A Small Mind At The Theatre

I first saw the work of Divided 's writer and performer, Subika Anwar-Khan, back a little over three years ago, during a rehearsed reading of her, then new, play Stateless . While I have never got to see a full production of this, it has gone on to be performed in London and received some really unsurprisingly great reviews. Therefore after such a long time, it was nice to return to see some more of Anwar-Khan's work. Divided is a very different piece, a one-woman show, performed by Anwar-Khan herself, telling the story of three characters and their links together, one of which has escaped an abusive relationship, and just three years in the UK, still lacking in English skills. This relationship, while born through an arrangement, is very much lived through love in the character of Amina, and Divided depicts the pull and pushes away from someone, that she clearly adores, but yet is cruelly abused by. The three main characters that we follow through Divided are Amina herse...

For those unfamiliar with Kneehigh Theatre (from where this show originally comes), the best way of explaining them is that they do traditional things, differently. This performance by Warts and All Theatre of their adaptation of the classic tale of Hansel & Gretel tells you much of what you need to know early on as a (human) rabbit is pinned down upon a table and skinned (half their costume removed). It is just one of an evening of wacky and quite brilliant moments as this production sours mostly for the sky of brilliance. Handed to a cast of young performers, the result is often disturbingly professional. Sure it is still rough around the edges at times, but perhaps this helps the material. It doesn't actually matter if there is sparring from the cast with the audience, knowing looks and playfulness. It doesn't matter if one of the cast nearly knocks the cymbal of the musicians flying, perhaps it would have been even better if they had, this is anachic fun at its ver...

Two years ago this week, I saw for the first time the older faction of the Royal & Derngate Youth Theatre perform Sweeney Todd (I had seen one month before the younger part create the delightful Honk!). While a quite brilliant level of standard has continued in their productions since, nothing has quite reached that optimum point of Sweeney for me. Oliver! is their latest production and this epic scale show merges all of the age groups together to create a spellbinding piece of youthful and lively theatre that is rightfully packing the auditorium like no R&D youth show before. I have to say straight up that Oliver! does not beat the legend that is Sweeney for me, however it comes as close as we have ever been to doing so. A lot of this perhaps is down to my personal taste and Sweeney's two stunning leads, which have yet to be bettered. The macabre nature of Sweeney also gelled with me and Lionel Bart's tale, despite being packed with more known tunes than seems possib...

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...

Theatre at its very best is a totally encapsulating experience. While you are relaxed in your theatre seat, you want to be taken to this created land and dragged into the lives of the people on the stage. You want to suffer the stress, the fun, the wide-eyed joy of those actors in front of you. Royal & Derngate's Youth Theatre gives you a very different immersive experience with Kontakt. During it running time of 45-60 minutes, you are very much part of the performance. Not any old part, you don't get dragged on stage for a couple of minutes here or there. You are pretty much fifty percent of the show, for the whole show. Originally created and developed by Philip Mackenzie for the Sherman Cymru Youth Theatre in 2008, the format is on paper simple, if a little scary to the audience member. You and a youth theatre actor share a table for the duration of the show partaking in games, simple question answering, drawing, some more deeper thoughts on life and dancing. For tho...

I officially love leaning on a table while watching a play being performed. That is my conclusion of spending Sunday afternoon watching two youth theatre shows. It helped of course that the shows in particular were of the most glorious and inventive variety, the first of which was performed by the specific Youth Theatre group (the younger stars in this case) and featured more than a hint of the Scooby Doo about it. Deprived of a dog, we had a band of five led by Shannon "Shamrock" played by Crystal Reilly with more than a hint of nastiness about her. Well a lot of nasty to be honest and her whipping boy mostly was poor old Cameron played with wonderful charm by Alfie Sanders. This being a musical we were of course treated to a lot of wonderful little numbers, all excellently performed. The best of which had to be the solo ghostly performance of My House. This was the most wonderful of pieces delivered gorgeously by the young star whose name alas eludes me. Just perfect th...

There was a moment at the end of DNA when the lights came up that I feared there would be deceased individuals surrounding me in the audience. Such was the abrupt and terrifying arrival with a strike of sound at the beginning of the play, that I surely did think someone with a dicky ticker must have succumbed. However what was greeted with general hysterics at their shock, seemed to have not made a corpse of any of the patrons. It was a striking beginning to a tough, but also very funny play from Dennis Kelly (writer of Channel 4's excellent thriller Utopia ). Telling the tale of the a group of youngsters who have killed a boy named Adam and attempt to cover up the fact. Originally written for National Theatres Connections Festival in 2007, this is a short and sharp edgy play lasting an absorbing fifty minutes or so. Having seen four of this years Connections plays earlier this year, I could certainly see the feel of this being such a play from that festival, made more so of the ...

I like the story of Sweeney Todd, the particularly morbid, horrific tale appeals to me (need counselling), and Stephen Sondheim's musical version is a particularly clever and fun (yes fun as we slit them throats) version of the tale. This particular version was performed by the talented bunch of youngsters that makes up the Royal & Derngate Youth Theatre under the guidance of director Christopher Gorry, whose work I had seen previously in Honk Jnr a few weeks before. Once again he had crafted magic from these skilled young performers. The ensemble welcomed us to the show with a stirring (and loud) rendition of The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd , after which Sweeney made his appearance in the guise of Brett Mason. From the outset Mason captured the character with aplomb and portrayed the tortured soul of both the loss of his wife and his freedom through to his demonic collapse. Also introduced with the song No Place Like London was Michael Ryan as Anthony. Ryan for me was one of t...

Honk Jr could not be described as high art, a collection of silly songs and corny jokes ( Not marmalade dad, WHAT"S MAMA LAID!!! ), it was just simply pure fun performed by a mighty band of youngsters, who they themselves appeared to be having high fun while also for so young, staying professional throughout. Honk Jr. is a junior version of Honk, which in turn is a musical version of the Ugly Duckling. Honk! was written by George Stiles (music) and Anthony Drewe (lyrics) and originally performed in 1993 in Newbury. The junior version is a slightly adapted version with some alterations to characters and songs, but it maintains some of its more grown-up jokes ( I haven't been out there since your father and I were courting...and I didn't mean to go that far then! ), that are the little bits for the adults and did offer some interesting responses I noted from the audience. Before I get to the performers, I have to make special mention of the set which was a delight (and l...