Cindy Marcolina - Page 55

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.

Leave it to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s most colourful musical to date to pull London out of the lockdown blues! After closing down with the rest of the West End last year, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat comes back to the Palladium starring Theatreland’s sweetheart Jac Yarrow as the title character, Alexandra Burke as the exhilarating Narrator, and Jason Donovan - who’s graduated to Pharaoh after playing Joseph in the early 90s. 

The last time Reg was breaking hearts on a London stage was at the Apollo Theatre back in 2015. Simpler times. Much has been said and many comparisons have been drawn between the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and everything that’s happened in this pandemonium of a pandemic.

The hottest Hamlet on the scene is an octogenarian. But Ian McKellen’s latest stage appearance in Windsor is far from being a geriatric production. In the run up to their opening, McKellen and the company described it as “age blind”, almost an experiment to see how the visual aspect of a Shakespeare play impacts the content. The resulting answer is difficult to pin down. Hamlet’s perceived age changes the dynamics. But also, surprisingly, it ultimately doesn’t matter much.

There’s a song by Brad Paisley titled “Little Moments” where the American singer-songwriter celebrates the small instances and idiosyncrasies that make life worth living. Ben Barrow and Lucy Ireland’s new song-cycle From Here feels like the spirit of that ballad was given the space and breath it deserves - although the genre and delivery have nothing to do with Paisley’s hit.

What do Dua Lipa and a French comedy from the 18th Century have in common? Absolutely nothing. They might do in a different adaptation of Pierre de Marivaux’s The Game of Love and Chance, but not in Quentin Beroud and Jack Gamble’s.

Right when summer starts kicking in and restrictions slowly ease, Iris Theatre is putting on an eclectic range of shows at The Actors’ Church in Covent Garden. With bunting all around the grounds and flowers blooming, the new musical The Red Side of the Moon couldn’t have asked for a better ambience. But while the surroundings are a great backdrop with their music festival vibes, it’s not all rainbows and butterflies for the show.

Mr and Mrs Pooter have just moved from Peckham to their new home in Holloway, much to the Mrs P's dismay. She tries her best to be “a dutiful wife” and he is the model Victorian husband. But are they, really? English writer Evelyn Waugh once described George and Weedon Grossmith’s novel The Diary of a Nobody as “the funniest book in the world”. The Pooters have gone on to have quite an onward life over the years and have finally landed at Jermyn Street Theatre in an effervescent revival of Keith Waterhouse’s Mr and Mrs Nobody.