Cindy Marcolina - Page 48

San Francisco-born Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's hit doomsday comedy Boom, about a biology lab meet-cute with major evolutionary consequences, premiered at the Ars Nova Theatre in New York in 2008. This August, it comes to Theatre503.

Director John Haidar marks the 20th anniversary of Enda Walsh's award-winning Disco Pigs with a cracking new production at Trafalgar Studios. Premiered at the 1997 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the play depicts the peculiar universe created by Pig and Runt in Cork City. Born at the same time on the same day at the same hospital, the deep friendship that unites the two takes a turn on their 17th birthday.

Set in three bedrooms, the same emotional world under three different roofs in time, Torn Apart (Dissolution) is an intimately powerful play. BJ McNeill bares an array of human feelings and cages them on the stage in singular snapshots of differently shared lives.

In 1942, the American War Office issued a pamphlet titled 'Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain' to prepare the nation's soldiers to a life abroad defeating the Nazis. In the riotous comedy by Fol Espoir and The Real McGuffins, Americans and Brits come face to face with odd traditions, typical and debatable food habits, and a shared language that couldn't sound more different.

Premiering at Southwark Playhouse, Superhero is a bittersweet, funny and genuinely moving musical about a dad fighting for custody of his daughter. Colin Bradley (Michael Rouse) recounts his journey through fatherhood recollecting the small victories, hilarious moments and painful mistakes of his life with Emily, his beloved daughter, and Christine, his ex-wife.

James Bridie's Mr Gillie comes to the London stage after more than 60 years. Helmed by Jenny Eastop, this production is a successful portrait of love and passion for art and education.

Owners of a passed-down takeaway joint on an Australian highway, sisters Elma (Emma Playfair) and Nancy's (Lily Newbury-Freeman) unstable relationship is challenged on a daily basis between running the shop and dealing with their past. When they decide to turn their activity into a proper restaurant and hire the mysterious traveller Hakan (Scott Karim), their life take an unexpected turn.

Upon being discharged from the Marine Corps, Isaac (Arthur Darvill) goes back home only to find an anarchically ruled household at hand of his mother (Ashley McGuire). Fed up with domestic patriarchy, Paige seized the opportunity given by her abusive husband Arthur (Andy Williams) having a stroke to turn the tables and start making the rules. She built an ally in her transsexual son Max (Griffyn Gilligan), who helps her to keep tight hold on the reins. Isaac is forced to come to terms with a reality he doesn't recognise as his own.

The Heather Brothers are back with their new heavenly blaspheme musical comedy Holy Crap!. After launching the first pay-per-view religious channel in Great Britain, the American Bobby Del La Ray (John Addison), The "Hallelujah Cowboy", soon realises that there is no market for such an enterprise in the "godless and bankrupt UK". Since his meddling with the mafia is taking its tall on his mother, who is being held hostage in Sicily, he decides to start offering his few viewers another kind of entertainment, something that he is sure will increase his figures: porn. Helped by Rex Bedderman (Arvid Larsen), a legendary British rockstar and devout Christian who promotes his channel, Bobby's influence starts to grow.

Anthony Biggs presents the UK premiere of Maxim Gorky's 1908 The Last Ones in a highly dramatic and touching production that nevertheless feels ultimately insubstantial.

Directed by Anna Ledwich, Kiss Me is passionately and heartbreakingly intimate. Stephanie (Claire Lams), a war widow, struggles to reconcile her role as a "modern woman" with her longing to have a baby. She is met by a man, Dennis (Ben Lloyd-Hughes), whose job is to give exactly what the woman wants most. Their meeting will be the start of an unorthodox relationship in a shifting 1929 London which is still learning to adjust to the new world.

Like other young men, Jack, a 25-year-old with a learning disability, has needs and desires, and his parents don't want him to feel left out of significant life experiences, so they decide to hire a prostitute to arrange their son's first sexual encounter. Julia will slip into the cracks of a marriage on the verge of an invisible crisis, and in the end she will do a lot more than just help Jack.

Edward Fox stars in the one-man tribute to Great Britain's most acclaimed Poet Laureate John Betjeman. Following a successful UK tour, Sand in the Sandwiches is a verbal tour de force for the actor, who, at the age of 80, delivers a distinguished transposition of the artist.

On a (thankfully) sunny Saturday afternoon, the thespians who usually inhabit London theatres turned bakers for the day. Benefitting Acting For Others, an umbrella name that represents 15 charities devoted to helping people in the theatre business, the West End Bake Off was a bounty of show-stopping sugary goodness.

Peter Darney brings back his highly acclaimed and disturbingly honest 5 Guys Chillin' to King's Head Theatre. After an original run in 2005, the show has touched audiences at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, and the SoHo Playhouse in New York. The play challenges the uncomfortable implications that come with  the practice of ChemSex, the sexualised drug use largely spread among gay men. By interviewing real consumers and transposing their words verbatim, the playwright and director is effective and straight to the point.

Five people face the shame that comes with being exposed in the digital age: a woman dealing with her younger sister's sex tape being published; a father coming to terms with his daughter's sexuality and his relationship with porn; a scorned woman's revenge on an ex-boyfriend; an app developer's faux pas; and a young woman's self-love discovery that turns against her. The tales are joined by a thread consisting of sex, porn, and the impulsiveness and appeal of new media.

Lettice Douffet (Felicity Kendal), a tour guide at Fustian House, has inherited her mother's penchant for theatricality. This inclination leads her to filling the gaps in the boring history of the stately home with embellishments and imaginative stories. Her dismissal by her supervisor Lotte Schoen (Maureen Lipman) oddly marks the start of a timid friendship that will develop into a fascinating adventure for the two lonely women.

In a zombie-raided Scotland, best friends Paul (Paul Thirkell) and Rob (Finlay Bain) have found refuge in an abandoned flat. Out of luck, they managed to surround themselves with all kinds of comforts, so they've accustomed to a shielded, secure life in their sanctuary away from the horrors of the real world. Their lives turn upside down with the arrival of Penelope (Pearl Appleby), a young woman who survived a lot more than just zombies.

At the end of World War Two, Annie (Ruth Gemmell) and Isabella (Emma Paetz) are being interviewed in Poland by the Allied forces. The two women tell two sides of the same story: the former - a Commander's wife whose biggest dream when she was younger was to become a dancer but is forced into marriage - recalls her married life with her husband Frederick, the latter - a ballet dancer - explains how she was picked from a concentration camp because the Commander wanted a ballet dancer for his party.

The Last Five Years recounts Cathy and Jamie's five-year long relationship. With music, lyrics, and book by Jason Robert Brown, it's an intricate work: while Jamie narrates his side of the tale in chronological order, Cathy's is flipped, going from the end to the start of their happiness together. The characters interact only once in the middle of the show, when their timelines converge for the span of their wedding song ("The Next Ten Minutes").