Cindy Marcolina - Page 27

It was 2015 when Athena Stevens was forced out of a flight to Glasgow due to her disability. Upon the return of her £30,000 wheelchair, she found that the airline company had severely damaged the machine - and they were being most flippant about it. A social media war ensued, and Stevens ended up signing an NDA and settling the case months after being left with no means of autonomous mobility. Scrounger packages this disastrous event in a chirpy yet feeble comedy that becomes the opportunity for her to detail the endless systematic discrimination she faces daily.

Hampstead Theatre opens the new year with a heartwarming but generally forgettable play on their smaller stage. The Tyler Sisters follows three girls as they grow up and find their place in the world from 1990 to 2030. What the audience gets to see of this time frame in the life of women who might not like each other all the time but who are bound by blood is a series of single scenes for each one of the 40 years.

After 40 years of leadership, Jatinder Verma is stepping down as artistic director of Tara Arts in January. After its conception in 1977, he's turned his company from a community project to a prominent presence on the British theatre scene. In recent years, Tara Arts has also become the first (and so far only) BAME-led company with their own theatre building. We had the pleasure to have a chat with Verma, who summed up his groundbreaking journey and took a look at the state of the industry.

Mike Lew's Teenage Dick has just opened at the Donmar Warehouse. The original take on Shakespeare's Richard III relocates the action to an American high school. We talked to Alice Hewkin, who plays Clarissa Duke, about everything it takes to move Shakespeare into Mean Girls territory.

After being in Peter Pan Goes Wrong and The Comedy About a Bank Robbery, Ellie Morris is joining Mischief Theatre once more to star as Sandra in The Play That Goes Wrong.

It's Christmas Eve and Andy (Elliot Levey) is waiting for his daughter Maya (Ellen Robertson) to come back to him. She left home three years prior after they had - according to her father - a silly argument and she hasn't spoken to him since, nor has she replied to his texts. But someone has seen her in a café in Oxford, so Andy feels that she's ready to finally meet him. He's decked the village hall to welcome her back and he's sure she's coming, even though there are no signs of her. Then, Natalie (Amber James) bursts through the door.

A family start their day like any other. A daughter, a younger brother who's still in school, a mum who takes care of everyone and everything, and a dad who often works night-shifts. They don't know that, as they go about their life as normal, their lives are going to be changed forever when police show up on their doorstep. “Death never used to be for the young” says Francesca Amewudah-Rivers in her arresting performance of debbie tucker green's random.

The Park Theatre are doing Christmas a little differently on their smaller stage this year, presenting an adult play that's seasonal only in its wintery setting. Martha, Josie and the Chinese Elvis is an avalanche - and not in a good way.

Jermyn Street Theatre's Christmas shows are always a surprise. After last year's murderous black comedy Burke and Hare, now they're shifting the spotlight on a collection of fascinating vignettes that are, essentially, the definition of one of the internet's favourite words: sonder, which is a?oethe realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your owna??. That's the core concept of One Million Tiny Plays About Britain.

Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol places Ebenezer Scrooge centre-stage, shoving all its female characters to the side in an attempt to paint a deeply unfair and harrowing picture of London's Victorian society. The protagonist has been an immovable presence in theatres around Christmas time from the same year the novella was published, establishing Scrooge as a historically male role. That is, until now.

Things haven't been easy for Dan after his split with his ex-wife Mandy. His best days now all have their daughter Maisie in them, and she's all he talks about. She's six and they're spending the day in London before she's due to go to her friend's birthday party. The unimaginable happens, and the cracks that were there become abysses. Roger Goldsmith's Maisie is the heart-wrenching account of a broken man.

The third offering of the newly opened Immersive LDN has become a festive classic over the years. Alexander Wright's adaptation of A Christmas Carol is known to appear at a different location every year; Scrooge's Parlour has relocated to the lower ground floor of the venue (which is also hosting their other talk of the town - The Great Gatsby and The Wolf of Wall Street - whose faint noises you can hear in the distance if you pay enough attention).

Following last year's hyper-successful To Jesus, Thanks For Everything, BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon are back with their new extravaganza: All I Want For Christmas Is Attention. The show is a drag-tastic alternative Christmas treat.

Comedy trio Sleeping Trees bring Christmas to Battersea Arts Centre with their latest fairy-tale mash-up. After Cinderella and the Beanstalk and Scrooge and the Seven Dwarves, James Dunnell-Smith, Joshua George Smith, and John Woodburn venture into Wonderland in classic Sleeping Trees style. Goldilocks and the Three Musketeers is rambunctious and properly laugh-out-loud funny.

During a fortuitous meeting at the edge of an abyss, two strangers contemplate the existential decisions that have lead them there. A Bench at the Edge is a sharp and uncompromising dark comedy that examines mental health and free will. Luigi Jannuzzi's distinctively Beckettian piece of theatre delivers a broad observation on attachment to their existence and loss of hope, while directly addressing the individual complexities that push people to suicide. Directed by Kasia Różycki, the play is quiet and, even in the sparse auditorium of the Tristan Bates Theatre, offers a cinematic atmosphere to the story.

After being on Broadway twice, God has finally arrived to London. And She's a woman! A lesbian, specifically comedian Zoe Lyons. Displeased with how people have been taking Her Ten Commandments too literally, She's decided to descend onto Earth to give a new, updated, and more modern list first-hand so not to be misinterpreted once again. She's accompanied by Her two best Archangels, Michael (Matt Tedford) and Gabriel (Tom Bowen), who will help Her answer people's questions and set things straight for the future of the universe.

Magnificent Bastard Productions reveal the latest Christmas ace up their sleeve, presenting A Pissedmas Carol. In true Shit-faced Showtime fashion, they grab a beloved story and transform it into a jolly ol' drunken time by having a member of the cast highly inebriated before the curtain goes up.

Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso met in Paris in 1935. She was a young photographer who was establishing herself in a world dominated by men, and he was one of the most revered painters of the time. She was drawn to him for his artistic flair, he was known for chasing a new muse every other day.

Ronan Raftery plays chess world champion Boris Spassky in Ravens: Spassky vs Fischera??a??a??a??a??a??a??, beginning this week at Hampstead Theatre. The Cold War is taken to the chess board as Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer prepare for battle. Raftery told us what we should expect from this game of epic proportions.

After joining Jamie Lloyd in his Doctor Faustus at the Duke of York's Theatre and featuring in his Pinter at the Pinter season, Tom Edden is jumping back on stage with the director to star alongside James McAvoy in Cyrano. His credits name-check long-running shows like Les Misérables and Matilda, as well as plays of the likes of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui at the Donmar and Amadeus at the National Theatre. We caught up with him to chat all things Cyrano and what makes Lloyd such a special director.