.
(republished from an old interview for UK Theatre Network in advance of his 2013 tour The Racist)
https://www.trevornoah.com/
0 notes
Text
Sleeping Beauty: Sittingbourne
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
For all its colourful, outlandish silliness, the traditional panto is a deceptively sophisticated artform, and more often than you think reaches its highest form not on a major metropolitan stage with a cast full of overripe, half forgotten celebrities, but in England’s noble provinces. In this production we find ourselves in a spacious curtained off hall inside a leisure centre, where the smell of the chlorine and the roar of the crowd become part of the immersive experience.
Sleeping Beauty - directed and starring Mikey Smith, hits all the right notes in this crowd pleasing, cliché evading rendition of a fairy tale classic. Smith’s Joey the Jester, a loveable, fidgety man-child haplessly in love with the Princess, is a heavily physicalised comic creation: there are double takes, triple takes, quadruple takes, camp leg lifts, and an impeccably timed, hilarious false exit. For all his idiocy, Joey’s lines are rapidly and dexterously delivered, and always with Smith’s knowing wink hovering behind the persona.
Holly-Jane Crowter glitters as Fairy Kindheart, a melodious, mellifluous delight who refuses to yield to the exuberantly evil, deliciously sinister Carabosse (Hollie Jones), whose glowering presence fills the stage. Jordan Kennedy plays a perfectly charming Prince but his portrayal of the King as a hunched, word-muddling, buffoon is far more comically satisfying. His bass, plummy tones and non-sensical circular statements offer a satirical portrait of Boris Johnson as he instructs his daughter, in sermonizing tones: ‘You must stay in, but go out, but don’t go out if you are able to stay in, but go out. In these trying times we must all pull together, but not too close, because you must stay in , but go out... Wear a mask where you have to, except when you don’t have to, but do wear a mask. And if you do have a Christmas party, just deny it ever happened, and people should forget about it in about a week or so.’
Gina Amundsen is magnetically wholesome as Princess Beauty, and her performance is distinguished by a singing voice both powerful and pure. There are some wonderfully devised set pieces, not least of which is the extended pun fest involving almost every chocolate bar in the land, each line delivered as a giant wrapper is pulled out of the picnic basket: ‘Did I tell you she was an Aero-hostess?’ ‘She used to Revel in me, I think she was worried we’d Drift apart. ‘She couldn’t wait to get her hands on my Curly Wurly.’
Engaging an audience who span the age range: that is the art of the pantomime. When the children are screaming out in excitement, and the adults are laughing with sincerity, this is a sure sign that the challenge has been met.
Supported by a versatile and dynamic troupe of dancers from the Kent School of Dance, this was a strong script, amply served by a promising cast of up-and-coming actors. There’s nothing sleepy about this production at all.
Additional Creatives: Kassie Malam (choreographer), Kevin Brown / Darren Paine (producers)
https://www.trio-entertainment.co.uk/
Playing until 24th December
0 notes
Photo
Rachel Podger and the Brecon Baroque at Malvern Theatres
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Rachel Podger and the Brecon Baroque have risen to modest prominence in recent years, and Podger’s 2018 disc ‘The Four Seasons’ saw her named as the Gramophone Artist of the Year. Alongside a number of other classics from ‘The Red Priest’, including Sonata Al Santo Sepolcro in E Flat Major, and Concerto in G minor RV156, ‘The Four Seasons’ was performed with characteristic panache and aplomb. Podger’s bow floats fluidly and effortlessly above the strings in what was a traditional canonical interpretation, sans amplification, with the occasional witty little twiddle and flourish. Her ensemble, delightfully and smilingly in league with her at every turn, show great skill, too: the Brecon Baroque form an exquisitely evolved musical organism with a single beating heart. And what a marvelous, mellifluous beast it is…
http://www.rachelpodger.com/
https://www.malvern-theatres.co.uk/whats-on/rachel-podger-brecon-baroque-2/
#rachel podger#brecon baroque#malverntheatre#musical theater#music review#classical#music#violin#Critic#thrifty critic#musical instruments#concert#artist of the year#gramophone#2018#june 2019#baroque#review
0 notes
Photo
Comedy Review: Jon Richardson (The Old Man gripes again)
★ ★ ★
The Countdown comedian delivers his familiar, self-knowing, self-lacerating brand of exasperation
When you pay to see a favoured TV comedian perform live for the first time there is always the risk the three dimensional reality will fail to live up to expectations. As Jon Richardson says of his own comedy, “It’s nice to see it live. If nothing else you see how well they edit on TV.” As it turns out, however, the unexpurgated, two hour, in-the-flesh version is nearly as funny.
Thirty-four going on seventy-four, and attracting an audience demographic even wider, the tour is named after Richardson’s curmudgeonly old man persona, “...for obvious reasons. I play Countdown for a living and I wear cardigans. Full time. I’m not one of those Christmas pricks.”
Nerdy, neurotic, needy - these are adjectives he readily applies to himself in a performance that is a kind of self-knowing, self-lacerating splurge of exasperation about anything and everything, from his wife’s vaginal health to pre-fame loserdom in Swindon to tessellated spoons in poorly loaded dishwashers. Mostly it is the little, annoying things which loom large in Richardson’s world and his material, anecdotal in nature, gravitates towards the excremental and the copulatory. There is an explosively funny ten minutes dedicated to a massive ‘superman turd’ he discovers in a public toilet, a lurid description of his wife bent over as he massages ointment into her perineum, and a riotous dissection of a Twitter comment in which he is accused of being about as funny as a ‘Yugoslavian Rapist’. Obsessive fans and enemies of Richardson alike will be interested to learn he will read anything you Tweet to him, even though this threatens to unsettle his precarious state of mind.
Surprisingly, given the more measured tempo of his television quippery, Richardson’s delivery is breathless and rapid-fire. His endlessly digressive anecdotes come in waves and once he’s on one he rides it to exhaustion: great if you’re there alongside him but frustrating if you fall off beforehand. There are the occasional pleasing turns of phrase: “I like to live next door to retired people. They’re always in and they like signing for things” and, even in the exaltation of fatherhood, he is tyrannized by an obsessive-compulsive need for order: “I watched Peppa Pig on an odd number all day long and I said nothing!”
If there is a danger of relentlessness and monotony in this brand of comedy, Richardson evades it by exuding a friendly charm strategically at odds with the material. This is cynicism with a cheeky smile across its face.
https://www.jonrichardsoncomedy.com/
#jon richardson#the old man#comedy#comedian#review#gig#tour#2019#jon#richardson#standup#apollo#countdown#tv#show#thrifty#critic
0 notes
Photo
Comedy Review: Stewart Lee (Content Provider)
★ ★ ★ ★
‘A meticulously structured performance, densely layered with irony’
I always leave a Stewart Lee gig feeling elated and edified: elated because he offers us comedy in its highest form, edified because there is moral substance to his work. Tonight I can add ‘berated’ to the post-show mix, since I’m a member of the smartphone generation which comes in for a particular bashing. ‘I’m 38 and I play Imago’, he rages imitatively, but not before he’s done a protracted impression of a brain dead monkey stabbing blindly at a mobile phone. It’s scathing, it’s simple, and it’s very very funny.
I’m also berated simply because I’m part of the audience: he is exasperated when we laugh in the wrong places, at our failure to match the standards of his ‘liberal metropolitan elite’ fan base, at our disappointing inability to rise to his “four and five star rated” performance. “If there’s a problem here, it’s not on my side”, he informs us witheringly. And the more he exasperates, wearily stopping the show to explain exactly why it is we should be laughing, the more we do, in fact, laugh. Of course, this is all part of his “smug, self-knowing, meta-shit”, an intellectually complex style which divides the public into those who love him, those who just don’t know what the hell is going on, and those who seem genuinely to hate him.
But then Stewart Lee, it seems, delights in ranting about the things he hates almost as much as he delights in those who rant hatefully about him. “Stewart Lee is not funny and has nothing to say” reported one Daily Telegraph critic, little expecting his quote would be reproduced on the tour’s promotional literature. And when a despised member of the Trip Advisor generation approaches him to say how much he’d disliked a show, Lee can only respond: “I don’t know what you want me to do about it. You paid to see me…and I’m him.”
Famously left-leaning in his liberalism, these are a few of his favourite hates: hypocrisy, Russell Brand; Russell Howard; people under 40; selfies; “the character of Steward Lee”; Netflix; Game of Thrones; people who go on about Game of Thrones; Deacon Blue; Amazon; Google; tax evasion; Friends of Malvern Theatre; Skye; Murdoch and that man who left to go to the toilet halfway through the first act. Cheap, commercial comedy (which ousted him from his usual television slot) is high up on that list, too: the set is composed of several collapsed heaps of second-hand, stand-up DVDs which occasionally crunch underfoot. Not that this is intended as a symbol of disparagement, you understand, but at 1 pence a shot on Amazon it turns out this is simply the “cheapest building material going”. Second place goes to Brexit while number one, of course, goes to the newly elected president of the USA: “Not everyone who voted for Trump was a racist...no. (LONG PAUSE) Some of them were cunts too.”
Well, not all of it's complex.
https://www.stewartlee.co.uk/
0 notes
Photo
Music Review: Far From A Machine
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Dreamy, dysphoric, dystopian, Far From A Machine marks Sophie Hadlum’s highly idiosyncratic entry into the world of the classical EP. Across a sequence of tracks with bleakly poetic titles like ‘The Storm Before the Calm’, ‘All I’ve Got Left of Me’, ‘The Worlds We Left Behind’, Hadlum conjures a sparsely populated, post-apocalyptic universe where arpeggios surge back and forth like waves.
Recorded on a Kawai baby grand in a grand old church in Coventry, Hadlum explains: “You can hear the wooden panels creaking and cracking as they contract and expand”, an effect that is all of apiece with this strange, cataclysmic soundscape where seismic scales collide, cascade and crescendo.
(Images courtesy of Anna Wardropper)
Hadlum was once described by her music tutor as ‘unteachable’, and to this day she composes and plays predominantly by ear. Of her album she explains: “Some of the compositions were worked on gradually over several months, some were mostly completed within a few days. ‘Meeting’ was composed for live performance which incorporated improvised physical theatre, while ‘All I’ve Got Left of Me’ was adapted from the soundtrack I composed for the short film Stripey Socks (Baileyface Productions).”
Far From A Machine showcases a genuinely distinctive and accomplished creative talent, in which the classic (Tchaikovsky, Chopin) colludes with the contemporary (Nyman, Einaudi) to produce something that warrants its own adjective. Ought ‘Hadlumian’ to be the title of her next album?
You can listen to her EP on Spotify HERE
or on YouTube below.
youtube
#sophie hadlum#far from a machine#classicep#musicreview#music review#piano#classicalpiano#classical composer#sophie shangaihostage
0 notes
Text
Five Questions With...travel writer Jamie Phillips
(Above: Jamie Phillips at work on her new book, to be published July 2019)
Who is Jamie Phillips?
I’m Canadian and, according to the people who make fun of me for being cold all the time, a bad one. A lot of my favourite things are also the most basic of Tinder bio tropes: travelling, yoga, coffee, sushi, Netflix binges and looking at pictures of dogs on the internet. I studied psychology in University and am still fascinated by all the idiosyncrasies of the human condition, only instead of making lots of money as a shrink, I write about real life experiences just for fun. I spend a lot of time thinking about bees and feminism and the inevitable robot uprising.
Tell us about your book!
My book is a collection of true travel stories spanning ten years and six continents. I think the most interesting and entertaining travel stories are the ones where something goes wrong or plans go off the rails or something really weird happens. Anything that makes a trip more difficult or uncomfortable or absurd is usually a great story afterwards, in hindsight. So, this book centres around the best worst things that have happened to me on the road, like: the time I got into a fight with a donkey in the middle of the night in the Kyrgyz mountains; living on an Australian farm in a house full of bees; failing at hitchhiking in Chile, getting lost inside a cave in Lao; an almost terminally boring bird watching tour in India, and lots more.
What prompted you to write it?
Writing a book has been on my to-do list for a really long time – I told my kindergarten teacher that I wanted to be an author when I grew up. And I wrote about travel because it was easier than coming up with fictional stories. Travel is a such a great subject because it puts you into these bizarre and incredible and hilarious situations; it basically writes itself. I also gravitate towards weird situations so that I can tell stories about them and, hopefully, entertain people and make them feel good about their own life choices.
(Above: Machu Picchu, Peru)
Choose three words to describe your writing process.
Idea! Distractions. Fussiness.
What next?
I’d like to change it up and write about something other than travel – maybe even something fictional! I’m really into horror stories and speculative fiction and dystopias, although real life is pretty saturated with dystopian horror shows right now so I don’t know if I want to depress myself any more than necessary. I’m also interested in the practicalities of ageing – about assisted living and long term care facilities, how the medical system works or doesn’t work for the elderly, what’s going to happen when all the Baby Boomers need care homes and whether there’s different and/or better ways to take care of our old people. So, we’ll see. Maybe it’ll be a horror story set in an old folk’s home.
To read more visit Jamie’s travel blog HERE
Follow Garreteer Press on Twitter HERE
0 notes
Text
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Malvern Theatres
What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?
Tilted Wig’s adaptation of the classic Wilde novella is mostly engaging if a little uneven. Excellent is Dorian Gray’s transformation from naïve youth to morally corrupt scoundrel. Likewise, Lord Henry Wooton’s (Jonathan Wrather) deterioration as he sinks into moral and physical dilapidation. Sarah Beaton’s set, a high-ceilinged Victorian drawing room, is pleasing: its once opulent and decadent features now in a state of sad, damp, iniquitous decay.
On the other hand, there were some clunky features and underdeveloped performances. The stylized rave, for example, felt slightly awkward, while the gun on the wall, which lit up at moments of moral crises, though an interesting Chekhovian conceit, was an example of unwieldy symbolism we might have done without. This production didn’t always hang well together, but there were some striking moments.
Principle performers: Jonathan Wrather, Gavin Fowler, Daniel Goode, Kate Dobson
Creatives: Séan Aydon (Adaptor & Director), Sarah Beaton (Designer), Jo Meredith (Choreographer)
TO BOOK TICKETS
https://www.malvern-theatres.co.uk/whats-on/picture-dorian-gray/
until 11th May 2019
On tour until late May
https://www.tiltedwigproductions.com/dorian-gray
0 notes
Text
Cult Internet star Jody Kamali to perform at Brighton Fringe
In Bristol, where he’s something of a minor-celebrity, Jody Kamali is better known as comic alter ego and Internet hit Terry the Odd Job Man. Now he’s back at the Brighton Fringe with a preview of a new working-class character - the bumbling, Bristolian ex-darts champion Mike Daly.
Hugely inventive, warm and engaging Total Theatre
Directed by acclaimed character comedian Colin Hoult (Anna Mann, Murder in Successville, Derek), the show offers a whirlwind journey into the soul of an idiot. The beer swigging, pie-munching former champ may have fallen from grace, but he’s back. And now he wants to set the record straight.
No stranger to the stage, Kamali regularly performs a crackpot gallery of characters at the Edinburgh Festival, as well as to sell-out audiences at some of Bristol’s best-known venues. His sixth year at Brighton fringe, Jody Kamali tells us:
There’s a severe lack of working-class actors out there on TV and stage. It’s no wonder terrestrial TV figures are dwindling. Everyday people tune into my videos by the thousands as I feel they are not getting this output on TV.
A high energy, physical character comedian and actor, Jody Kamali has worked with veteran Lord of the Rings actor Bernard Hill in the film Golden Years, and Harry Hill on the madcap TV project Harry Hill’s Tea Time (Harry Hill describes his act as ‘brilliant…original visual comedy’). He currently lives in Beckenham, Kent, where he promotes and comperes the much lauded Beckenham Comedy Cabaret.
Kamali’s working-class roots inspire many of his character creations, which have in recent years amassed a cult following on Facebook, where his videos have chalked up to quarter of a million views each. These days he even gets mobbed on Bristol’s streets.
Mike Daly’s calamitous Q&A adventures continue at Edinburgh Festival later this year.
Mike Daly: Darts and All
The Warren: The Nest
2-5th May - 19.40-20.40 - £10
www.jodykamali.com
To book tickets visit brightonfringe.org or call 01273 917272.
For more info contact Jody Kamali
0 notes
Photo
Shanghai Hostage’s latest EP
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Funky, punky and spunky. Three words to describe Coventry based Shanghai Hostage’s new EP, featuring lead song ‘Step too Far’ (watch below).
youtube
Composed of a sizzling pan-fry of styles, their defiantly uncategorizable sound makes for a listening experience both curious and compelling. As band member Beth Black explains: “[Our music ranges from] funk to folk, jazz to rock, [and is] influenced by each band members’ musical background. I am a former member of Rooted n Booted, and a lover of ska and reggae.
“Rich on bass is into the heavy, bluesier side of music, giving all the groove he’s got in his animated performances. Drummer Matt brings the psychedelic energy, and his beats are often improvised and experimental.
“Dynamic pianist and composer and singer Sophie provides the sass and soul through her bold vocals and engaging lyrics. And finally, the latest addition is musical magician Ian on guitar, also a member of local Jazztronica band Messages to Mars.”
From left to right - Richard Bear Brown (bass), Matthew Stanley Donaldson (drummer), Sophie Hadlum (lead singer, pianist), Ian Todd (guitar) and Beth Black (guitar)
Sophie Hadlum’s powerful vocals are exhilaratingly volatile, and switch in a heartbeat from honeyed solicitation to mellifluous outrage. For my money ‘Nomad’ is the most beguiling track, and stylistically the syncopated rhythms and surging folksy melodies seem to traverse centuries and continents.
And the beat…always that compulsive beat! To listen to Shangai Hostage is to feel an overwhelming urge to dance, and one feels that the band’s natural home must be the live performance venue.
Speaking of which, you can catch them next at Temperance in Warwickshire on July 12th.
To listen to their new EP click HERE
To keep up to date with what they’re up to click HERE
0 notes
Photo
Jack Barry: Tango (Berk’s Nest / Avalon)
★ ★ ★ ★
Jack Barry has the persona of the guy next door, who unexpectedly turns out to be very funny. His affable manner and apparently effortless style of delivery belies a natural comedic flair with some clever turns of phrase. There was much candid talk of sex – anecdotal and confessional – more than I would have liked, but this didn’t seem to be a problem for the younger crowd who were volubly appreciative, in fact the content was well suited to the loud, beery, vaguely laddish atmosphere of The Globe. Jack Barry has the people’s touch and I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of his face, and not just on the side of McCoy’s crisps’ packets.
Globe Bar @ Globe, Edinburgh Festival
@JBazzler
0 notes
Photo
The Gin Chronicles in New York (Interrupt the Routine)
★ ★ ★ ★
Perfectly located in St. Marks vintage church, with its crystal clear acoustics, this 1940s radio-style pastiche follows the gin based misadventures of sleuthing duo John Jobling and Doris Golightly as they sojourn in New York. This trio of accomplished actors switch effortlessly between characters and voices, and this dexterous audio performance is enhanced with slickly choreographed visuals, including a rather pleasing dance number. The ingenious sound effects are defly delivered by a fourth cast member using an array of props. The narrative zips along at a pace, aided in part by a drink courtesy of Fentiman’s tonic and Tanqueray Gin. A sparkling hour in a resplendent setting.
Art Space @ St Marks, Edinburgh Festival
https://www.interrupttheroutine.co.uk/corporate-events-entertainment-london-gin-chronicles/
0 notes
Photo
Lucy Pearman: Fruit Loop (United Agents / Heroes)
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“You’re too early. Fuck off!”
Lucy Pearman is wonderfully, uproariously bonkers. Her show begins with a crude home made worm, draped over a stage curtain, and its disembodied voice urging an audience member to stick his hand inside her. That’s a fairly surreal start, but it gets weirder from hereon in: there is the little Early Bird, for example, who we are licensed to scream ‘fuck off’ at every time it makes an appearance. Or the anthropomorphised bunch of grapes with a wobbly moustache. The performance unravels as a sweet worm based narrative and there is something liberating about the silly audience interaction, which everyone is immediately on board with. An instantly lovable conjurer of clownish chaos, Lucy Pearman may well have genius in her.
Monkey Barrel @ Monkey Barrel 2 - Edinburgh Festival
Being performed again at Soho Theatre 26th Nov - 1st Dec
Book here: https://sohotheatre.com/shows/lucy-pearman-fruit-loop/
0 notes
Photo
Evita - Malvern Festival Theatre
★ ★ ★ ★
‘I will rise again’
Stunning visuals, highly polished choreography and powerful vocal performances define Bill Kenwright’s latest incarnation of Evita at the Malvern Festival Theatre. Famously brought to celluloid my Madonna in 1996, Evita tells the story of Maria Eva Duarte’s meteoric rise from humble beginnings to international prominence as Argentina’s first lady in 1946.
A much loved demagogue, she saw herself as ‘not just the spouse of the president of the Republic...I am Eva Peron, the wife of the president...I am also Evita, the wife of the leader of a people who have deposited in him all their faith, hope and love.”
Lucy O’Bryne’s transformation from small town girl to post-war saviour is credibly presented, while Glenn Carter plays Che with a certain avuncular ruggedness. Mike Sterling’s Peron is appropriately carried with a statesman like solemnity and gravitas. Performed against a set of magisterial arches, the staging is never less than opulent. Honey voiced Cristina Hoey puts in a strong supporting performance as the mistress.
Moments of quiet modulation are thin on the ground in this larger than life production, but then this is all a piece with a narrative that is touched by both magic and majesty.
Principle performers: Lucy O’Byrne (Eva), Glen Carter (Che), Mike Sterling (Person)
Creatives: Andrew Lloyd Webber, (Composer) Bob Tomson (Director), Bill Deamer (Choreography)
TO BOOK TICKETS
https://www.malvern-theatres.co.uk/whats-on/evita/
until 8th September 2018
On tour until November
http://www.kenwright.com/microsite/evita/#booktickets
0 notes
Photo
Five Questions With...21st Century Bard
Hamlet in Session with Sigmund Freud was performed for the first time in June and marked the launch of a brand new theatre company. I caught up with fellow actor Benjamin Archer and threw him a few quick fire questions...
Talk to me about 21st Century Bard.
21st Century Bard was established with one simple goal, to make Shakespeare’s plays more accessible to a modern audience.
You managed to get Freud and Hamlet together in one room? Explain.
In Freud’s 1910 publication The Interpretation of Dreams he applies his theories of psychoanalysis to an array of Shakespeare’s characters. The conclusions he drew about Hamlet and his Oedipus complex have stuck with the character and the play ever since, so I wanted to explore what would actually happen if the two sat down in session.
Director, actor and writer all rolled into one. What was that like?
It was tremendous fun whilst remarkably challenging. I have a wealth of experience in all three disciplines, but never simultaneously… until now.
Who is Benjamin Archer?
I am a professional actor, acting teacher and PhD student. I am currently researching ways of making Shakespeare more accessible through actor training.
What’s hovering on the horizon?
I am currently developing Hamlet in Session with Sigmund Freud from a thirty-minute play into a full-length production. I intend to stage the newly developed play in 2019.
For more details about the company, or the production, visit:
http://21stcenturybard.co.uk/
@21stCBard
(Image: Klemens Koehring as Freud and Benjamin Archer as Hamlet)
0 notes
Video
youtube
Red - Wyndham’s, London
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
‘One day the black with swallow the red’
Rothko’s paintings were simple, monolithic, powerful, three words which might also be used to describe the play. Simple because it depicts only two characters - artist and assistant - in a single place, Rothko’s high-ceilinged studio. Monolithic because the play is a dense exercise in high brow verboseness (there is no interval). Powerful because Molina’s performance wields emotional force and intellectual heft. There are linguistic fireworks as well as moments of silent wonder, as the suspended paintings, set phosphorusly aglow, are allowed to work their dark art on us. The dialogue lacks verisimilitude - it is too brilliant for that - but this is not the point. It captures the essence of a man ultimately swallowed up by the blackness. This is electric theatre.
Strongest features: Powerful performance from lead, sparkling dialogue, visually surprising, no spare flesh here.
Weakest features: Some verbal contrivance, errs on the side of brevity
Principle performers: Alfred Molina (Rothko), Alfred Enoch (Ken)
Creatives: John Logan (writer), Michael Grandage (director)
TO BOOK TICKETS
http://www.wyndhamstheatre.co.uk/
until 28 July 2018
0 notes