-
Elizabeth McGovern to star in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in Bath
Downton Abbey’s Elizabeth McGovern is to star in a new production of Edward Albee’s classic play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at Theatre Royal Bath.
She will play Martha – one of the greatest roles in 20th-century American theatre – in the new production directed by Lindsay Posner which runs at the theatre from 13 January to 11 February 2023.
First staged on Broadway in 1962, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? was soon established as one of the great plays in post-war American drama.
During the course of one night, George, a college professor, and his wife Martha invite a young couple back for late-night drinks after a faculty party. As the alcohol flows, the guests are coerced into witnessing and participating in George and Martha’s sadistic game-playing and vitriolic verbal scrapping which reaches its climax in a momentous revelation.
Further cast and creatives are yet to be announced.
McGovern is now best known for playing Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey, but she was Academy Award nominated for her portrayal of Evelyn Nesbit in Ragtime and had leading roles in films including Once Upon a Time in America, The Wings of the Dove and the 1990 adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale. Her most recent stage credits include the UK tour of God of Carnage.
Tickets will go on sale at theatreroyal.org.uk from 30 August 2022.
-
Blippi The Musical plans West End return for Christmas
Family show Blippi The Musical is returning to London’s West End this Christmas after its successful sold-out run this summer.
Based on the hit Blippi children’s show on YouTube, the production will run at the Lyric Theatre from 7 December 2022 to 8 January 2023.
It brings the curious and fun character Blippi off the screen and onto the stage with world-class production, audience engagement and music.
Blippi encourages learning through doing, playing and exploring, inspiring a child’s natural curiosity about the world around them. In the live show they will continue to learn about the world around them while singing and dancing along.
The 65-minute daytime show is presented by Blippi distributor Moonbug Entertainment and Round Room Live in collaboration with Carter Dixon McGill Productions. It is currently running at the Apollo Theatre in the West End from 16 August to 4 September.
Stephen Shaw, tour producer and co-president of Round Room Live, said: “Our sold-out run this summer is currently delighting children and families, and we’re thrilled to provide joyful memories for even more families when we return this December.”
Susan Vargo, head of live events at Moonbug Entertainment, added: “Blippi The Musical proved such a huge success this summer. We are extremely excited to bring it back to London’s West End again this Christmas, where live theatre for family audiences thrives.”
Laurence Miller, commercial director of Nimax Theatres which operates both the Apollo and the Lyric, said: “In 15 years of daytime family programming at Nimax Theatres, Blippi is the first family show to sell out before the first performance. It’s a massive hit.”
With over 54 million YouTube subscribers and one billion views per month, millions of kids have joined Blippi on playdates and learned about vehicles, professions, animals, the natural world and much more.
Blippi was originally created and played on screen by Stevin John and more recently by Clayton Grimm who is involved in the current stage production at the Apollo.
When Blippi The Musical returns this Christmas, the character of Blippi will be played by professional stage performers selected specifically for the stage show.
Tickets for the Christmas run are on sale now at nimaxtheatres.com/shows/blippi-the-musical-lyric/.
-
Full cast in place for Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman at Bridge Theatre
The rest of the cast has been revealed for Bridge Theatre’s new production of Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman starring Simon Russell Beale, Clare Higgins and Lia Williams.
They are Sebastian De Souza as Erhart Borkman, Daisy Ou as Frida Foldal, Laila Rouass as Fanny Wilton and Michael Simkins as Wilhelm Foldal.
They are joining Russell Beale in the title role, Higgins as Gunhild Borkman and Williams as Ella Rentheim in a “new version” of the classic play adapted by Lucinda Coxon.
It will run at the Bridge Theatre, between London Bridge and Tower Bridge, from 24 September to 26 November 2022, with opening night on 29 September.
It is directed by Nicholas Hytner with set designs by Anna Fleischle, costume designs by Liam Bunster, lighting by James Farncombe and sound by Gareth Fry.
First published in 1896 and premiered in 1897, John Gabriel Borkman was one of Ibsen’s last plays. It tells the story of a once-illustrious entrepreneur who has been brought low by a prison sentence for fraud.
As he paces alone in an upstairs room, bankrupt and disgraced, he is obsessed by dreams of his comeback. Downstairs, his estranged wife plots the restoration of the family name. When her sister arrives unannounced, she triggers a desperate showdown with the past.
Tickets are on sale at www.bridgetheatre.co.uk.
-
Review: Hungry, Summerhall, Edinburgh Fringe ✭✭✭✭✭
Cultures clash in the kitchen in Chris Bush’s play, Hungry. Lori, an ambitious chef with a love for experimental dishes, falls for Bex, a young working-class woman who comes to work under her. With timelines split between the past and the present, we see the couple’s relationship blossom over food but also floundering as flaws and differences come to the surface.
From the start, the pair are ill-matched: Lori craves gourmet food, Bex enjoys a Pot Noodle. What Lori calls a marquise, Bex calls a mousse. But attraction leads to passion over the stainless-steel worktops and an intense relationship develops. Initially, Bex enjoys all the new flavours and opportunities that her lover and mentor introduces her to but she comes to resist Lori’s well-meaning but overbearing efforts to control and change her.
With wit and compassion, Bush presents and unpicks the complexities of relationships but, with Bex being of mixed heritage, the story also provides a canvas to explore ideas around cultural appropriation, colonialism and class, with subtlety and a lightness of touch that does not overwhelm the narrative. Melissa Lowe and Eleanor Sutton are excellent as the two women, from their early tentative flirtation and banter through to the pain of break-up and recriminations. Directed by Katie Posner, Hungry is an enthralling drama seasoned with plenty of humour and overlaid with lots of ideas to chew over.
Hungry runs at Paines Plough’s Roundabout at Summerhall for Edinburgh Fringe until 28 August 2022. Tickets at festival.summerhall.co.uk and edfringe.com.
-
Kris Marshall to star in new play at Theatre Royal Bath
Kris Marshall is to star in the world premiere of new play Charlotte & Theodore at Theatre Royal Bath.
He will play one of two idealistic academics, Teddy and Lotty, who pick their way through the political and social minefield of life on a university campus.
Written by Ryan Craig, Charlotte & Theodore will run in the Ustinov Studio at Theatre Royal Bath from 16 February to 18 March 2023, directed by Terry Johnson.
Further cast and creatives are yet to be announced.
The play is said to tackle topics such as “cancel culture, gender politics, trans rights” and online abuse which are at play as part of the power struggles on a university campus, described as “a battleground where every well-intentioned thought and deed can have unexpected and long-lasting consequences”.
Marshall has starred in TV series including My Family and Death in Paradise and appeared on stage in shows including Treats opposite Billie Piper, Fat Pig in the West End with Robert Webb and Joanna Page, and the London revival of Glengarry Glen Ross alongside Christian Slater and Robert Glenister.
Craig earned a nomination for most promising playwright in the Evening Standard Theatre Awards for his debut play What We Did to Weinstein. His follow-up works include The Glass Room, which deals with Holocaust denial, and The Holy Rosenbergs at the National Theatre.
General booking for Charlotte & Theodore opens on 30 August 2022 at theatreroyal.org.uk
-
Review: The Girl Who Was Very Good At Lying, Summerhall, Edinburgh Fringe ✭✭✭✭
Lies turn out to be better than the truth in Eoin McAndrew’s enthralling play, The Girl Who Was Very Good At Lying. Lonely misfit Catriona feels shunned by everyone in her small seaside town in Northern Ireland and spied on by her mother who worries about her daughter’s penchant for telling lies. Working behind the bar at the local pub, she throws herself into the path of a reasonably attractive American man who is visiting the area in search of his family’s history. She takes him on a guided tour, drawing on her considerable skills at making things up to create a new history for the town.
It is her series of colourful, amusing and sometimes lurid tales that show how stories can reveal a greater truth than mere facts and cold reality. Here, they reveal the injustices and cruelties of life as well as the joys, including a particularly poignant episode in an insane asylum. Giving an intense and impressive solo performance, Rachael Rooney is a compelling storyteller, bringing Catriona’s town and its characters – real and imagined – to vivid life. Directed by Fay Lomas, it is an exquisitely paced character study that never flags, with the shifts in Catriona’s mood and imagination beautifully matched by Amy Hill’s lighting design. By the end, lies start to give way to a more hopeful future for Catriona but we can still enjoy the delightfully deceitful ride getting there.
The Girl Who Was Very Good At Lying runs at Summerhall as part of Edinburgh Fringe until 28 August 2022. Tickets at festival.summerhall.co.uk and edfringe.com.
-
Review: Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel, The Lyceum Studio, Edinburgh Fringe ✭✭✭✭
A little over halfway through Shakespeare’s King Lear, the mad monarch’s Fool disappears from the action. It has intrigued academics and theatre-makers for centuries, with some speculating that the character is simply no longer needed, others that he has been killed, possibly by Lear himself, as happened in Sam Mendes’s 2014 production at the National Theatre. In Tim Crouch’s latest show, Lear’s Fool becomes the jumping-off point for an intriguing and sometimes disturbing exploration of theatre and society and the violence within them both.
In calm, soothing tones, Crouch himself addresses the audience in the bare, utilitarian setting of a modern rehearsal studio at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum. His plays are often concerned with the materialism of theatre – how we are affected by the actual space and environment where we watch a show. For part of the time, he wears a virtual reality headset, making us think he is on stage at a large-scale production of Lear, playing the Fool, looking out at the audience and silently witnessing the action.
His calmness belies the increasingly violent images he describes to us, initially in King Lear, with its eye-gouging scene, but then more generally, questioning our tolerance of the horrors of modern life. The show’s title comes from early on in Shakespeare’s play when Lear threatens the Fool with being treated like a dog for speaking the truth, and Crouch’s bleak vision of society and its amoral leaders is speaking truth to power (even if it is, in the moment, speaking truth only to a presumably liberal audience at the Edinburgh Fringe). Crouch’s play prompts the question of whether we respond to this, like the Fool, by giving up and quitting but, as he ponders this in front of an engaged audience in a theatre, the answer seems to be that we cannot help but stick around, even if it is just as morally numbed observers.
Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel runs at the Lyceum Studio as part of Edinburgh Fringe until 28 August 2022. Tickets at lyceum.org.uk and edfringe.com.
-
Review: Feeling Afraid as If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen, Summerhall, Edinburgh Fringe ✭✭✭✭✭
In Marcelo Dos Santos’s new solo play, a comedian and “professional neurotic” peals away the surface of his wise-cracking veneer to expose a self-destructive but deeply vulnerable core. As the title, suggests, there is a growing sense that something terrible is going to happen, and may well have already happened, not least that the unnamed comedian might have to confront reality and stop distracting himself from his feelings and self-loathing with carefully crafted jokes.
In a bravura performance, Samuel Barnett brilliantly captures the style and engaging delivery of stand-up comedy, hand resting on a microphone stand as he shares his deeply personal story. Caught in a cycle of meaningless hook-ups, he finds himself going out with a handsome American – a relationship that feels too good to be true. But there is one problem: his boyfriend suffers from cataplexy, which means he can have a seizure or even die if he laughs – probably the worst-possible partner for someone who has chosen a comedy career.
With pinpoint-sharp direction by Matthew Xia, Barnett gives a mesmerising, flawless performance, lurching from hilarious to heart-breaking. But it is unclear how much, if any, of this professional comedian’s story is true. How much is he really sharing about his life, how much of it is constructed just for laughs? As his façade starts to crumble, he forgets to address the audience through the microphone, suggesting a rawer version of himself is emerging, unmediated by his comic routine, casting a disconcertingly ambiguous shadow over the show’s ending – and all that has come before.
The shifts in narrative are matched by Elliot Griggs’s lighting and skilfully supported by Max Pappenheim’s sound design. Genuinely funny with plenty of gags, the show explores the craft of stand-up comedy and its tenuous and shifting relationships to a performer’s real life as well as the challenges of finding connections on today’s gay dating scene. But most of all, it is a devastating, darkly comic study of a man trying to wrestle with the everyday pain and anxieties of his life.
Feeling Afraid as If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen runs at Paines Plough’s Roundabout at Summerhall at Edinburgh Fringe until 28 August 2022. Tickets at festival.summerhall.co.uk and edfringe.com.
-
Brixton House unveils new autumn programme of shows
Brixton House in south London has unveiled its autumn programme, from site-specific promenade theatre created by local artists to a new take on Alice in Wonderland.
Acclaimed director and actor Rebekah Murrell will direct Knock Down, a weekend of promenade theatre in partnership with all-female-led theatre company Dropped Tea from 7 to 9 October 2022.
It will feature pieces by five artists raised in Brixton, including award-winning actor Michael Balogun, Crongton Knights’ author Alex Wheatle, Thea Gajic, Sola Okulode and Jennelle Reece-Gardner.
The autumn season will also see the return of Things I Can Laugh About Now, written and performed by Shakira Newton, running from 1 to 11 November, in association with Piece of Cake Produtions.
Directed by Carlo (Lo) Feliciani Ojeda, it is a funny and moving coming-of-age story of self-discovery, which originally ran with sold-out performances in Brixton House’s Housemates Festival in April.
For Christmas, Brixton House is joining forces with theatre company Poltergeist for an inventive re-telling of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, weaving rap music together with the sights and sounds of Brixton.
Directed by Jack Bradfield, Alice in Wonderland sees 11-year-old Alice trapped on a Tube train speeding into Nonsense, surrounded by weird and wonderful passengers. It will run from 1 to 31 December.
The autumn programme also includes the premiere of Black Corporeal (Breathing by Numbers), a film by visual artist and poet Julianknxx, commissioned by Brixton House.
It highlights air pollution and how working-class people are often forced live in areas with poor environmental standards. It will be screened from 5 to 7 October, with a live performance by Julianknxx on 5 October.
London’s international dance festival Dance Umbrella will present Change Tempo, a triple bill of international artists in partnership with Brixton House, exploring themes of transformation, transmission and representation.
The three solo pieces will be Calixto Neto’s O Samba do Crioulo Doido, Joy Alpuerto Ritter’s Babae, and Linda Hayford’s Shapeshifting. They will be staged on 12 and 13 October.
Brixton House’s artistic director and joint CEO, Gbolahan Obisesan, said: “Our house opens its doors to a multitude of brilliant artists exploring an awakening. These pieces of work interrogate identity, resilience, mortality and the pursuit of liberation.
“Our communities are still in the process of healing, and having them in our building as part of their journey has been invigorating as we continue to look to programme work and artists that resonate with their concerns and experiences.
“Our building continues to strive to be a safe space for our intergenerational international communities and offer quality cultural encounters for everyone.”
Brixton House, formerly known as Ovalhouse, opened in Coldharbour Lane in Brixton in April this year. Tickets at brixtonhouse.co.uk.
-
Review: Wreckage, Summerhall, Edinburgh Fringe ✭✭✭✭
Tom Ratcliffe’s haunting new play, Wreckage, explores how those we have loved and lost never truly go away. A young man, Sam, replays the moment that he inadvertently contributed to the horrific death of his fiancé, Noel, in a car accident, desperate to be able to turn back time. Racked by guilt and grief, he finds that Noel continues to live on in his mind. As the months and years pass, Sam works out his emotions in conversations with his dead lover as he tries to build a life out of the wreckage of his loss.
Directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair, it is a simple premise brilliantly executed, with two excellent performances by Ratcliffe himself and Michael Walters as Sam and Noel. Ratcliffe is particularly impressive in his layered portrayal of Sam who can be petulant and childish but also vulnerable and endearing. His inner and outer journeys are made more vivid by Rachel Sampley’s projection and lighting design on a stage that is otherwise bare aside from the tendrils of greenery from Noel’s garden. While loss and grief are at its core, Wreckage is not only moving and powerful but also funny and heart-warming and ultimately an uplifting story of love.
Wreckage runs at Summerhall at Edinburgh Fringe to 28 August 2022. Tickets at festival.summerhall.co.uk and edfringe.com.
StageWire UK 