My Melodrama
“Warning ! This review of Heart Wall at the Bush Theatre is going to be effusive as the play spotlit the main loves of my life: a leaky pub, trashy pop music & people who aren’t very good at recognising, let alone talking about their feelings. 23 year old Franky has returned from London to her parents home in a town in the north-west of England. She’s not that happy, her parents are not that happy & their local, The Sun Inn’s karaoke evenings are no longer weekly, but daily. For 90 minutes Kit Withington’s writing made me laugh, smile, shed a tear(s) & smile again. Spiky exchanges between Franky & her old friend Charlene particularly tickled me. Charlene now drinks red wine. Not because she likes the taste, but because it gives her black teeth & she reckons she looks at least 26 when she’s got black teeth. Go & see this, with a pal or a parent & then dissect it over pints in a pub afterwards. Talk about the characters fears & feelings. That way you can indirectly talk about yours.”
Catch while you still can
Ionesco/Dinner at the Smiths
Please take a seat for this absurdist dinner, based on the words and works of Eugène Ionesco (master of French avant-garde theatre, whose absurdist work interrogated the strangely meaningless yet terribly poignant fact of human existence). There’s a reason that this immersive production has been put on intermittently since 2017. It’s very, very good. Even for those unfamiliar with the Theatre of the Absurd, rest assured you will leave feeling you have quite ‘immersed’.
The concept: Audience members are seated around an enormous long table, with a glass of French wine and a blindfold. At one end sits Lucy Russell’s Mrs Smith, at the other end sits Sean Rees’s Mr Smith. Sat at the table the audience are complicit in the absurdity of middle class manners and the banalities that paper over the cracks that form in human connections.
PSA: Tickets include a glass of wine and seating is first come, first served.
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The Authenticator
“‘That was a really good show’ enthused a girl to her pal whilst exiting The National’s Dorfman Theatre. That girl was not me (I was alone), but that girl was right. The Authenticator by Winsome Pinnock is set in a stately home in the English countryside. Two black academics have come to see the recently discovered diaries of the long dead white aristocrat who bought the now crumbling pile. The subject matter Pinnock’s play addresses is serious (race, slavery, reparations) but her plot & characters are full of humour, surprises & sprite. Excellent acting from a small, three-strong cast & a gloriously decrepit set. Book your ticket(s) now if you’d like to experience that increasingly rare & special feeling of sitting in a theatre which over the course of 90 minutes fills up with an audiences thoughts & laughter.”
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