Cindy Marcolina - Page 20

Let’s rewind to 2016. The fires of Brexit are being stoked left and right and the discourse is rife everywhere, the news swarm with opinions and facts. Theresa May is about to go from Home Secretary to Prime Minister. Kenneth Clarke is being interviewed by Sky and he’s passing judgement on the candidates for the job. He smirks through his opinion of May and ends it with “Theresa’s a bloody difficult woman, but you and I [Michael Rifkind, whom he was talking to] worked for Margaret Thatcher”. This is the anecdote that titles Tim Walker’s new play about the sparring between May and Gina Miller, who took the government to court over their authority to trigger Article 50 without any approval from Parliament after the Brexit referendum.

The theatre gods work in mysterious ways. Right when Putin is wreaking havoc in Ukraine, threatening to start a nuclear world war, a show set in a fallout shelter opens at Theatre Royal Stratford East. Dennis Kelly’s After The End is a play about power and displays scenes of spine-chilling violence - which is the main reason why the writer hasn’t let many people touch it since it debuted in Edinburgh in 2005. With Lyndsey Turner at the helm, the project is a jarring, visceral tale of manipulation, control, and toxic masculinity.

The Norwegian Ibsen Company return to London with Ibsen’s swansong. After bringing us a mesmerising The Lady From The Sea in 2019, When We Dead Awaken fits well in the emotional panorama of the world with the regretful and melancholic atmosphere of its story. At a time when we might have lost hope in the future, the dramatist’s last play is bittersweet and nostalgic, profound and captivating. Unfortunately, it’s also exceptionally anticlimactic in this instance.

We’ve been saying it for decades, robots are going to take over the world. While it’s obvious now that there are many jobs that can be undertaken by more efficient metal arms and the lot, for a while we latched on to the reassurance that there are some things that they simply cannot do - being empathetic or feeling, for instance. While working robots have the tendency to be removed from looking like the human figure, it’s more and more common to see humanoid machines in human roles. They’re carers and sexual partners, customer service assistants and hotel receptionists.

We never go too long without learning new details of the heinous crimes committed by the Catholic Church. Just earlier this year, Pope Emeritus Joseph Ratzinger apologised for turning a blind eye to clerical pedophelia back when he was Archbishop of the dioceses of Munich and Freising. He’s not the first and won’t be the last ecclesiastical figure to admit something of the likes. It’s a widespread issue and the perpetrators keep eluding the law, with the clergy opting to punish their own with a slight slap on the hand and a different faraway parish where they can save more innocent souls. It’s not enough to diligently recite “mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” when centuries of abuse keep going without consequences. 

Being seventeen is hard enough without having to shoulder a climate emergency. At school, Zoe (Mei Henri in her first stage appearance) is a paladin of justice and Rain (Jordan Benjamin) is the new boy who just moved to the neighbourhood. While protestors gather on the east coast to rally against the big corporation East Coast Energy Solutions, the girl convinces Rain to set out on a cross-country trip to find her mother and save the world in the same breath. Crystal Skillman’s play is a dreamer’s guide to heroic activism. It’s a piece with good intent, euphoric in its stagecraft but unconvincing in its story.

The theatre formerly known as Tristan Bates, located just across the road from the Palace in the West End, has undergone a refurbishment and come out of the pandemic with a brand new name and snazzy facelift. Now called the Seven Dials Playhouse, it’s finally opened its doors again with a camp, compassionate story about hurt and acceptance that’s really a tribute to musicals at its core.

Hannah is the youngest of three siblings. There’s Joshua, Ben, and then herself. From the day she was born, she was taught to behave differently with them because Joshua is autistic. We meet Hannah (Rachel Hammond) when she is seven years old and follow her through her uncharacteristic adolescence. Armed with a looping machine and exceptional perceptiveness, Hammond delivers a sincerely bittersweet play directed by Lucy Jane Atkinson about what it feels like living with a person with autism. It’s definitely not all fun and games.

Eleanor (Meaghan Martin) is the daughter of Allison (Flora Montgomery) and Nadine (Amanda Bright). Conceived by Allison on a night-one-stand before meeting her future life partner, the gifted college girl drives back home with her boyfriend Rob to find out who her real father is. With the help of Rob’s private investigator friend, they track down the potential match and briefly destroy their family balance.

“Thirteen is young for an existential crisis”. Eileen has barely entered her teens when her older sister, Olive, dies of anorexia. It was sudden, during their family Sunday roast. Eileen had made the Yorkshire puddings, so it must be her fault. Rosie Day writes an intense rollercoaster of a play built on pitch-black humour and abrasive prose. The story of Eileen and her broken relations leads to an intelligent reflection on grief and mental health in a society where girls die trying to make themselves look smaller.

There’s a certain gravitas that follows Hamlet, a reverence that seems to accompany the great Dane alone. When you happen to have a centuries-old church at hand for Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, this happenstance only grows. Freddie Fox stars at the Prince and Holy Trinity Church in Guildford acts as “most excellent canopy”. Director Tom Littler’s first take on the most dysfunctional of Danish families comes off as tentative rather than assured, never quite fully coming into itself. 

As if the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse wasn’t already atmospheric enough, it feels like a special treat to witness their first candlelit Hamlet. After directing the colourful A Midsummer Night’s Dream just across the courtyard at the Globe, Sean Holmes goes darker and moodier with our favourite revenge tragedy. George Fouracres is the title character. Known mostly for his comedic work (he was Flute in Holmes’s Dream), he proves himself an eclectic actor and an electric Brummie anti-hero. The play’s not the thing here, Fouracres is.

The last time we had a chat with Michele Austin we lived in a different world. It was 2019 and we were talking about The Hunt at the Almeida. It's shocking to think how much everything has changed since then. Now she's reprising her role in Jamie Lloyd's Cyrano de Bergerac starring alongside James McAvoy. 

Since Hamilton debuted in 2015, the biographical musical genre has been at an all-time high. People love them, look at Six! Charlie Eglinton has now released a concept album for a new one based on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s life. Peter Shaffer gave us an imaginary account of the lives of the Salzburgian composer in his play Amadeus, but Eglinton’s Saving Mozart is rooted in history and - as Shaffer did to an extent - uses Mozart’s music as the foundation for each song in the show. 

Great minds meet at symposiums, state dinners, in literary circles, in the theatre. They get together and discuss their theories, arguing and tearing each other apart in dramatic fashion. What happens when two of the most famous men of their time clash in a small Hampstead office at the doors of the Second World War?

“I know who I am”, Fidel’s mantra echoes throughout Paul Anthony Morris’s play. But he doesn’t. Nor does the play itself. Conundrum is crowded with glaring themes. It’s about memories, identity, and racism. But it’s also about unlearning societal dogmas and healing your inner child, if you know where to look. And about how parents relate to their children, and about trauma and confidence. Unfortunately, they’re all throwaways. 

Irish politics is, usually, abundant with stereotypes according to British theatre. From gun-toting IRA members to peasants desperately fighting for the right to retain their mother tongue, it’s easy to get carried away with whiskey and a jolly dance. But there won’t be any leprechauns or Riverdance in The 4th Country. Kate Reid’s piece, first seen at VAULT Festival in 2020, is a dark, dark play that shines a light on the historical trauma of Northern Irish people.

So many musicals wish they were as cool, progressive, provocative as Spring Awakening still is since its premiere Off-Broadway in 2006. More than 15 years later and a bunch of awards garnered across the world, it’s still as fresh and stunning in Rupert Goold’s monumental production at the Almeida. Based on a 19th Century banned German play and delicately exploring topics like sex, homosexuality, abortion, and rape in a disapproving, hyper-conservative community, Steven Sater (book and lyrics) and Duncan Sheik’s (music) rock musical has become an evergreen show that society as it is won't be able to surmount thematically.

Every once in a while, we fall prey to the glitz and glam of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age. In the smaller space at Southwark Playhouse, it’s 1929. Daisy Buchanan - who now wants to be referred to with her maiden name, Fay - was in a sanatorium for seven years before escaping, still seemingly drugged up and confused, to find Jay Gatsby and live their extravagant life together. But Gatsby, of course, was killed in his swimming pool. We know it, everyone else seems to know it too. With the help of speakeasy owner Woolfe, Daisy retraces the events that led up to that fateful day.

In the best-case scenario, by the end of the 21st century, the Earth will “only” become warmer by 1.5 degrees Celsius. Realistically, it will be much hotter. Severe heat waves and rising water levels are only two of the main symptoms of this; coral reefs will disappear almost entirely and animal species will go completely extinct. Seas will swallow cities whole. Polar bears will become a fever dream.