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Showing posts with the label Megan Burda

Review of Flash Festival 2016: Altered by Faux Pas Theatre at Castle Hill URC

Altered from Faux Pas Theatre takes memory as its theme and the possibility that you could be tricked and coerced into a false memory. Its case study comes from the true story of Beth Rutherford and her battle with what she remembers of her past is actually true. Altered is classic Flash fodder, take a very serious subject, treat with care and delicacy in exploration scenes of quietness. Then all of a sudden throw in some classic and over the top buffoonery. I have seen it done before in Flash many times and for most of the time Faux Pas' quintuple of ladies hit the nail on the head with the balance. There are quite a few brilliant individual scenes of entertainment, with my favourite the hypnosis one as we switch with perfect timing between the character of Beth (Sophie Rose-Darby) and her taped off council room and the three other actors completing and adding words to sentences in increasingly comic ways. Often including singing in these parts also highlights some very good u...

Review of Welcome To Thebes - University Of Northampton BA Actors at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

Following the rather poor play in the form of Days Of Significance (and a little bit of minor social media storm), I am happy to say that the third and final outing from this years third year uni shows was a much greater success. This despite the fact that Greek themed plays are well down in my own personal favourites. Written by Moira Buffini, Welcome To Thebes is an exploration of an encounter between the wealthy state of Athens under leadership of Theseus (Vandreas Marc) and the substantially poorer Thebes of the title under command of Eurydice (Sharni Tapako-Brown). Lurking in the background are Prince Tydeus (Charlie Clee) and lover Pargeia (Kathryn McKerrow) seeking to snatch power through their own stirred up anarchy. The direction from Eva Sampson is for me the best of the three plays, superbly whipping the audience into the world of Thebes with opening tension in the stalls of the Royal. Three soldiers; Megaera (Madeleine Hagerty), Scud (Daniel Gray) and Sergeant Miletus (...