A Small Mind At The Theatre

Bryony Lavery's More Light , presented here in London as the final group performance by the 2019 BA Actors of the University of Northampton, is one of the more stranger plays that you might have the opportunity to see. Also despite is strangeness, it is also alarmingly entertaining as well. Although even now, I'm not entirely sure why. Their Emporer is dead, and these ladies who served him have found themselves confined against their will with his body. However, these ladies do not wish to die, but how to survive? They must eat of course, and sealed in a tomb to the great Emporer, what is the only thing that they can eat? One guess. It was as I came to write this review that I discovered that actually More Light was originally commissioned as a National Theatre Connections play, and on this revelation, all suddenly made sense. It's an accessible piece, ridiculously odd, but totally accessible, even though you might not understand it all. It also has a very large ense...

Grapevine Theatre Company's rather spectacular opening to their production The Cost Of Freedom rather sets the scene for potentially one of the best Flash Festival productions ever. A stirring piece of physical theatre, high in risk at times, and performed under a sustained period of strobe lighting. What is happening during this sequence is that the white man (a harrowingly performed, uncredited appearance) is pursuing the six characters of the play, in an attempt to capture them to make slaves of them. We are in 1853, in America, a time when slavery is still dominant. A barbaric and cruel time and The Cost of Freedom tells its story in a harrowing, but an immensely watchable way. The Cost Of Freedom contains perhaps the actor with the greatest stage presence of this year group, that of Michael Gukas, here as Noah, the effective leader of the group, he is at his best. The perfect demonstration of raising your voice, without raising your voice. The best actors can say the p...

I can't quite remember how many versions of Charles Dickens' classic tale I have seen (maybe too many), but this dynamic, and at times, very different, version, was the second that I had seen in seven days following a Masque Theatre version the previous week. They couldn't have been more different in places, despite rigidly following the original story very well. This production started with an uncharacteristic mingling of the cast with the audience, including a collection of non-period tunes playing (there goes #Whamaggeddon!). It has a mixture of weird and relaxed to it, and the assembled school kids certainly relished it and the mince pies, candy canes and chocolate coins that were being handed out. As the cast disappeared at their due time, the scene is set for our narrator, Lyric Impraim, complete with dust riddled book to open the tale. She's a great performer, full of enthusiasm for the tale being told, and has a most brilliant cameo later a...