A Small Mind At The Theatre

It's perhaps a shame that the major talking point after United-Force Theatre Company's production of Persecuted is its final scene, and more so over the sheer realism of it, rather than anything directly related to the acting and writing of it. The shame is that it overshadows what is quite a brilliant piece of theatre in its own right, well constructed and superbly acted by the trio in the group, Alexander Forrester-Coles, Chris Tyler and Radostin Radev.

The date is 11th May 2005 and the Iraq War is no longer having the initial success that it had after destroying Sadam Hussain's regime. In a camp in Basra, Mohammed bin Osama bin Laden (Radostin Radev) is captured and under interrogation by commander James Farrell (Alexander Forrester-Coles), the good cop of the story, and Dan (Chris Tyler),  a Lieutenant, very much of the bad cop variety.

It's an ugly, but also a very vivid tale, claustrophobic and always intimidating. When the actors are not churning through the int…

At the centre of Carousel Theatre's An Error in the Melody is an intriguing character, performed by the groups solo performer, Amelia Renard. She plays, with some skill, Leonie Owens, a composer of immense skill herself, well, in her head in any case.

With shades of Glorious! The true story of Florence Foster Jenkins, which I have also seen this year, Owens just wants to perform and absorb the love of an audience, despite the fact that her skills mostly just lie within her head. Owens perhaps isn't anywhere near as nice a character as Foster Jenkins though, and when the tide turns against her, she really is quite nasty, and definitely very cold.

The dislike of the character though isn't the biggest problem with An Error in the Melody, it's more that it is a very insubstantial piece. Two very long scenes in this play are just so lightweight, the opening where she tidies her shelves, mostly with her back to the audience, and then later another scene similar in style. It…

The Pillowman sounds such a friendly title, and to be fair, his story is one of the lighter aspects of Martin McDonagh's script. It still involves dead children though, if you want to get a clear vision of how dark this play is.

Set in a police state of the future, Katurian (Toby Pugh) is taken in for the content of his often violent stories and a similarity to a spate of recent child killings. Here in detention cell 13, his police captors, Tupolski (Adrian Wyman) and Ariel (Steve While) play good cop, bad cop while holding over the threat of violence against Katurian's mentally disabled brother Michal (Patrick Morgan), being held in another cell.

The Pillowman is clearly a very warped story, with the blackest of black comedy, and often also very offensive with it's racial stereotyping and disability. In fact, it is no surprise that a couple left in the interval, as I would happily admit that this play is far from everyone. I like a good black comedy though, and lifting an …

Today I have been attending my new school, Wordsworth Comprehensive, and the teachers are a really bizarre bunch.

Miss Turner (Kerry Lovell) was a little scary, but really rather sexy with it as well. She really is gorgeous to look at and stirs some odd emotions and fings in me. Can get awkward sometimes, but the desk helps. She really is brill at dancing like crazy in high heels as well, not that I was looking through the staff room window at her, or anything.

Headmaster Mr Mills (Tom England) is making all the baby-faced boys jealous with his exceptional growth on his chin and confused everyone with his real odd accent. A rumour going around school is he can put an immense amount of sand in a mug. Why, though, it is hard to fathom, and it's a weird skill to have really.

Talking of accents, the other new guy Tobias (James Newton) was sporting another odd accent as well, and randomly talking to people in the assembly, somehow he is able to freeze and control the other staff and p…

It is fairly safe to say that I am not, on paper, in the optimum target audience of this new musical, The Band by Tim Firth. It revolves very much around a group of girls, then ladies, who grow up through their love of a boy band, "the boys". However, for those who have seen the work of Tim Firth before, you will know that he has a knack for making all things accessible but also extremely touching and funny as well. This is why The Band actually becomes a show for everyone.

For those unaware, this unnamed group in the show, just happen to perform songs by Take That, and there are also five of them, however, for those expecting a history of that group, you will be disappointed to find, that is your lot pretty much in the Take That area, they don't get a name check at any point in the show. This show actually follows a fictional fan base, from their poster strewn walls of their teenage bedrooms, and to their lives, and the tribulations that go with it, of 25 years later.

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It is safe to say that there have been a lot of Agatha Christie spoofs kicking around over the years, they are ripe material to plunder, and often feeling as if the original author was even sending them up at times as well. So, to discover another one on stage at The Core Theatre in Corby is no surprise.

New Old Fiends' Crimes Under the Sun is a patch above many of them, a speedy, witty and genuinely ingenious take on a Poirot influenced case (no prizes for guessing Evil Under the Sun). As our lead, we have a curiously Belgian detective Artemis Arinae, Poirot in all but name, and more specifically gender (it's the first thing I noticed about her, to steal a joke). The show opens relatively badly, with a rather long introduction from our detective played by Jill Myers. It is the only downside of the evening, as once the stage is full of the quite brilliant collection of characters, this show whips along with an amazing intensity.

The characters created in Crimes Under the Sun …