Cindy Marcolina - Page 54

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?

During the first three weeks of the initial lockdown in 2020, 16 women and children were murdered in the United Kingdom because of domestic violence. Those numbers were only going to rise during the following year. It is said that men were able to gain power and rule the world because murder makes them less uncomfortable.

“Do you think I care for the souls of the poor?” It’s something that could come straight from a private conversation in Downing Street, but on this occasion it dates back to the first century in Domitius, a brand new musical about the fifth emperor of Rome: Nero. Born as Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus before he became Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, he’s quite the controversial figure in Roman history.

Ireland, 1922. A brand new facility to provide refuge and help to single expecting mothers and their babies opens in Cork, Bessborough Mother and Baby Home. Owned and operated by Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary, it was a horror house for many until its dismantling in 1999 - 22 years ago.

There’s a level of narcissism that pervades every relationship we build. If we take a deeper look at how our bonds operate, we’ll notice that intimacy and the boundaries we set for ourselves are what control them.

Vincent Van Gogh's is one of those life stories that we love to retell. There are countless museums, films and documentaries cataloguing the tormented and tragically suicidal post-impressionist painter, and the Doctor Who episode dedicated to him is absolutely tear-jerking.

Sometimes theatre shows don’t work out. Some can feel like watching a train wreck in slow motion, and others build a brick wall without any mortar to keep the pieces together. It takes nothing, maybe a slight push for the latter to disintegrate. I Could Use a Drink is a mix of both under director Alex Conder.

“So much pain was filled with happiness, at last!” There’s a reason why we call a lengthy, adverse journey “an odyssey”. In 24 books and over 12’000 lines Homer follows Odysseus, the “Master of plots and plans” and King of Ithaca, on his adventures after the decade-long Trojan War. Across another ten years while he was presumed dead, our hero saw all his crew-mates dying horrendous deaths. He was lured by sirens, killed a cyclops, and faced a series of horrible feats.

“My filter goes when I’m nervous!” That’s how we meet Jane Sinclair. The scenario is simple and normal: the 23-year-old young woman is being interviewed for a job. The cold and professionally detached poise of her potential new manager clashes with Jane’s tendency to over-share, but this only seems to amuse him. He slowly warms to her potty mouth and all of a sudden things take a turn for the worst.

“It isn’t where you came from; it’s where you’re going that counts” said jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. It’s almost as if Hymn embodies this quote. Written by Lolita Chakrabarti (of Red Velvet and the staged version of Life of Pi fame) over lockdown, the play had its premiere in a sold-out live-streamed run in February.