Cindy Marcolina - Page 53

A brilliant new collection of voices has just hit bookshelves. 50 Women in Theatre, published by Aurora Metro, shines a light on the invaluable contributions of women across all disciplines and fields of stagecraft. From stage designers to actors, the volume is an inclusive and all-around eye-opening account of how theatre has changed from the post-war period to now.

Lots has changed in the United Kingdom since the referendum in 2016, and so has in British theatre. International, multicultural shows are now a steady presence in the fringe, making different points of view louder and stronger. These pieces are usually in English, our common language, or have some sort of sur-or-sub-titleage going on. What happens when a company refuse to do so and decide to perform a play where languages intertwine and interact? Mrs Green happens.

There are many plays that have been pushed back by the pandemic. For some, their delay is an honest shame. For others… well… even more development time might have actually saved them. Dissident Theatre’s snazzy debuting run of Snowflakes is now playing at the Old Red Lion Theatre after its original 2020 cancellation.

There is something unexplainable and idiosyncratically intimate about Aria Entertainment’s The Last 5 Years. In a journey begun at Southwark Playhouse right before the pandemic hit our stages, Jonathan O’Boyle’s production of Jason Robert Brown’s beloved musical has redefined the piece itself to the point where now there probably isn’t a purest way to make the show.

On Shaftesbury Avenue, right opposite The Palace Theatre with its Cursed Child, a venue which holds a mesmerising surprise lies between a Wing Stop and an educational centre. Stone Nest - an old Welsh Presbyterian church - is now home to an Anglo-Russian multimedia production with looks as luscious as its core subject is plain.

Move over Hamilton and Six. There’s a new historical musical in town and it’s creating ripples. After a sold-out debuting run at the New Diorama back in pre-covid times and another one in 2020 at Southwark Playhouse, SplitLip’s Operation Mincemeat has just returned to Elephant and Castle once more before coming back again next year. It almost looks like the West End needs to take notice ASAP.

In 1940 a group of four teenage friends, thinking they’d be crawling through a secret passage to the close-by Lascaux Manor, made one of the most astonishing discoveries of the 20th Century. Over nine hundred paintings dating back god-knows-how-long, in their eyes. Something inside of them knew that they needed to preserve it, so they camped out day and night to protect it. Then WWII started, and they enrolled in the French resistance.

It’s the 11th of September at The Grand in Brighton, first in 1943, then 1982, and then 2001. Writer David Hendon’s choice of years is, obviously, everything but a coincidence. World War II, The Troubles, and then the attacks on the World Trade Centre. One wonders how can a play that spans such crucial moments in modern history be so shockingly apolitical other than unnecessarily long.

“I’m a part-time time-traveler!” Toby is an artist who moonlights (quite literally) in an observatory. While his job is generally a tedious keeping track of stars and making sure they haven’t moved, everything changes when he spots a comet that seems to be coming towards Earth. An action-film fanboy with a profound lack of confidence, when nobody pays attention to his warning, he transforms into a blockbuster hero. Meanwhile, in his personal sphere, a chance encounter at a party makes him fall in love with a girl who made “time melt”.

Memories are fickle things. We rehearse them, we shape them, and we eventually forget the original events and end up making new ones, filling the gaps with our experience of them rather than the actual occurrences. It’s the core concept of Shelagh Stephenson’s multi-awarded play, The Memory of Water. Premiered in 1996 on the Hampstead Theatre stage, it went on to win an Olivier in 2000, debut in the States, tour internationally, and even landed on the big screen in 2002 titled Before You Go directed by Lewis Gilbert.

“Where do men go to grieve?” a failed relationship, a fixer-upper job in a pub, a sudden fear of dying, and now his best friend’s suicide are breaking Daniel Hallissey’s character. In the Shadow of the Black Dog (written by Hallissey and directed by Conor Neaves) tackles men’s mental health in a long stream of consciousness. Unfortunately, it doesn’t give any solution, or insight, or way out. It’s sadly full of stereotypes, excused machismo, and a propensity to victimisation. 

“I wish you weren’t so far away” says Robert Rowell to Elizabeth Bishop in the return of Gate Theatre’s 2019 production of Dear Elizabeth. Staged at Theatro Technis this time around, Ellen McDougall’s concept for Sara Ruhl’s play is still the main focus rather than the actual plot of it. Each night, a pair of actors who haven’t read the script and don’t know much about the contents of the show go on a treasure hunt reading Bishop and Rowell’s letters.

“Everything about him was too big, too heavy, too hard” and yet the abominations of his behaviour went unaddressed for the majority of Donna’s life. Four kids and a broken childhood later, she’s in prison while her father lies in a grave with a head mangled by a cast iron pan that was too bulky for her to lift normally.

In 1921, female homosexuality was discussed in Parliament for the very first time. Its male counterpart had its earliest outing in the 16th Century. There’s only a four-century gap before the leaders of the country decided that women, after all, do not do certain things. Fast forward to our generation, lesbians need to have a specific look on screen while getting abused (read: nearly killed) on a bus.

All artists must think they’re better than anybody else, even if only by a little bit, or they must be convinced they have something to say at least. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be doing it. “The work has to come first”, even before personal relationships. That’s what Isaac and his two friends Piotr and Damien believe. It’s a recipe for disaster and Painting By Numbers turns it into a hilarious catastrophe.

In a room at the Savoy, an Artist is desperately trying to deliver 100 artworks to the new manager to pay the bills. But his overbearing Mother and her ongoing legal battle make things difficult and the dystopian society the derelict hotel is set against doesn’t help either. While we meet the pretentious despair of the drama queen and her drama son, the portrait of a very feasible future is painted on the background alongside a broader discourse about what it takes to be creative.

There are plenty of gay plays, some very successful and other less-so, that carefully depict life as a homosexual male. There aren’t too many that deal with being a bisexual man, with Mike Bartlett’s Cock perhaps being the most famous one. Somehow, someone’s sexual and romantic attraction for multiple genders is always a bit left behind, like in the real world. When we talk about queer issues, bisexual stigma is very present even inside our own community. From their alleged promiscuity to never-being-gay-enough, bi people have their own set of paranoias that can make a very good play.

The pandemic - and perhaps Brexit - threw a spanner in the works of the steady ascent of smaller-scale European theatre in London. In The Before Times it was very easy to find these types of shows in dark rooms above pubs all across town. Now that everything is starting again, it’s great to see that they’re reappearing and international companies are back staging their peculiar genres. We need them on the scene, they’re corridors that lead to the variety of disciplines and points of view found on the mainland. British theatre can feel like an island.

“Perception is a choice!” Sam concludes in his pedantic and condescending tirade about ghosts and “the unexplainable”. Frustratingly, the remarks of such an insolent, smart, and snobbish man keep ringing true to the logical crowd. It’s quite difficult to stage a properly frightening show in a theatre, and that’s perhaps the reason behind Danny Robins’s brand new play 2:22 - A Ghost Story being referred to as a “supernatural thriller” rather than any other horror-related genre.

What would happen if the Prozorovs were a modern family in lockdown? What if they had to move to a small rural town not because of their father’s army job, but because of the pandemic? What if Irina worked in Greggs?