A Small Mind At The Theatre

Much like Sell-By-Date in 2014 took death in it's many guises and made a dark comedy with wonderfully dramatic moments, The Show Must Go On takes cancer and creates a piece much like that Flash classic. Devised by Penelope May, Jake Rivers and Madeleine Hagerty, who between them are Lead Feather Theatre Company, this is without doubt the most emotionally dramatic play of the week. It centres around Alice (Penelope) and an illness that we eventually learn is cancer. Around her are her brother Ed (Jake) and her friend Sally (Madeleine). The piece is handled with a deft and adult style throughout much of the play as Alice's condition worsens. There is also a tremendously strong subplot as well with a husband and his cancer affected wife. The husband played by Jake delivers a particularly brilliant and challenging stand-up rountine (shades of Sell-By-Date once again) that builds from guilt laughter from the audience to eventually silence as the tone of the jokes deftly changes....

Following the emotional trauma of Blue Stockings, for my second play from the University of Northampton's third years, it would have been nice to have a gentle cool down. Days Of Significance telling the story of love lives and their own fears for a future on the front line in Iraq was not to provide it. Never in my experience so far have I been welcomed to a play with such aggressive and upfront material as this from Roy Williams. A barrage of F words, a minor mortar of a prosthetic penis hanging limply from an actors trousers and then an artillery shell of C words to make sure the enemy/audience is totally wiped out. I am quite frankly not surprised that an elderly couple did leave the show relatively early in the first half as despite our understanding that this was a war themed play, we were little prepared for the "Battle Of Bridge Street" opening, to give it a local theme. Fortunately myself, while not likely to partake in verbals to this extreme, rarely, maybe ne...

My ongoing policy to avoid William Shakespeare as much as possible is as successful as many government ones over the years. A Small Mind is not for turning! However he always, endlessly ends up back sitting watching another of the bards many (and long) tales. The Merry Wives Of Windsor has the one thing going for it in my mind from the bard, in that it is one of the comedies. I find them more bearable, but unfortunately locally there seems to have been very few of them performed. So for every comedy I have seen (and this would be only my third live), I have seen an endless stream of dead bodies on stage at the end of some horrific tragedy. Trepidation therefore was high as I approached another prospect of three hours of Shakespeare. Having said all this, I have managed to enjoy the University performances the most because they tend to do something different. This time the different had begun before the play started as when entering the inferno, otherwise known as the Underground, w...