Cindy Marcolina - Page 2

When Penelope’s father passes away in England, the family divides: where should he be buried? His Greek Cypriot sister thinks ancient tradition should take over, but his wife refuses to move his body abroad. An ugly feud erupts. The plot of The Ophiolite has a lot of potential. Philip de Voni’s debut play addresses loyalty and household politics, ritualistic allegiances and emigration; it’s a shame that the structure is messy, the writing is lousy, the acting is shockingly subpar, and Kerry Kyriacos Michael’s direction is equally disappointing.

There’s nothing like a great love story. Jess and Robbie met and instantly fell head over heels for each other – well, almost. Then, it was bliss until it wasn’t. Stuck in a liminal space, they disclose their own versions of the facts. Frantic Assembly take on romance and loss in their new production, which originally premiered in Leicester last year. Lost Atoms candidly analyses the everyday tragedies that bring a relationship to an end. It’s uplifting, moving, and desperate in all the right moments. Written by Anna Jordan and directed by Scott Graham, the show doesn’t hide a grander purpose. There’s no apocalypse, no war, no climate emergency that’s being directly addressed – we just have two people trying to make it work. And that’s their crux.

Make no mistake, the writing is dated and it’s far from being a masterpiece, but the production does something that’s so specifically disturbing that it’s difficult to ignore. Bateman’s raison d’être is unnerving to begin with. Once you combine this archetypal psychopath with a jaunty synth-heavy score and a glitzy choreo, watching our executioner dance maniacally with a cleaver becomes a spectacle in itself.

A journey through time and memory, Ballad Lines must be one of the most exciting new musicals to hit the stage in some time. We follow Sarah, an American queer woman, as she dives headfirst into her family’s roots. Through the centuries, the same melodies come back to link the women who came before her. It’s a story about female anger, patriarchal conflict, sacrifice, and the deep cathartic pull of feminine energy. Blending traditional folk music from Scotland, Ireland, and the Appalachian mountains with standard pop, Finn Anderson and Tania Azevedo write a visceral reminder of the power of choice.

October 1936, Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists march on East London. When they reach Cable Street, a stone’s throw from Whitechapel, they find that its people have gathered in a united front against fascism. British, Irish, Jewish, and communists are blocking the road, ready to fight. Written by Tim Gilvin and Alex Kanefsky, Cable Street couldn’t be more timely. After two successful runs at Southwark Playhouse, the musical returns to remind us that there’s strength in unity. As ICE murders innocent citizens who stand up to injustice across the pond and Union Flags keep going up on our home turf, this is the comeback we need. This is a high-energy, anti-fascist history lesson.

Is there a story more universally connected to the experience of girlhood than Little Women? Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 coming-of-age novel is a beloved read across the world, with its descriptions of sisterly devotion, struggle, love, and loss. The March sisters - Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy - have woven themselves into the lives of women and girls since their publication. The March sisters are also no strangers to the theatre, and this is not the first time that someone tries to adapt it for the stage, and we’ve had quite a few less-than-deserving examples that shall go unmentioned.

Since the 7th of October 2023 nearly 20000 children have been killed in Gaza. This number doesn’t include the kids who are still buried under the debris, or maimed by the bombs, or missing. Israel’s strikes on the innocent are ongoing, even after the so-called ceasefire came into action last year. The Arcola Theatre is presenting an intimate one-woman show adapted from Leila Boukarim and Asaf Luzon’s collection A Million Kites: Testimonies and Poems from the Children of Gaza. Written and directed by Elias Matar under commission of the London Palestine Film Festival, A Grain of Sand is a harrowing look at a senseless genocide. Though incredibly powerful, the production is flawed and doesn’t fulfil its dramatic potential.

Life doesn’t stop when 15-year-old Ollie’s mum dies suddenly. Ollie Maddigan’s autobiographical one-man play returns to London after a shower of praise around the country. The Olive Boy tells the story of a young boy attempting to navigate grief and an estranged father against a tsunami of adolescent hormones. Forced to move to the big city and change schools, he decides that his next step is to get a girlfriend. Directed by Scott Le Crass, Maddigan delivers an intense 75-minute rollercoaster of a performance.

London, 1970s. The media explode: a vampire roams the streets of Highgate. Bag of Beard Theatre bring their own brand of dark humour to one of London’s most baffling 20th-century frenzies. They reimagine the events, teaming up a bishop and a tobacconist – purity and sin – in a crusade against evil.

Co-Artistic Director of the RSC Daniel Evans brings to life one of Roald Dahl’s most darkly beloved children’s books in an utterly thrilling adaptation by Tom Wells. 

Considered the first Irish “state of the nation” play, it’s now turned into a historical vignette imbued with hoarse black comedy. Its long placid rests are interrupted regularly by blazes of humorous energy: it entertains, but the pacing is slightly too slow for it to be full-on engaging. It’s a worthy curiosity.

There’s nothing like a good comic horror to keep you warm in the wintertime, but you will find no such thing at Southwark Playhouse. The Grim is a badly paced, maladroit absurdist situational thriller that tries too hard to ease its nonexistent suspense with shallow laughter. Mid-60s, London has been seized by a series of murders. Shaun has taken over his family’s funeral home with plenty of imposter syndrome due to his father’s brilliance. His assistant, Robert, is all over the place. Chaos ensues when they take in the corpse of the most violent criminal in Britain, Jackie “The Guillotine” Gallagher.

This is Ivo van Hove’s triumphant return to the West End. He reunites with Bryan Cranston (whom he worked with on Network at the National theatre in 2017) for Arthur Miller’s All My Sons – famously, the playwright’s last attempt at writing a commercial success. Van Hove assembles a tremendous company (Cranston, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Paapa Essiedu, Tom Glynn-Carney, and Hayley Squires) to dissect the exploitative nature of the American Dream, giving a jarring picture of family and loyalty. This is, on the surface, quite the stylistic departure for van Hove. The director decided that less is more here and the result is astonishing.

Housed in a purpose-built venue in Canary Wharf, it’s a behemoth. Adapting it for the stage was always going to be a Herculean task, not only when it comes to pleasing a very passionate fandom, but when we consider the scale and magnitude of the story too. Written by Conor McPherson and directed by Matthew Dunster, it’s an unquestionably impressive achievement with great technical value. The actors are tireless athletes, the theatre is an imposing arena, and the stagecraft is often remarkable. Unfortunately, it’s also a soulless incarnation.

Directed by Miranda Cromwell, it’s a mixed bag: invigorating and galvanising on one hand, sermonic and overly explanatory on the other. Exquisite performances deliver generally mid songs that have a tendency to come up short on poetic narrative, but overdo it on the clichés. A more decisive tonal approach might have made the message hit harder. The continuous reiteration of the piece’s political beliefs and the doubling down on its feminist slant by telling rather than showing us slows the show down dramatically and narratively.

If there is one message that those who were in attendance at More Than One Story LIVE on 9 November absorbed through their skin, it is that “The arts don’t belong to a few, they belong to everyone.” The sentiment was declared proudly by Rory Kinnear in his opening speech and echoed warmly by co-host Shahab Awad, actor and member of Cardboard Citizens. It was sprinkled, allegorised, and spoken boldly throughout the monologues that were presented.

A life coach and his struggling daughter embark on a journey to find their Irish roots. Each of them is running away from something. Joy, who is exceedingly against the idea of leaving for an unplanned trip with her father, is going through a bad breakup; Winston, overly chatty and intrusive, is trying to forget the lawsuit that threatens his so-called career. Nancy Farino’s debut play tries hard to be profound. It looks into how our need for connection is the answer to many of our problems, but – much like its characters – it doesn’t know how to communicate its ideas. Directed by Tessa Walker, Fatherland might as well be a pedestrian radio drama.

Artistic Director of Papatango George Turvey presents the winner of their 2024 New Writing Prize: The Meat Kings! (Inc.) of Brooklyn Heights. Hannah Doran’s debut play thrives under Turvey’s enticing vision, alternating spells of emotional introspection with devastating blows to the gut. 

Cindy Marcolina’s journal. (Not kept in shorthand.) 30 October. London. Left Warren Street Station at 6:42pm, arriving at Camden People’s Theatre at 6:47pm; should have arrived at 6:45, but the streets were busy. Countess Dracula was waiting. Joanna Holden and Jack Kelly team up for a brash look at ageing and menopause in the shape of a quirky adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic novel. There’s a grotesque vaudeville aura to it, with the duo using meta-performance as the supporting framework for their jolly 45-minute show.