A Small Mind At The Theatre

Kay Mellor's The Syndicate has been a huge success on television having reached four series across the last ten years or so. Each following a different group of characters who find themselves the lucky winners of a lottery jackpot, it has managed to snare impressive cast members as well across the series. Due to the success, it isn't a surprise that this play, based purely on series one, has reached the stage. However, does television make good theatre, that is the question. It seems, as a result of this production, it creates maybe what could best be described as average theatre, as across its short two-hour running time (which includes the interval) there are a few thrills and a good number of laughs, but few moments in the way of ground-breaking theatre. Directed (and starring) Kay Mellor's daughter Gaynor Faye, and a collection of relatively familiar faces from TV, the production is a standard offering. Directed with little flair, and a large number of scene changes, ...

To Move In Time , is a monologue described on the producers website as " in which an unnamed protagonist speculates playfully about what he'd do if he were able to travel backwards and forwards in time ". To be fair it is a totally fascinating scenario and probably something almost everyone has thought about over time. It is such a wide scope as it could be personal, global or anywhere in between. It's such a scale that you wonder how writer Tim Etchells with his performer Tyrone Huggins could possibly condense such a scenario into a show not even an hour in length. Maybe they had time travel plans in operation in the theatre. Truth be told Etchell works wonders around words and concepts of time-travel to insert every idea you could imagine into this brief moment of time. It starts suitably enough small scale with the prevention of a friends wallet being lost for instance, or their friend being caught in a road accident. Etchell at first places us at this point before...

Written almost 250 years ago,  Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play The School for Scandal , has, I freely admit, passed me by, and I had very little knowledge going into the theatre to see this new Tilted Wig production, directed by  Seán Aydon, of what it was even about. Sadly, it has to be said, there was a great deal at the interval I didn't know either. Looking back at the performance a day later, I feel that I have finally got a handle on why as a play this is very difficult to get into, and unlike my initial thought of the somewhat old language it exhibits (a slightly more modern Shakespeare vibe), I feel now that the direction of the performers is a little to blame. The School for Scandal you see is set in a world of larger-than-life characters and for much of the first act, these are played by the performers as larger than even that, with exaggerated delivery of lines, high emphasis on certain words, and delivered a decibel or two too high to be easy on the ear. As a resu...

The second of two BA Acting performances at the Royal & Derngate saw a production of The Sweet Science of Bruising by Joy Wilkinson. The play tells the tale of the much earlier world of women's boxing than most would realise. Set back in the 1860s, Charlie Sharp, known in the boxing world as The Professor is what we know more now as a boxing promoter, but he likes to think he is a little more scientific as he takes four ladies from different worlds and makes them the "Lady Boxing Champion of the World". Richard Akindele is excellent as The Professor, both a character in the play driving the progression of the story, but also embodying as a narrator of the piece. He has the presence and gravitas for the role and stirs his crowd around his protégé. The roles of the four boxers are played in no particular order by Sophie Lawlor as Violet Hunter, Sasha Wallett as Polly Stokes, Millie Metcalfe as Matty and Sadie Douglas as Anna. Each is tremendous, playing very diffe...

This BA Acting performance of Nell Gwynn heralded my first opportunity for a few years to see the actors from the University of Northampton plying their trade in the Royal Theatre, following something to do with covid and my own unavailability. It seemed quite apt in many ways that it was to be Jessica Swale's Nell Gwynn , presented in the most perfect theatre for such a play, and some boisterous antics, pre-show of audience members (actors) including referencing the "plague". It felt very much 17th Century going on 2020 all over again. Seeing this work of Swale on stage in the Royal, again under the presentation of the University actors also reminded me of the glorious Blue Stockings by the same writer presented by the BA Actors some years ago, and while many of the hallmarks of that show are here, it didn't quite match that magnificent moment. Nell Gwynn , if you hadn't already worked it out, tells the tale of the 17th Century fruit seller (and other "trad...

The 1987 film Withnail and I has over the, now many, decades since its first release gained an ever-increasing cult status and is very much regarded as one of the finest British films of both its time and potentially all time. So, while it is over thirty years since the film hit the screens, and over fifty years from the film's setting of 1969, original writer Bruce Robinson has decided to create a ripe new adaptation of the film for the stage. So, the question is, does it manage to both capture the nostalgia and setting of this cult film or does it feel a little late for such an adaptation to be made in these very different times? Before digging deeper into the play though, a very brief departure into the storyline, such as it is. Withnail and I are aspiring actors, on the dole line and very much on the booze line (with further slides onto the drugs line). They are trapped in their very infested digs in Camden Town. After a battle with too many entities emanating from their sink,...