Review of Sell-By-Date by Marbleglass Theatre. Returning to Northampton soon.

The excellent Sell-By-Date by Marbleglass Theatre returns to Northampton this Saturday and its original home of the Looking Glass Theatre. If you get the chance to see this, do so!

Below is my original review of the show as performed at the 2014 Flash Festival, Northampton:

"... the very dark, very funny and very powerful Sell By Date. From Marbleglass and featuring the talents of Marcus Churchill, Ashley Cook, Joseph Derrington and Sophie Murray, this was a gem. Setting the bar even higher for the week ahead.

Mixing music, dance, comedy, strong drama and in one particularly outstanding part, some very clever puppetry.

The performers in this group were particularly strong and I remember them well from their parts in Animal Farm (Animal Farm review). Whether playing the clown or deadly serious moments, they were at the top of their game. Even this early in their hopefully very successful careers.

The play itself was broke up into many parts, cleverly interchanging the aforementioned clowning, with the heavy and, yes, very emotional parts.

The previously mentioned puppetry scene was my pick for the best part. However the very rude, offensive, politically incorrect and therefore very funny, stand-up routine performed by Derrington had to be my second pick, particularly with the emotional pay-off.

I will also remember fondly the slightly ruder Two Ronnies bar scene and the best set change joke I have yet heard.

Overall this was a very clever, well written piece in need of your viewing as you may not find a better hours entertainment for a while for £6 (it is now £8!). Go see!"

Sell-By-Date was originally performed at the Looking Glass Theatre on Wednesday 14th and Thursday 15th May, 2014.

Tickets for the above can be booked here: https://thelittleboxoffice.com/lgt/event/view/18208

MarbleGlass can be found on Twitter @MGTheatre and they have a website at http://www.marbleglasstheatre.co.uk/

Looking Glass Theatre is in Derngate (Road), Northampton and can be found on Twitter @LGTheatre and on their website at http://www.lookingglasstheatre.co.uk/

Review of Murder She Didn't Write at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

Murder She Didn't Write , stopping off for a four-day run at Royal & Derngate on a lengthy UK tour, treads the now well-worn path of an improvisational evening of theatre entertainment. Unsurprisingly, from the title, this show from Degrees of Error's takes a murder mystery as its inspiration, with the story influenced by ideas from the audience each evening. Due to this, Murder She Didn't Write and a review are very much an individual affair. What I saw in my evening at the theatre will differ significantly from what the audience will see the following evening; however, the fine performers will remain. The touring cast, in no particular order, is Lizzy Skrzypiec, Rachael Procter-Lane, Peter Baker, Caitlin Campbell, Stephen Clements, Douglas Walker, Harry Allmark, Rosalind Beeson, Sylvia Bishop, Emily Brady, Alice Lamb, Sara Garrard, Peta Maurice and Matthew Whittle. For my performance, Skrzypiec, Procter-Lane, Baker, Walker, Bishop, and Clements were on stage alongsid...

Review of The Rocky Horror Show at Milton Keynes Theatre

Richard O’Brien’s anarchic, surreal, and often incomprehensible musical, The Rocky Horror Show , has captivated audiences for over fifty years now. With this new tour, it feels as fresh and unpredictable as if it had just emerged from O’Brien's vivid imagination yesterday. While another review might seem unnecessary given the countless dressed-up fans who fill every theatre it visits, let’s go ahead and write one anyway. The Rocky Horror Show follows the adventures of Brad and Janet, a newly engaged couple. On a dark and stormy November evening, they run into car trouble and seek refuge at a mysterious castle reminiscent of Frankenstein’s. There, they encounter the eccentric handyman Riff-Raff, the outrageous scientist Dr. Frank N. Furter, and a host of other bizarre characters. What unfolds is a science fiction B-movie narrative that is at times coherent and at other times bewildering — yet somehow, that doesn’t seem to matter. I first saw The Rocky Horror Show in 2019 and exper...

Review of Immune by R&D Youth Theatre at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

The cover note for the script of Oladipo Agboluaje's Immune describes it as "a challenging science fiction play with a large cast", and the word challenging in this case is not a lie. This is a fast paced, multi-cast changing script which leaves little room for error for its young cast in the performance. If the script isn't enough to handle for the young performers, director Christopher Elmer-Gorry and designer Carl Davies have made the situation even more complex for the actors with the set and stage work. Having to manhandle great panels on wheels and a huge cube, which also splits in two occasionally, during scene changes requires skill, coordination and cooperation of a high level. As if all this is not enough, the actual story is epic enough for the relatively small stage of the Royal. Attempting to form an apocalyptic world (albeit only happening in Plymouth) offers challenges in itself, but Agboluaje's script does that in a sort of apocalypse in the teac...

A Small Mind At The Theatre

Search This Blog