Skip to main content

Review of Flash Festival: Black Females Theatre - Black Hearts Black Truths at the NN Contemporary

Black Hearts Black Truths starring Melissa Madden is not the best Flash play I have seen this week. However it perhaps takes its subject matter and burrows deeper than any other. It also totally educates in its brief period something that personally was unknown.

It was never an issue to me growing up about people being different. While the understanding of racism existed, it never occurred to me that there was the prospect of being too black as a further form of this. This was an education and enlightening in the extreme.

While watching the only thing that came to me was how Michael Jackson's appearance changed over the years and whether this was in the same mindset as this. However because of this play it stirs things in the mind to find and learn more. That is the credit of such a show, to challenge the brain, to learn things you may never have experienced before.

Melissa through her play creates substantial real people, some likable, some repulsive, all clearly defined. The final scene with the bleach is an incredibly tough scene to watch having learnt so much in so little time it comes the more devastating.

While I did wonder about actually whether I was going to appreciate this play from the lack of understanding the subject matter, I came away from it educated in something I truly had no knowledge about in the first place.



*
As a separate comment, I would say that this was the least appealing of the four locations of the festival. Ignoring the fact that the staircase takes you to a place where the air is thin, there are issues with the room itself with chairs all on one level much is lost by the rows further back. The chairs also were not the most pleasant. Therefore it is not a venue that I would desire to visit again in too much of a hurry.


The Flash Festival 2015 runs between 18th-23rd May, 2015 at four venues across the town. Details can be found at http://ftfevents.wix.com/flashtheatre2015, while tickets can be booked via the Royal & Derngate. Details at: http://www.royalandderngate.co.uk/whatson/2015-2016/Other/FlashFestival15

Popular posts from this blog

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 Flashdance - The Musical at Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes

For the second week running, the Milton Keynes Theatre is overrun by a wave of eighties nostalgia as Selladoor's production of Flashdance The Musical follows hot on the heels of An Officer and a Gentlemen. However, is it nice to have more of that classic decade upon the stage? The answer mostly is yes, despite the fact that the story driving Flashdance is that light and flimsy at times, you just have to sit back and watch the dancing and the bright colours to get you through. Welding genius, Alex Owens, has her sights set for a bigger thing beyond this tired and struggling factory in Pittsburgh.  Hoping to take her dancing beyond Harry's bar, she plans to make big, via Shipley Dance Academy.  Then, also drifting into her life comes Nick Hurley, who initially unknown to her, happens to be the factory bosses son, the scene is set for romance. Flashdance has a generally excellent cast led with a tremendously good performance from Joanne Clifton as Alex Owens. Those famil...