“What would you do if we was the last two people on earth?”
“I’d think how unlucky I was to end up with you.”
Pondling follows the story of ‘Madeline’, a young girl who tells us stories of love, dresses, cycling around Paris In her beautiful new shoes and… beheading chickens. This narrative monologue is written and performed by Genevieve Hulme-Beaman. The piece has won several awards including Best Actress at the Dublin Fringe and a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Fringe, and it is clearly very deserving of these achievements.
To say that Bryony Kimmings and Taylor Houchen have impressed me with their work in That Catherine Bennet Show at the Southbank Centre is not saying nearly enough. This aunt and her 11-year-old niece are the responsible ones for the creation and development of Catherine Bennet, the new pop star alternative that offers teens a different option in the midst of the increasingly similar pop stars of these days that only sing about money, fame and lust.
Billed as the story of the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, Memphis tells a story of forbidden love between a white radio DJ and a black singer, in 1950s America. It featured a talented ensemble cast and some great original songs. I was keen to see Beverly Knight as starring as Felicia (the singer who falls in love with Huey the radio DJ). She did not disappoint, she has a truly astounding voice and fantastic stage presence.
What better way to warm up this autumn than to hop, skip and ‘Jump‘ your way to Sadler’s Wells Theatre for an eclectic evening of slap stick comedy, physical theatre and martial arts.
I approached The Infidel, a musical seeking to tackle the centuries old Jewish-Muslim tension through song, with caution. The premise is a brave one: Kev Orkian as Mahmud, a modern everyday Muslim, finds out that he was born Solly Shimshillewitz, which throws him into a significant identity crisis. As Lenny, his Jewish neighbour and soon-to-be best mate puts it, he may as well have been called “Jewy-Jewy Jew Jew”.
It’s Afro Vibes Festival down at Stratford Circus this month and when I got there I was welcomed by the sound of The Soil, with talented support from a youth choir. It was an energetic start, and I joined in with gusto, if not grace. Rhetorical takes a retrospective look at the political career of Thabo Mbeki, a key player in the ANC and Mandela’s successor. The piece is a series of separate pictures, based around three of his speeches and sewn together in a broad tapestry illustrating some of the many perspectives of the South African people. The poor still desperately poor, still waiting for the change they have been promised while the rising middle class cling to their newfound freedom. We are brought into family life and political arenas and on to the streets and slums, to witness the state of a society still recovering from the many wounds of apartheid as well as some more recently inflicted.
There are three distinct modules to Daddies Don‘t Cry. A conversation, a dance and a monologue. One of them is fascinating and beautiful and is sandwiched between two monotone performances that doesn’t do anyone involved any justice. When entering The Loft an impressive stage is there to greet you. It looks like a massive piece of shattered glass, an apt metaphor for the life of the child on which the performance centres. The set ends up being the highlight of the play, and even then felt underused.
There are shows you feel should be better then they are. A clever concept, good actors and a great venue should be a recipe for a great play but sometimes it just doesn‘t come together. It may be that the shows humour doesn‘t translate or simply that it never gels. Whatever the reason, Hundred We Are feels like it should be better than it is. The theme is interesting enough, the many lives we can live and how we choose between them, on top of that how we deal with the lives that we didn‘t live.
‘You may be the wealthiest coloured woman in New Orleans, but you built this house on sand, lies and dead bodies’.
Marcus Gardley began his writing career as a poet before becoming a playwright; and his flair for the poetic is evident in the mesmerising lyric dialogue of The House That Will Not Stand. The language runs rich with imagery and the wry metaphorical description typical of literature set in the American Deep South. With “mouths the size of the Mississippi” and irises that “wither into the soft hues of morning” or “burn bloodshot like a sunset”; the themes of mysticism and the supernatural are propelled by the play’s language, established from the off by the ominous grey-haired corpse splayed on the dining room table and developing into voodoo ritual and black magic as the story unfolds.
