Skip to main content

Review of Flash Festival 2019: The Nubian Sky at Looking Glass Theatre, Northampton

The Nubian Sky starring Shemelia Lewis was one of only two solo performances at this year's Flash Festival, and this exploration of what it is like to be a black woman now generally was a success, but in need of just a little more tightening up, and indeed exploration.

There are some strong moments here, from a youngster watching a quite remarkable cartoon from 1941 (Scrub Me Mama With A Boogie Beat), onto a schoolgirl in trouble for her hairstyle being distracting, and then the most bizarre TV show centring around whether a domestically abused housewife should get justice or not, we of course say yes, the show says no. It's a surreal and quite stunning collection of observations which are tough viewing of course.

Unfortunately, The Nubian Sky doesn't really take anything anywhere, there is, no exploration, it's just generally a basic collection of anecdotes of shocking occurrences, with no depth given.

Despite this, and most vitally though, Lewis is an excellent performer, making all the characters breathe differently. We quickly know who we should find endearing, and who we should be repulsed by, often just by initial and very clever body language.

It can at times get a little picky and bogged down with costume changes, all in view, which often spoils the flow of the piece, and because of the strength of Lewis' performance, are not really needed.

The Nubian Sky though is an interesting show, mostly because of its performer and her obvious dedication to the theme, it just needed a little more substance to actually become a great show.

Performance viewed: Friday 5th April 2019

The Flash Festival 2019 ran until Sunday 7th April 2019 at venues across the town.
Details here: Flash Festival 2019
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Hacktivists by Ben Ockrent performed by R&D Youth Theatre at Royal & Derngate (Underground), Northampton

The National Theatres Connections series of plays had been one of my highlights of my trips to R&D during 2014. Their short and snappy single act style kept them all interesting and never overstaying their welcome. So I was more than ready for my first encounter with one of this years Connections plays ahead of the main week of performances at R&D later in the year. Hacktivists is written by Ben Ockrent, whose slightly wacky but socially relevant play Breeders I had seen at St James Theatre last year. Hacktivists is less surreal, but does have a fair selection of what some people would call odd. Myself of the other hand would very much be home with them. So we are presented with thirteen nerdy "friends" who meet to hack, very much in what is termed the white hat variety. This being for good, as we join them they appear to have done very little more than hacked and created some LED light device. Crashing in to spoil the party however comes Beth (Emma-Ann Cranston)...
Read more

Review of Bat Out of Hell - The Musical at Milton Keynes Theatre

This tour of Bat Out of Hell - The Musical has become sadly a double-tribute as it tours throughout the UK into 2023 and the love of its creator Jim Steinman, and the man who made his work world-famous, Meat Loaf, both lost in the last year, runs through the cast in this impressive version of the show. The storyline of Bat Out of Hell takes the Peter Pan idea and warps it into a dystopian world of a group of youth known as The Lost trapped forever at 18 years of age. The centre of this group is Strat, who, after a chance encounter, becomes under the spell of Raven. Of course, into this mix must come a megalomaniac, as all dystopian worlds really need. This is the father of Raven, Falco, who, with his wife Sloane, battle The Lost, Raven’s relationship with Strat, and indeed their own very bizarre relationship, to the backdrop of Steinman’s music. Bat Out of Hell doesn’t start particularly well, be it the performance or a show issue, for the first twenty minutes there is a lack of clarit...
Read more

Review of It's A Wonderful Life by Masque Theatre at the Holy Sepulchre, Northampton

Remarkably I only saw the classic film It's A Wonderful Life last Christmas, this was thanks to spotting it lurking on my subscription of Netflix. A glorious heartwarming film perfect for Christmas? That must be why I was a blubbering mess at the end of it then. There was hope that in public, The Masque Theatre's performance of the radio version of the story didn't leave me in the same situation. As it happened it did a little as that final scene in the Bailey household played out again, but it didn't matter as there were members of the cast in the same broken state as many of us audience members. Left to right: Jo Molyneux, John Myhill, Lisa Wright, Michael Street, Lisa Shepherd and Jof Davies This was the first radio play that I had seen performed and on the evidence of this, I sure would like to see some more. While not having the drama of standard plays in their creation of moment and places, they do have a rather striking drive towards character creation. The ...
Read more