Why A Black Woman Will Never Be Prime Minister @ Camden People's Theatre

Why A Black Woman Will Never Be Prime Minister takes us through 9 months (or 3 trimesters) of a young woman’s quest to break the cycles she comes from. She is child of a single mother who works incessantly to make a better life for her daughter; her daughter who has taken that gift and translated it into acceptance to university and an internship with a candidate for prime minister, alongside a steady relationship. The text intersperses spoken word poetry with direct address monologue and two-handed scenes (with her boss at the internship). The production moves fluidly through these elements, propelling the story forward as we learn that external barriers aren’t the only forces at work against this young woman; indeed she learns she became pregnant just before uni began, so that the trimester cycle of uni and the political campaign dovetail with her own pregnancy.

The two performers do a capable job bringing the characters and world to life, and the director sets a fun stylistic tone upfront; however as the seriousness of the challenges she is facing shift, the tone of the production doesn’t quite shift to the same degree, causing those more serious and touching moments to not work as well as they could. The script was strong in parts but did have some rather expository elements which could be done without. 

Toto Kerblammo! @ Unicorn Theatre

Toto Kerblammo tells the story of a young girl and her dog, as they navigate a challenging personal situation for her. Faced with a major tragedy and her mother taken to mental hospital, Effy has to move in with her aunt and uncle, where she can’t keep her dog Toto. It centres around the idea of listening — specifically that her dog can hear things she can’t to tell how she is felling. 

The story is told through headphones, creating an intimate atmosphere and one where the mechanism of listening becomes heightened. Moving back and forth through time and in and out of reality, the story unravels for us slowly, and in a really touching way, until we realise that another tragedy has occurred for Effy to move forward from. 

All elements of the production come together to perfection, but in particular, a couple elements stand out.  Tim Crouch’s script deals with intense subject matter, and for a young audience, yet doesn’t shy away from it or simplify it. In fact, there are elements introduced throughout the story which make it beautifully complex and difficult. The way the story unravels is careful to release just the right amout of story as it goes, slowly revealing what is happening and the depths of the situation to the audience. By positioning the story of this young girl’s emotional growth around her dog and what the dog can hear, with the overwhelming theme of listening, the audience are able to achieve a psychical distance and objectivity to the story while still being emotionally impacted by it. This is a beautiful story, well told — for audiences of all ages. 

And secondly, the sound design by Helen Skiera is truly exceptional, if relentless. The audio is playful and evocative — it creates closeness, and distance, builds spaces and changes times despite next to no change in the physical space. The layers to the sound design really emphasise the elements of the story and elevate them. The elements of sound design work together to create an intimacy between the audience, actors, and story.

Go see this.

NOWHERE - Fuel Theatre @ Battersea Arts Centre

Where are we safe? Khalid Abdalla’s solo show leaves nothing untouched in its challenge to the audience. Blending personal history with the politics that overshadow it, Khalid takes us through his family’s history as it relates to revolt, colonialism, and the current imperialist ventures in the West Bank and Palestine.

If it sounds heavy, it is - at times. But at times it is also darkly funny, light, playful, and despite the darkness, filled with hope.

Director Omar Elerian uses a brilliant blend of media to bring us this story - projections of old photographs, video which is and is not live (and it hard to tell when it transitions), and perhaps most movingly, images on a phone. To give the audience a story about contemporary uprisings which are made possible in many ways by the smartphone, which we far away primarily learn about through our phones, is nothing short of genius.

The play moves at a blistering pace and yet feels gentle, thoughtful. The performance, production, and script all come together in the most beautiful way, that the audience are left a little breathless, a little teary, and completely reminded of why we make theatre. This. This is why.

Twine @ The Yard Theatre

Selina Thompson’s newest play, Twine, explores adoption, and the search of an adopted child to understand their history. Set in a magical between place, Sycamore has been split into three parts to represent her at different points in her life. Seed is her at 5 days old (when she was adopted), Sapling is her as a teen, and Bark is adult her, hardened to the realities of life.

The premise is intriguing, and there are moments where it is truly exciting, however as a whole piece there are moments that just don’t work. The first act worked better than the second, using music to engage and weave the story, although it ran a bit long and flagged toward the end of the act. The second act felt a bit disjointed from the first until the very final moments.

The music and performances were all strong, supporting a strong idea, but the script just didn’t quite have the pop it could have.

ECHO (Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen) @ Royal Court for LIFT Festival

Where does performance happen? What does it mean to be present in a space? Nassim Soleimanpour’s latest play, ECHO, digs at these questions. Using the convention of an actor who hasn’t read the script before performing live which Soleimanpour used with great success on White Rabbit, Yellow Rabbit, this play pushes that technique further. Not only is the actor contending with a script they haven’t seen, but with technology, projection, and more. This play asks big questions; about who we are, what ties us to a place or a memory, and importantly about what it means to move away from home and family, living as an immigrant in another culture divorced from your own but unable to separate yourself.

I won’t say more as to not steal the surprise — but suffice it to say that the images and questions this play ask have been looming over me since seeing it. That’s not easy.

Slave Play by Jeremy O Harris @ Noel Coward Theatre

I was more than a little excited when the London production of Jeremy O Harris’ Slave Play was announced, after hearing about the New York production and its reception. This is a play intended to make people think, and it is not easy viewing at times.

Don’t worry - I won’t give much away. Only to say that it is a searing commentary on racism in today’s society, in the context of all that came before (thanks Kamala). The play itself is structurally the love child of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls and Jean Genet’s Le Balcon (in all the right ways). It is delightfully confusing at first, then as it explains itself it challenges the viewer to examine their confusion and feelings on the earlier pieces. It is searing and raw.

This production’s cast are exquisite - every performance as exceptional as the next, a true ensemble. This is essential viewing - please, please go. Maybe you’ll be like half my row who walked out? Honestly, goals.

As You Like It (The Land Acknowledgement) by Cliff Cardinal @ Lift Festival

How do you hold an audience accountable? Cliff Cardinal’s As You Like It premiered in Toronto the day we moved to London, so I didn’t get to see it. . . but it was hard to avoid the furor it caused amongst Canadian theatregoers and critics. Some adored it; others were appalled. And in a way, that was the point. Reminding comfortable middle class audiences in Canada of the things they do and say to make themselves feel better, without actually doing anything.

So when I saw that this show was coming to London for the LIFT festival, I was excited of course, but also intrigued. In Canada, audiences are familiar with land acknowledgements as a construct, and have at least SOME knowledge of the horrific acts against indigenous people. But how would this translate to English audiences? I’ve now lived here nearly 3 years (this time around) and am reminded regularly how little Brit’s think about Canada, much less the politics of indigeneity, or indeed what the concept is at all. Furthermore, not only do they not think about Canada, but they are wildly underinformed (in the main) about their country’s role in “creating” the country, stealing the land, and the ensuing 200+ years of history.

Cardinal is an engaging performer, disarming the audience and making them feel comfortable, creating truly funny moments early on. He made some really clever adaptations to the script, providing some context to the UK audience that were necessary for the script to work, and for the accountability to have a hope of happening. He did a brilliant job in bringing this audience in — educating them while also adapting to their knowledge level, making it all the easier to turn the knife when the moment came. And you could feel this in the audience when the moment came (and came again. . . and again).

My only question is whether it could have gone further. . . did that audience really leave with a sense of what happened, continues to happen, and is in parallel with the much more publicised genocides? Or are they still sold the Canadian propaganda of nice people in a clean country with lots of trees? It is hard to tell.

Piece of Me @ Camden People's Theatre

At first, a seemingly silly exploration into childhood passions. And then, a deep dive into what it means to live in our hyper-recorded, overly monitored reality. Piece of Me frames around a young girl and her friends’ pop-star aspirations in the 90’s, but asks signficantly deeper questions about what we are giving up when we live our public lives.

Accompanied by an exceptionally interesting sound design, and some head bopping pop tunes, the play takes on some huge questions. I’m not convinced it answered all it set out to, but have to applaud the delightfully meta-theatrical exploration and play with form.

Get Off @ Battersea Arts Centre

This show isn’t intended to be easy viewing; from the very start, we see the performer, Katy, in a loop of video, nude in her bedroom, panning around the space. When the performance begins, she is laying on the floor of the white stage, in front of the screen, with a microphone. A clever play between the recorded Katy and the live in front of us Katy sets a tone for a funny performance that won’t take itself too seriously.

It continues with some truly delightful and funny moments, and some really challenging moments, and quite a lot of failure in performance. It was interspersed, however, with some fairly graphic moments projected up on the big screen, which I struggled to connect with the rest of what was happening in the story. Furthermore, it was never made clear why the performer was naked, or what purpose this served. Which is fine, but for me in the particular circumstance of performance (particularly female solo performance) this double objectification needs to have a purpose.

All in all, while there were some fantastic moments, and some that really made me think, the production as a whole (in this new version) felt undercooked — a lot of great ideas, but just missing that link that would pull them all together, giant poop video and all.

A Spectacle of Herself @ Battersea Arts Centre

Sometimes you get the evening of angry feminist performance art you need. Laura Murphy’s solo show blends spectacular design with a brilliant and challenging script, pressing into moments of tension or discomfort to create recognition of the anger boiling in our bellies here in the 21st century. The piece is at times circus performance, at times expressionist art, at times standup comedy, and also a lecture, a movement driven academic argument.

In particular the overlay of relationships to space exploration with relationships to gender and sexual expression which in parallel to one another as the overarching thematic movement of the piece is an emphatic expression of our current world. The truths Murphy speaks through voice and movement choices are incredibly resonant.

Watch for this to be re-mounted, and GO.

What (is) a Woman @ Arcola Theatre

Billed as a one woman play with music, this show veers much further into Musical Theatre than I expected, although the songs can’t be claimed to advance the plot. That’s not the fault of the songs, but rather a narrative that is unclear. It jumps around in time and place - fine - but nothing really happens. It is simultaneously not a meditation on any one topic, or exploration into the postdramatic.

It is unfortunate, because all of the individuals creating the work are clearly very skilled at what they do — the underscoring from live bassist and keyboard are exceptional, the lighting design clever (if not altogether aligned with the action), the performer highly skilled as a singer and dancer, the choreographer creating intricacy. . . but somehow none of these elements mesh together into a cohesive moment or succession of moments.

I might be biased, but it felt as through there was an absence of a dramaturgical hand in the writing, which carried through to the production.

Red Pitch @ Soho Place Theatre

Daniel Bailey’s fast paced script matches the intensity of a 5 a side football match; the 3 young actors move and play and jest and argue, through the highs and lows of life as young men with their hopes pinned on getting out of “ends” through prowess on the football pitch.

The production is simply spectacular; simply designed leveraging red metal grate to create the cage, then with superbly selected music and simple but effective lighting choices, the world of these characters is apparent from the very first moment, and doesn’t wane. The simplicity of the space and direction allows the dialogue room to live freely, creating relationships between these young men, their world, their aspirations… and the outside factors pressuring them.

This is an absolutely brilliant script which captures the real language and rhythm of the lives of young men in south London perfectly.

Samuel Takes a Break by Rhianna Ilube @ The Yard Theatre

…in Male Dungeon Number 5 After a Long But Generally Successful Day of Tours

Yes that’s the whole title. And the mouthful of a title hints at the darkly serious yet funny play that marks the debut of Rhianna Ilube at The Yard Theatre. The play tells the story of a tour guide, Samuel, and his colleague, Orange, and the cast of individuals who come to take a tour of the Castle in Ghana where humans were held as captives before being shipped to North America as slaves. It tells us a story of modern times reckoning with the long reach of colonialism in a deeply insufficient way. It tells us a story of contemporary humans grappling with the depths of the distant, and not-so-distant past.

The cast is rounded out by two actors who play all of the couples making the visit; all 4 are directed superbly by Anthony Simpson-Pike, who creates a physical and intentional space which allows the audience to be taken in and not question the jumps in space, time, and reality. All 4 actors are equally exceptional, and the production as a whole was thoughtful, yet felt dangerous and at the edge of acceptability.

An absolutely incredible play, production, and set of performances. One can only hope for a remount.

Bacchanalia - Sleepwalk Immersive @ St Peter's Crypt

An exciting performance space, Bacchanalia uses the basement crypt of an old church in Bethnal Green to create an immersive performance telling the story of Dionysus’ return. Using a strong physical performance vocabulary, the performers move between multiple areas while the audience, clad in black capes, are allowed reign to roam and watch where they like. There are scenes which overlap that serve one another, however there are also times where the sound bleed from one room to another is more distraction than support. Despite strong work by all performers, I found it hard to find space to watch, or to hold attention outside the the group scenes. There also seemed to be a few red herring scenes, objects or plot lines introduced that went nowhere.

On the whole, a fun experience, but with its heavy reliance on the techniques of Punchdrunk who have made great strides in the immersive space, it is hard to see that this production brought anything new to the discourse of immersive theatre.

August in England @ Bush Theatre

The intimacy of The Bush’s space welcomes us into an extended front room of a house. A house filled with memories and pictures on the wall, with well worn but cared for furniture. The house of someone who has worked hard all his life and values what that has brought him.

Enter Lenny Henry, as August. Jovial, friendly, but at times harsh. Throughout the play we learn the story of August, who moved with his mother to England as a child and grew up here. He builds a life and a family, and suddenly, like a wave, it is taken from him. This story of the Windrush generation quite literally takes your breath away, as this man who was full of life and love and hope is crushed by a technicality well beyond his control.

Henry’s performance is astounding, weaving between characters but retaining August’s point of view - everyone we see is seen through his lens. He brings the audience in with such ease, making you feel he is speaking just to you.

Truth's a Dog Must to Kennel by Tim Crouch @ Battersea Arts Centre

What are we doing when we go to the theatre? Tim Crouch’s latest play challenges the very existence of theatre, its purported value and necessity, whether it is alive at all. Structured in his inimitable manner, taking the viewpoint of an actor inside a production who is experiencing the aftermaths of that production while addressing the audience, the “performance” in this case - which we never see, of course - is of a “modern dress production” of King Lear. A play which falls into the category of big and important and meaningful plays. A role stars are desperate to play, and which audiences regularly hand over large sums to watch.

But what are we doing when we do this? Paying to watch simulated death, surrounded by people (we assume) have similar tastes and values and lives to us. Good people and compassionate people who care and read and donate. Paying to watch simulated death. Paying to be seen in this place. Paying for the comfort of this ritual. A ritual of wealth and privilege and self congratulation. Where everyone knows how to behave and nothing bad actually happens. Where we can tut and gasp at the terrible things happening, then applaud at the reminder of how far they are away from us when the lights go down, safe in our bubbles.

But we aren’t, of course. The world of King Lear isn’t as far from us as we want it to be, nor is the real outside world. So when that real world creeps in, we’re affronted. We’re annoyed. We’re busy watching a fictional world about a terrible leader and worse father, paralleled by another terrible leader and even worse father (not our world, of course).

There are so many layers in this script, as there always are in Crouch’s work, that I’m still digesting the many resonances and connections. That said, for me in this moment the resonances above are the strongest - that big, looming question of why we are even trying to make this (possibly dead) art form in this (terribly broken) society and pretending it makes any difference. We could have stayed home and warm and watched Netflix.

Crouch’s script doesn’t just ask these big questions; it offers answers that are discomforting. Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this at all?

If you can make it to this production, please do. You will be challenged, but you won’t be disappointed.

Katharsis by Yvette Nolan @ Prairie Theatre Exchange (limited recording)

I viewed this via Prairie Theatre Exchange on Vimeo, during their limited free availability of the piece on demand.

Yvette Nolan has written a love letter to the theatre. It is gentle and kind, acknowledging the uncanny situation we find ourselves in — desperate for connection and stories, but unable to serve them in our preferred in-person manner. A time when theatre is more necessary than ever, and yet impossible in its old form.

The use of the enormous and empty PTE mainstage space is delightful. Tracey Nepinak guides us with comfort and reassurance, reminding us that we’ve been paused before, but will come back. She is charming and engaging (as always), and I honestly couldn’t imagine a better actor for this role.

A delightful treat of a piece in response to these pandemic times.

Heroes of the Fourth Turning by Will Arbery @ Playwrights Horizons

I viewed this during the live to zoom performance, presented by Jeremy O. Harris in October 2020.

Will Arbery’s Pulitzer finalist play is challenging, both in terms of the characters it presents, and the ideas it demands we confront. Framed around 4 young people reuniting at their faith-based college for an event celebrating one of their teachers receiving a prestigious promotion, the 4 are now at an afterparty, perhaps a bit tipsy, and dealing with the roiling emotions that are inevitable when a person returns to a place after some time.

These are challenging individuals, who bring us in to their world not through immersion, but through subversion; at first, the characters say and do things that seem perfectly “normal” (read; liberal) however as the play unfolds and their relationships and discussions return to old familiarities, their positions and statements begin to bristle against this. These individuals are completely familiar and yet altogether alien. They remind us that the people whom we may want to vilify in our thoughts for having views that seem untenable to us, may actually be more like us than we think.

The play, for me, demands we question the belief too tightly held, so aggressively and fervently grasped that it is morphed, and morphs us.

This was a re-staging for zoom of the original Playwrights Horizons production. Leveraging the individual screens of Zoom, director Danya Taymor created the dark stillness of a rural evening beautifully. While the stage version would have had all four in the same space, something unique happened when the actors were divided, when we saw each of them facing the camera directly, arguing with one another, but also somehow peering into the eyes of the viewer. The shifting quips and opinions, short responses bubbling into one another, in this format felt like a Facebook argument come to life.

I don’t want to give too much away, but would simply encourage that if you have the chance to read it or see it, do.

What The Constitution Means to Me - Heidi Schreck (recorded)

I watched this on Amazon Prime, where it continues to be available. It is a filmed performance from 2019 when the show was performed on Broadway, directed by Marielle Heller.

I have been excited about this play since I first heard Heidi Schreck talk about it on Brian Koppelman’s podcast, The Moment. There is an energy about the way she spoke about the play, and the awe with which Brian described it, that intrigued me. Framed around Schreck’s real life story of travelling around the US debating on the constitution to win prize money to pay for college, what begins as an almost too-real personal confession, quickly spins into a deep and scathing indictment of the treatment of women throughout American history.

Schreck’s performance is singular in its simplicity. She rarely feels performative, even when we see her as her 15 year old self. She is raw and honest in her storytelling. The convention for how the story is told shifts repeatedly, peeling back layers of artifice until we reach the final third of the play which is no longer a play, but a live debate of ideas between two fierce debaters. So rooted in the ancient Greek agon, this is simultaneously the most and least theatrical aspect of the play.

The design is simple, the space does not change but instead the people within the space change and modernize, a stunning metaphor for the old structures which we moden humans must live within, outmoded, but still what we’ve got — the perfect setting for a debate on whether we should continue, or burn it down and start again.

This is a timely watch.

What Happens To You, Happens To Me by Susanna Fournier - Canadian Stage

This is a free audio experience you can listen to here, until August 1, 2020.

This fresh new isolation-inspired audio play from Susanna Fournier is an exploration of connection, of storytelling, of collaboration. We hear one voice (the delightful Kristen Thomson) inviting us to listen and connect with her. I listened to the audio-only version (there is also a version with video images if you prefer), and spent the approximately 16 minutes thinking through questions of time and hope, and more importantly, what comes next.

The piece asks audiences to engage with it, although the parameters of this are unclear. Many questions are asked, divided into chapters, but really it is the final question that is pressing and holds urgency.

Definitely worth checking out before it is gone.