THEGAYUK

Category: Theatre

  • THEATRE: Blackouts

    Following a series of acclaimed performances, ‘Drag Fabulist’ Dickie Beau takes his first major solo show Blackouts across the UK in 2015.

    Conjuring the spirits of celebrated Hollywood icons in an innovative theatre experience, Dickie leads audiences on a bewitching adventure as he channels the ghosts of his childhood idols.

    Dickie secured exclusive access to audio tapes of Marilyn Monroe’s final interview conducted by journalist Richard Meryman. Published in LIFE magazine just two days before her death, Blackouts includes material never before heard in the public domain. As well as this rare audio footage, segments creatively appropriated from Dickie’s own recordings with Richard Meryman also form part of the story. Blackouts sees Dickie shape-shift through a shadowy soundscape of lost souls in a sensational trip to the subconscious underworld of his future self; bringing to life these audio artefacts.

    The show marks a significant development for Dickie’s trademark process of dissecting, then remembering (literally, putting back together and embodying), found sound. The digital script has been written entirely using this and incorporates much original source material, including the spellbinding Judy Speaks tapes – Judy Garland alone with a Dictaphone, making notes for a memoir never to be written. The resulting piece is a study of icons in exile from society and themselves, and the haunting impressions they’ve left behind.

    Tour Dates:

    Mayfest, Bristol Old Vic: Friday 15 & Saturday 16 May 9.30pm mayfestbristol.co.uk

    Chichester Showroom: Thursday 24th September 7.30pm www.theshowroomchichester.co.uk

     

    Further 2015 dates to be announced

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Rise Like A Phoenix

    ★★ | Rise Like A Phoenix

    Things have changed a great deal since the days of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, Kevin Elyot’s My Night with Reg and Tony Kushner’s brilliant Angels in America. HIV is something we can talk about more openly, people don’t die anymore, and, with treatment, can live a pretty normal life, though there is still a lot of stigma attached to it.

    Paul Emelion Daly’s new play, Rise Like a Phoenix, is billed as a comedy, but, apart from some admittedly hilarious one-liners, it actually takes itself rather seriously, maybe too seriously. As an HIV negative man, maybe I found it hard to identify with the five gay men, all of them HIV-positive, in Daly’s play, but I’m pretty sure that the majority of my HIV positive friends would have a problem too. Too many of the characters were fixated on the blame game, how they acquired the virus, who gave them the virus, and indeed, not giving too much away, much of the story revolved around a love triangle, in which one of the characters had unknowingly given it to one of the men, who then unknowingly gave it to another.

    I was hoping that a new play about HIV would take a more positive stance, but it seemed to me, that, for all the talk of the success of antiretroviral therapy, emotionally the play was still stuck in the 90s, with its reminders of those tombstone adverts. But the whole landscape has changed since then and we live in a far more positive world (in both senses of the word) than we did? Why was there no talk of TasP (Treatment as Prevention), of PEP or PrEP, the once a day pill that stops you getting HIV?

    I’m afraid I found it all rather dispiriting and negative.

    Performances were good, but Tim McArthur’s usually faultless sense of pace seemed to have deserted him this time round and the play dragged for too much of the time.

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Barnum, UK theatre tour 2015

    ★★★ | Barnum

    Cameron Mackintosh’s new production of Barnum charts the rise and rise of one of America’s most famous showmen, Phineas T. Barum, whose showmanship and panache for the spectacular led him to become one of America’s richest men. Starting off with a small sideshow, brick by brick he builds his entertainment empire into the greatest show on earth, whilst all the time being supported by his patient and understanding wife. The balance between his dreams and her grounded reality are evident, but his love is tested when he meets beautiful opera singer, Jenny Lind.

    Barnum, as a show itself, is perhaps not best remembered for its storyline, which is thinner than the usual musical; nor for its particularly memorable songs. The show itself is a fairly episodic affair, with the set pieces being broken up by scenes, mainly between Barnum and his wife, which carry the narrative. However, what this production will be remembered for is an absolute abundance of colourful, joyful energy during the big numbers, assaulting the senses with rousing singing and spectacularly choreographed routines. Filling the stage with a plethora of circus skills, including tumbling, ribbon work, silks, tightrope waking and balancing, there is no denying the fact that this is a performance which has been polished to within an inch of its life.

    Playing very much to his strengths, Brian Conley won me over in his performance as Barnum, as his wry smile and casual banter with the audience kept him just on the right side of being the confident, consummate showman; both as the character and in himself.

    Whilst this may have been Conley’s show, he was supported by a large and talented cast, including Linzi Hateley, Kimberly Blake and Landi Oshinowo, a packed out ensemble of very talented dancers and circus performers and a live orchestra. The scale of the production is impressive and it is clear to see the budget, quality and experience behind the production itself, with not only the visuals being bold, brash and ballsy, but in also the technical presentation of the show being wholly impressive, nowhere more evident than the superb lighting designed by Paule Constable.

    With its colour, vibrancy, sense of fun and its full throttle energy, Barnum may well be very much style over substance; but the style it has is undeniably top notch.

    Barnum is currently playing at the Sheffield Lyceum Theatre (www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk) until Saturday 11th April 2015, before continuing on its national tour (www.barnummusical.com) calling at Leeds, Milton Keynes, Liverpool, Plymouth, Southampton, Canterbury, Birmingham, Salford and Cardiff.

  • REVIEW | Simon Amstell Takes The P

    If you’ve a penchant for vulnerable, neurotic funny men – Simon Amstell’s current standup tour ‘to be free’ should be on your to-do list. You hardcore Beliebers out there might take offence by Simon implying he wants to make Justin cry by penetrating his bottom. Mr Amstell did harp on about his new-ish boyf so of course, he’s only kidding

    Simon’s tour pitched up in Bath last Friday (13th March). The City of Bath perfectly characterises Englishness, much like Simon Amstell’s awkward and clumsy persona. Bath’s Komedia is caked in the traditional theatre covings and mouldings. It’s intimate and foolproof venue for a standup with a nervous disposition.

    A dorky Norwegian chap called Daniel Simonsen kick started the diaphragm contractions and respiratory howls. Daniel belittles himself and frets his way through observational comedy poker-faced with a Norwegian accent. It works.

    The same sharp wit as Never Mind the Buzzcocks and self-deprecated style as Grandma’s House is rife throughout Mr Amstell’s performance. He’s like watching a humorous, nervy overgrown-chihuahua with a tight perm.

    The timid pooch eased into the act nervously laughing at his own jokes. Closely followed by roars from the audience. The art of timing is apparent unlike Elton brandishing a Dolce and Gabbana shopping bag in LA. The crowd’s laughter-pipes were put through a gruelling workout.

    Amstell twitched through an array of subjects – love, sex, anguish. One of the best lines of the night, “If I was autistic I could lick the world”. Controversy and Amstell go together like Romans and hot-tubs.

    The quips trickled from him seamlessly apart from when a member of the audience needed a tinkle. They then became his prey. Funny at first, but painful after the fifth attack.

    On stage Amstell looks uncomfortable in his own flesh, he relentlessly fiddled with his granddad-shirt and elasticated trousers. His anxious high-pitched guffaws are adorable tho. Perhaps all these are the traits of a teetotal comedian.

    You can’t help but love this eccentric word-wizard. You’ll no doubt be posting your application for the Simon Amstell fan club special delivery after seeing the show.

    Four stars for Simon.

    You can still catch ‘to be free’ 28th June Regents Park Open Air Theatre – tickets on sale now.

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Playing For Time

    ★★★ | Playing For Time

    Amongst the horrors and inhumanity of Auschwitz, a small group of women are pressured to play in a rag-tag band, used for both entertaining the higher ranks of their captors and to march their fellow inmates into the fields to work and into the gas chambers to die.

    Playing for Time explores the emotional toll on the women as they quite literally play for their lives whilst struggling with the ethics and morals of pandering to the theatrical whims of the murders around them as their fellow detainees are being massacred around them.

    Based on the autobiography of Parisian cabaret sensation, Fania Fénelon, the opening scenes of her and her fellow Jews crammed into a cattle truck effectively conveyed the confusion, fear and false optimism of the passengers, followed quickly by a powerful, jolting and brutal arrival at Auschwitz which was genuinely unnerving to watch. But the play swiftly switches from the brutality of the camp to an examination of the inner conflict between an individual’s desire to survive and their desire to remain human. The internal struggles and external quarrels about the dehumanisation of the women in the band and the divide between their loyalties to those around them and their own selfish and primal instinct of survival are the focus of the wordy script. The dimly lit and smoke-filled auditorium provided an air of somberness and oppression, and the almost monochrome presentation of the piece (the black and grey sunken set penetrated by crisp, defined white beams of light) seemed to be a visual representation of the stark choices that go towards life and death in such a place, whilst the constant rumbles, cries, whistles and gunfire of the excellent sound design by Melanie Wilson constantly reminded the audience of the inescapable confines of the concentration camp.

    Arthur Miller’s seldom-performed play is a touch overlong, with a slightly uneven pacing and a group of central characters, performed by the predominantly female cast, which was not easy to connect with, although this could be as a result of the characters intentional or unintentional self-serving motivations.

    The sound of Sian Phillip’s Piaf-esque voice accompanied by the accordion, harmonica or a gentle piano was convincing in terms of 1940’s cabaret and reminded you of how recent in European history the events you are watching actually were. The performance of Un bel dì (One Fine Day) from Madame Butterfly was inspired, and its delivery in the context of the surroundings was not lost on the audience. The poignancy of the aria’s lyrics describing “that thin thread of smoke rising over the horizon” beautifully reflected both the optimism and hopefulness of the original context of the aria and the hopelessness of life in the concentration camp. Perfectly timed to coincide with Arthur Miller’s centenary and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Playing for Time is more of an exploration of human emotion than a narrative piece of theatre and one with a technically impressive presentation.

    Playing for Time is currently on stage at The Crucible Theatre, Sheffield until 5th April 2015. For further details and tickets visit www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk

  • WATCH: They Had It Coming, Cell Block Tango Goes Gay

    As part of its annual Broadway Backwards event benefitting Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS, director Robert Bartley transformed Chicago’s famed “Cell Block Tango” with six really hot male dancers.

    (more…)

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Radiant Vermin, Soho Theatre, London

    ★★★★ | Radiant Vermin, Soho Theatre, London

    “I want this house. Oh, yes, I know there’ll be problems. But at least we’ll have the hope of things getting better. Isn’t that the least we owe our child? Hope.”

    Jill and Ollie: a seemingly ordinary couple, trapped in poor housing on a rough estate, unable to get on the property ladder. They want to tell you about how they found their dream home and some of the things they did in order to get it. It’s a beautiful house. They know you might find some of the things they did shocking and horrible but they want to explain. They deserve that chance, at least. It may well be that you understand more than you initially think you do, too.

    Philip Ridley’s plays are often visceral and dark with skilful humour leading the viewer subtly down dark routes too often brutal and sharp conclusions. This play is no exception with a hilarious and seemingly light-hearted satire on consumerism and the lengths we’re willing to go to acquire things. That’s till things get nasty and the gruesome secrets come out with Jill and Ollie’s suburban niceties peeling away to reveal deadly secrets.

    The sublime Gemma Whelan, star of Ridley’s last play, “Dark Vanilla Jungle”, puts on another brilliant performance as the seemingly naïve and sweet, Jill. She’s ably supported by hapless and sweet Sean Michael Verey (Pramface) as wholesome Ollie and Amanda Daniels as the Mephistophelean Miss Dee.

    A stark white set supports the raw action in this play that is perhaps one of Ridley’s most accessible. It’s a piece that’ll make you laugh, squirm and shudder and ultimately question your own motivations and desires. What would you do for a rapid induction hob, a four-man Jacuzzi and a flat screen TV? The Soho Theatre has yet again managed to put on something truly original and contemporary that suits beautifully in our current cultural landscape.

    Radiant Vermin runs until the 12th of April 2015

    Buy tickets here: http://sohotheatre.com/whats-on/radiant-vermin

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense: Hilarity at its best

    ★★★★ | Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense

    Jeeves and Wooster played by Jason Thorpe and Robert Webb respectively, bring to The Birmingham Rep a delightful and hilarious performance of Perfect Nonsense with actor Christopher Ryan. There is an initial gag before the curtains go up by a speaker announcing that phones should be switched off, for it might interrupt the first performance of Mr Wooster and he might feel nervous. Of course, merriment ensued.

    Perfect Nonsense tells a story of Wooster and his butler Jeeves who are putting on a play, but it is Wooster’s debut so he starts the show with running through his part and calming himself by saying: ‘How hard can acting be?’ Jeeves had cleverly set everything up so Wooster pretty much walks on to the intricate set that he has just been describing, as it is rolled on, on wheels, and displayed behind him as he turns around. It was so efficient that it surprises Wooster every time.

    Perfect Nonsense, directed by Olivier Award winner Sean Foley, is currently touring the UK, and it is peppered with comedy, suspense, and a little drama, especially when Wooster is blackmailed by half the characters, who all want the silver cow creamer.

    Robert, Jason and Christopher combined made the show extra special, as each contributed to the amusement by exaggerating facial expressions that provided the effect they wanted: to bring the house down with laughter.

    Robert Webb, whose credits are endless, but one would immediately recognise him as Jeremy Usborne from the Peep Show, had an innate ability of moving his body to suit the action and it made the transition between scenes even funnier. He even simulated Michael Jackson’s famous moonwalk to travel between scenes. Webb reprised the role like a duck to water and carried the show with relentless energy and flair.

    Jason Thorpe, whose theatre credits include: From Morning to Midnight, His Dark Materials and What the Butler Saw, lends his ingenious acting ability and comedic timing to Jeeves, Wooster’s butler. He also convincingly multi-part plays other roles in the show, and to each one he gives a special touch that supports Wooster’s storytelling. His characterisation of Stiffy was sublime.

    Christopher Ryan most famous for playing Mike in 1982-1984 TV series: Young Ones, portrays the character of Seppings who plays all other roles with an enthusiasm and persistence that would put anyone my age to shame. Christopher dominates the stage with his flair of movement with one second portraying Wooster’s aunty Dahlia and in the next Roderick Spode who is described as being 6ft 9in when Ryan is nowhere near that height at all.

    The set was a masterpiece of the steady yet unpredictable design of Alice Power whose recent design credits include: The Walworth Farce; and A Mad World My Masters by Thomas Middleton. Power designed a set that was so effortlessly mutable, that it became part of the comedy, as the sets were pushed on and pictures were rolled up and down a photo frame via a rotating handle.

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Beautiful

    ★★★★ | Beautiful

    Will you Still Love me tomorrow. I feel the Earth Move. You’ve got a Friend. These are just a few songs written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin that are included in the new West End Show Beautiful – The Carole King Musical.

    While Carole King might not be known to the younger generation, anyone 50 and older know her, and her music, very well. In the 1960s she, along with her husband Goffin, wrote dozens and dozens of hit songs including The Locomotion, You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, and Up on The Roof. Beautiful tells the story of King’s life, how when she was a young girl and sold her first song to music producer Don Kirshner, to meeting her songwriting partner, and partner in life, Gerry Goffin, to being a single mother as well as a very very successful singer and songwriter. In Beautiful, King is played by the energetic Katie Brayben, from the piano playing right down to the curly hair, the resemblance is very good.

    Beautiful covers King’s life from age 16 to the age of 29, when she’s at Carnegie Hall performing So Far Away – a hit single from her mega-selling and multiple grammy winning album Tapestry. It’s just Brayben and the piano on stage. The show then goes back in time, the time when teenager King (Brayben) is at home in Brooklyn wanting to go into Manhattan to sell songs to Kirshner, but her mom tells her that she’s not going into Manhattan all by herself. When King does get to Kirshner’s (played by Gary Trainor) office, she meets people there who will be the key players in her life. She meets Cynthia Weil (Lorna Want) and Barry Mann (Ian McIntosh), a songwriting couple, but more importantly she meets Goffin (Alan Morrissey). They start a romance, but King gets pregnant so her and Goffin (played by Alan Morrissey) get married. He loves her, and they literally make beautiful mussic together – they are at their best when writing songs, and they write some of the biggest hits of the 1960s. But over time Goffin starts to feel like he’s being tied down and wants to take advantage of their new celebrity status, while King wants them to go home at the end of each day and spend time as a family. It’s a stressful situation for King, and it doesn’t help that Goffin is having mental problems to go along with his infidelity. And this is the plot of Beautiful – the relationship between King and Goffin and their very close friendship with Weil and Mann.

    But in between this storytelling we get great musical performances by the ensemble in the show – the actors who play the musicians that King and Goffin write songs for. And this is when Beautiful comes alive. The ensemble really lets it rip, and brings life and colour to the show when they perform songs such as 1650 Broadway Melody, Some Kind of Wonderful and On Broadway, among others.

    Beautiful is a female singer, songwriter, mother, daughter, an American, and British-born Brayben does a fine job in portraying King. Recently seen in American Psycho, Brayben can sing and act, and can hit all the notes, and like King, Brayben writes her own music. Her hairstyle changes throughout the course of the show, most of these styles, however, make her look much older than the character she is playing.

    Morrissey is fine as Goffin, excited about their love yet still not sure that’s he’s happy or not in their relationship. Want and McIntosh are excellent as their best friends, and even more so when they provide emotional support after King’s breakup of her marriage. The staging of the show is fine, moving from living rooms to recording studios to Kirshner’s offices – but it’s Peter Kaczorowski‘s lighting that literally and figuratively lights up the stage. If only the book of the show was as good. By Douglas McGrath, the book is very mundane and not very dramatic – sure we care about King’s life but give us more of the music and razzle-dazzle and less of their bickering and conversations.It’s a musical that should be a musical, yet Beautiful plays more like a drama show with bits of music thrown in. But the show redeems itself when near the end, Brayben (as King) and the ensemble bring down the house with the song ‘You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman” – it’s a moment when you realize that King really is the greatest female songwriter of all time.

    Beautiful The Carole King Musical plays at the Aldwych Theatre,  until 5th August 2017

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Back Down: Cheeky, Dramatic and Sincere

    Back Down is an intense play by Steven Camden aka Polarbear, whose excitement stems from writing dialogue and unashamedly falls in love with his own ‘Brummie’ story, and the action centralises itself on the friendship of three ‘brummie’ friends: Zia, Tommy and Luke. ★★★★ (more…)

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Bathhouse, The Musical

    ★★★★ | Bathhouse, The Musical

    For their second production of 2015, Above The Stag have chosen to revive their hugely successful production of Bathhouse The Musical.

    It comes with a few changes of cast and new choreography by Carole Todd, a choreographer of some renown, who comes with an impressive list of credits which includes West End musicals as well as work at the Royal Opera House and Sadlers Wells.

    What was always a hugely entertaining and hilarious show now emerges slicker, tighter and cleaner.

    In case you missed it last time, the show is set for its entirety in a Bathhouse, with the cast wearing nothing but towels throughout. The story (such as it is) revolves around the adventures of young Billy, who starts out a bathhouse virgin, but finishes a lot more experienced. He is guided through his adventures by the disembodied voice of Giles Brandreth.

    The score is a wonderfully witty amalgam of styles ranging from hoedown to full out Broadway ballads with quite a few other musical references between. With song titles like I’m a Bear Chaser, the hilarious Penises Are Like Snowflakes, Clickin’ for Dick and Seduction Tango, the jokes aren’t exactly subtle, but nor are they meant to be.

    In a show that is such an ensemble piece, it would be invidious to single out any one individual. Each and every one gets their moment to shine and they are all excellent, so kudos to Will Ferris, Matthew Harper, John R Harrison, Ryan Lynch, Luke Webber and Tim McArthur, who also directs the fast-paced production, which doesn’t flag for one second.

    Great entertainment, not so pure and simple.

    Bathhouse the Musical runs at Above the Stag until 29 march 2015.