Skip to main content

Review of Into The Breach by Mark Carey at the Looking Glass Theatre, Northampton

Long term readers of this blog (I pity you) will be aware that myself and William Shakespeare are not friends, so the opportunity to go to see a play subtitled "One Man's Battle With Shakespeare" seemed very apt. This coupled with the shear horror of an opening in the form of a panto (another pet hate), could have left me fleeing for the doors of the Looking Glass Theatre.

However if I had, I would have deprived myself of seeing a quite brilliant one-man show from Mark Carey. So as I pretended to look like I was enjoying singing that "wishy washy" some such with words written upon some cardboard cutout bloomers, I gritted my teeth and got through it. Amateur dramatic director Simon Trottley Barnes did not however wish to see our lead George Crocker's Widow Twankey thankfully and we were soon away from such shenanigans and onto Shakespeare (whoopee do).

Into The Breach features five main characters (although there are seventeen in total), residents of a sleepy village in Devon. Set in 1943, all the characters are linked by their love and membership of the Lowford Drama club. The cast are all played with superb style by the one man performance machine known as Mark Carey, who has written the piece as well. When we see the drunken, forgetful Major we are really seeing Carey create a vivid character before us. When we see Ticker, we see all teeth and wait with baited breath for him to say "hello" once again. We see constantly throughout the show, fully rounded and full of character people. Carey totally embodies every part.

The story itself has very many layers as well, although it generally revolves around the club plan to put on a performance of "Henry Five". We also have an underlying romance tale and also most powerfully at the start of the second act a vivid flashback to the Great War. In under two hours you genuinely learn to love these oddball characters, all played by the same man, with just a hat, a whisky bottle or a pair of glasses the only visible physical difference.

This is a truly wonderful piece of one-man theatre, performed with real skill and love for the material of the Bard himself and even to an unbeliever of "Billy Shakespeare" like myself, a show to highly recommend you seek out. A quite brilliant and constant delight.


 Performance reviewed: Saturday 21st, 2015 at the Looking Glass Theatre, Northampton.

 Into The Breach was performed by Mark Carey at the Looking Glass Theatre.

 Details of Into The Breach can be found at http://intothebreach.info/

 Looking Glass Theatre also has a website at http://www.lookingglasstheatre.co.uk/
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Matthew Bourne's The Red Shoes at Milton Keynes Theatre

Sir Matthew Bourne has rightfully become the doyen of accessible contemporary ballet, with his works spanning a wide range, from Swan Lake , Lord of the Flies , and Edward Scissorhands to The Red Shoes , now here at Milton Keynes on an extensive tour. Based broadly on the 1948 film of the same name, The Red Shoes , set across Europe, follows the story of ballerina Victoria Page, discovered by ballet impresario Boris Lermontov. He requests that a ballet based on Hans Christian Andersen's tale   The Red Shoes  be written by the  composer Julian Craster, whom Page falls deeply in love with. A conflict arises, and Page must choose between love and success. The first impact on any audience of The Red Shoes is visually on the costumes and set. This is, without any question, a spectacular staging. Lez Brotherston, responsible for both costumes and set, has created a gem. The striking costumes effectively recreate the period in minute detail, placing the audience very much in t...
Read more

Review of Friends - The Musical Parody at Milton Keynes Theatre

The One Where 2026 starts in a world of confusion. And so, 2026 is upon us and for my first trip to the theatre this year, one of my most significant reviewing challenges was to occur. Touring to Milton Keynes Theatre is Friends - The Musical Parody , based, unsurprisingly, on that little American show that ran to a few audience members for ten years. However, I confess that I was not, and have never been in that audience, never having seen a single episode of the show. However, always up for a review challenge and doing my due diligence by having a Friends superfan as my plus one, I headed to Milton Keynes with anticipation. For those unfamiliar with the show, I could say I can’t help; however, a quick review of some of the information you might need (thanks, Google and my plus one). Running for ten years between 1994 and 2004 with 236 episodes (quiz question, you are welcome), the main characters consisted of Phoebe (ditzy, writer of sad songs), Monica (in possession of an unfeasibly...
Read more

Review of The Play That Goes Wrong at Royal & Derngate (Derngate), Northampton

It is scary to contemplate that it is almost four years since I first saw Mischief Theatre's The Play That Goes Wrong . It is no secret that on that night I enjoyed it quite a bit (and ended up on stage, but that is another story). I returned the next evening to watch it again and then stalked it down to London later that same year, which over three years later it continues its remarkable West End success story. Since my last encounter with this original, I have seen Chris Bean's ramshackle Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society create chaos on stage and television with Peter Pan Goes Wrong , mess-up Dickens' A Christmas Carol and even gatecrash BBC Radio at Christmas. This fourth encounter with the original The Play That Goes Wrong though, offers the opportunity to see it in the hands of a different cast for the first time. How can pretenders of the original creators shape up in this anarchic disaster of a play? Actually, as it turns out remarkably well. It is true that ...
Read more