A Small Mind At The Theatre

There is something quite special about Playhouse Creatures by April de Angelis currently being performed by Masque Theatre at The Playhouse Theatre. A colliding of a sparky, witty and often truly sad script, and an assembled cast of five, perhaps the consistently best I have seen from an amateur production in Northampton. Set around 1669 and telling the story of the first English actresses, Playhouse Creatures weaves a fictional tale around some very real-life and renowned characters including the most famous (mostly for other reasons), Nell Gwyn. It is a captivating little play, offering bold humour and painfully sad life events for the players. If there is perhaps one issue with April De Angelis' play is that for the first act at times it can be tricky to get a handle on its path. Many of the early scenes are formed through always entertaining, but very episodic scenes, through little snippets of performance of shows and character building. However while this seems disjoint...

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 ...

After clocking up over two hundred and fifty theatre reviews in less than three years, I nonchalantly thought that any show I have thrown at me, I can confidently cover. That was before I went to see Masque Theatre's production of the Anthony Horowitz play Mindgame last evening. A cast of three weave you into a mysterious web, where absolutely nothing is what it seems and leaves a terrified reviewer the prospect of trying not to reveal those weaves. I am of course bold and brave(ish) though, so this will not trouble me. Too much. First performed in 1999, Mindgame sees true crime writer Mark Styler (William Portch) arrive at the optimistically named mental institution Fairfields. His target is to meet, interview, profile, and tell the life story of inmate Easterman, a notorious serial killer. In charge at the hospital is Dr. Farquhar (Vince Perry), a bold presence, but surprisingly confused character to be in charge of such important patients. Completing our cast of characters is ...