Review: Casterbridge

The great tragedies begin with a mistake: King Lear divides his kingdom, MacBeth kills the king, Hamlet is incited to revenge. In Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, the mayor of the title sells his wife and his unborn child, a mistake that has reverberations and consequences down the decades.

Casterbridge, at the Hen and Chickens, is a brave, but ultimately not quite satisfying, attempt to recreate the plot of this novel, transposing it from a nineteenth century rural community to the twentieth century cut-throat world of finance.

There is an all female cast of four actors, two of whom play multiple roles, which I’m afraid only adds to the complexity of an already difficult to follow plot. Basically, the unsuccessful drunk who sells his wife to a naval officer becomes a successful businessman, over an intervening period of years, and reaps the whirlwind when his youthful indiscretion is uncovered. 

But there are a lot of twists and turns in this process. Characters who should be something, prove to be something else, and the pace here is determinedly breathless. So much so, that the production seemed to have more in common with a soap opera Christmas Special, than a considered piece of tragedy.

So, you have to concentrate hard on what is happening to whom, without the luxury of wondering why, and when motivation is difficult to figure out, character and plot seem to unravel. There seemed to be a recognition of this fact in the tongue in cheek apologies for coincidence that form part the story.

On the plus side, there’s a lot of energy from a young cast who will learn a lot from this experience and come back stronger when they have learnt to take their time a little bit more.

Review by Michael Spring

Casterbridge
Not The Way Forward Productions
Hen and Chickens Theatre
4.30pm on the 12-14 August
https://camden.ssboxoffice.com/events/casterbridge/

Review: Village Wooing by George Bernard Shaw

This is old-fashioned drama, in the sense that it relies on verbal jousting for its effect, and to carry that off, the actors involved have to be at the top of their game. The play is carried by casual glances, a flick of the head, the timing of a remark, and it is a great credit to both the actors concerned here (Joe Sargent and Maryann O’Brien) that our attention never wavers. 

George Bernard Shaw’s script can sometimes seem too clever by half, and it has to be said that not too much is at stake here. This is a genuine comedy of manners and the interest is maintained by our doubt as to whether the feisty but penniless girl will in fact get her richer, intelligent, but diffident, man.

The play begins, not in a village, but on board the Empress of Patagonia, a cruise ship in the Red Sea. He is engaged in writing his travel guides to the tourist sights of the world. She, with an assumed accent you could cut with a knife, is trying to strike up a conversation. It doesn’t go well.

The two encounter each other again and much later, in the village where she lives and works. He doesn’t recognise her. She is only too aware of who he is.

Shaw’s comedy resolutely avoids the hearts and flowers cliches of romance. Instead we have a much more considered affair in which the terms of a future long-term contract are being worked out, but even if some of the conversation doesn’t quite ring true to 21st century ears, the overall effect is charming and entertaining.

Village Wooing is on Upstairs at the Gatehouse until 14 August. It would be a shame to miss this concentrated hour of entertainment.

Review by Michael Spring

Village Wooing
Shaw2020
Upstairs at the Gatehouse
8:30pm on the 9 & 12 August
7:30pm on the 10 & 11 August
7pm on the 13 August
https://camden.ssboxoffice.com/events/village-wooing/

Review: It’s Not Rocket Science

It’s Not Rocket Science by Cecilia Alexander takes on a life journey. In just 45 minutes and eight or so scenes, we follow the progress of Eve who becomes fascinated with ideas of space and space travel, and in due course becomes an aerospace engineer.

This show isn’t so much about the science (something that, I confess, I didn’t ‘get’ at all in my youth) as the barriers to success faced by a woman in a traditionally male-dominated world. Eve is undaunted, and has to be, by the ratio of men to women in her university course. She has to be brave in business, as she  is consistently underrated, under-appreciated and under pressure, simply because she is a woman. The scenes give us examples of this, from school through to the publication of her book which describes her experiences, an exhortation to girls and women to be everything they can be.

The show is overlaid by recordings of women who have in real life, been in these kind of situations, the kind where the woman in the room gets asked for a coffee, no matter how senior or successful she is.

It’s Not Rocket Science is itself an exhortation. For us all to call out sexist behaviour and help move beyond a world of barriers and roadblocks.

It is charmingly performed, but doesn’t move us too far beyond what we can already imagine. And of course, prejudice against women is only one kind of discrimination. Nevertheless, for everyone who needs a refresher course on why we need to change our attitudes, It’s Not Rocket Science could be just the thing. And you’ve two more chances to see it at the Hen and Chickens this weekend. 

Review by Michael Spring

It’s Not Rocket Science
Letter for Letter Theatre
4.30pm 5-7th August at the Hen and Chickens Theatre
https://camden.ssboxoffice.com/events/its-not-rocket-science/

Review: Colloquium by Katherine Stockton

Colloquium is a play about knowledge, learning and all that that involves. It asks a lot of questions – figuratively and literally – and challenges us all to examine our answers in some detail. So, the whole idea of teaching and learning gets put under a powerful lens, not always comfortably.

A professor at an Oxbridge college is about to retire. His putative successor wants to stamp his own style on everything, and most importantly on the way students are chosen.

We are plunged into the selection process, a round of interviews that are supposed to bring out hidden qualities in the applicants, but which often look like a weird intellectual game. Whether the potential students find the game edifying, confrontational or just plain stupid, it seems that their futures are bound up with their ability to play it.

Scenes give us sidelights that ask their own questions. Is getting a degree more than an ability to answer pub quiz questions? Is the quality of an artist’s work restricted by commercial success, or the lack of it? Finally, what motive do you have in wanting to study English at this particular institution? Be careful before you are tempted to mutter something about ‘the human condition’.

Six actors provide illustration and context to all of this in a series of fast-paced scenes. The script (by Katherine Stockton) is often incisive, and more convincing because of the personal illustrations of the meaning of all this. While the philosophic wrangling seems to take place in the stratosphere, the results are real.

In the end, the central question is whether the game is worth the candle, and remains unanswered, but this enjoyable hour or so of drama gives us a lot to contemplate, even if we don’t know too much about Aristotle.

Review by Michael Spring

Colloquium
Cavendish Productions
1-4 August at the Hen and Chickens Theatre
https://camden.ssboxoffice.com/events/colloquium/

The 2022 Camden Fringe starts next week

The 16th Camden Fringe begins in 6 days and our intrepid reporter Michael is already booked into review a few shows.

If anyone else is interested in reviewing for us please get in touch! We’d love to be able to cover as many performances as possible!

camdenvoyeur @ gmail.com

Review: Dangerous Liaisons by Fireside Theatre

Eighteenth century France, and the rule of the Bourbons has encouraged decadent behaviour amongst its leisure moneyed class. This is a play adapted from the ultimate French novel  of seduction and intrigue, and perhaps tellingly, is performed by an all-female cast. So we have the ‘ruining’ of Cecile, just 15 years old and engaged to be married, as well as the seduction of the religious and married Madame de Torvel. All this is orchestrated by the Marquise de Merteuil , who was once in love with the seducer Valmont  and is now determined to set in train a disastrous course of events through lies, innuendo and carefully constructed ‘evidence’.

It’s a complex plot and there are a lot of twists along the way. For those familiar with the 1988 film, with its sumptuous interiors and costumes, comparisons may be invidious. Instead, we are confronted with the bleak facts of the scandal in scenes that are often quite spare and unflinching. It is a difficult plot to convey to an audience, and it’s easy to get lost or miss a vital piece of dialogue, best perhaps to go with the flow and not to worry too much about detail.

There are a lot of good ideas here. In the opening scenes, lighting freezes the action of the characters to make each a tableau with the look of a Caravaggio painting. Cecile plays and sings to a recorded soundtrack which includes her hesitations and mistakes, which must have been tricky to organise and complex to deliver. The final scene, with Madame de Merteuil’s letters strewn about the stage makes its point perfectly.

Costumes for this all-femaile cast are simple. Waistcoats for the male characters, corseted tops for the females. Madame de Merteuil  looks suitably decadent in maroon, and so stands out from the other members of the cast who are mostly clad in varieties of beige, and are often very similar in appearance.

There aren’t a huge amount of props but that furniture does need moving, and scene changes are punctuated by the cast effecting those rearrangements. This slows down the drama, but it does give the audience (or me at least) time to think about the scene just past and to sort out its ideas on what has occurred.

The biggest problem is that the stage at the Gatehouse is large and productions can get lost if they don’t utterly dominate the space. Madame de Merteuil does this splendidly  on occasion, but I often missed that swagger necessary establish these characters in time and space.

Review by Michael Spring

Dangerous Liaisons
Fireside Theatre
10th – 15th August at Upstairs at the Gatehouse
https://camden.ssboxoffice.com/events/dangerous-liaisons/

Review: You’re Singing My Song!

Caitlin Downie and David Kettle are two singers bringing their passion for performance to the stage with the help of a hard-working piano player. She is disappointed in not (so far) being able to find her soulmate. He has spent a career singing love songs to women, when he would much rather have been singing to a man. So, we get brief glimpses of personal lives in amongst songs that mean a lot to them in personal terms and which also have (in many instances) sustained the West End stage.

Her voice (I’m not expert here, so bear with me) seems a little more operatic. His is more attuned to the performance musical, but there can be no doubt that both are well able to hit notes. In these intimate surroundings, there really is nowhere to hide and no orchestra to paper over any flaws.
Intimate surroundings they certainly are, and the atmosphere at the Canal Cafe during this performance is like an old-fashioned night club. All that was lacking was a gangland boss with a bottle of whisky.
So what do they perform? Rather disconcertingly, Caitlin Downie starts with ‘I’m Not Wearing Underwear Today’ in an unashamed, and successful bid for our attention. Thereafter, they cover a wide expanse of musical territory, from an excerpt from ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ to Joy Division’s classic ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart Again’. It’s a sort of Desert Island songs with favourites from the shows, some classic and some less well known perhaps but equally well delivered. So we have ‘I Will Survive’ alongside ‘I’m Still Here’ by Stephen Sondheim from Follies.
In an era of pandemics and political rifts, this is an evening when we can focus on the personal, on life and love in song, and as such it is both uplifting and healing. It’s also a show for all the family, charming and foot-tapping – especially in that ‘Enough is Enough’ encore – and it’s lovely to be so close to some excellent live performers.

Review by Michael Spring

You’re Singing My Song!
Songbook Productions
9th – 11th August at the Canal Cafe Theatre
https://camden.ssboxoffice.com/events/youre-singing-my-song/https://camden.ssboxoffice.com/events/youre-singing-my-song/

Review: If You Find This

If You Find This is a dramatised monologue with music. The live keyboard accompaniment – much classier than the sort of thing that used to be played alongside silent films – really does add depth and enhances the tempo of Luci MacNair’s words. She has written the piece and plays Maggie, a carer whose long defeated ambition was to become a musician.

Maggie is underpaid and overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by a questions of belonging, of just feeling secure. Is she more than just one of the eight billion humans who inhabit the earth? What connection does she have with any of them? Will she ever be loved and wanted by any of them? These questions emerge as Maggie, used and abused, vulnerable and yet committed, ‘gets knocked down and then gets up again,’ and form the texture of the drama.

There’s a sense, early on, that Maggie lacks something. She is rudderless in an ocean of sharks, and her family is seemingly not mindful of a need for her to be either defended or supported. So she is continually preyed upon, pieces taken from her self-esteem at every turn. She is routinely abused by her uncle, groomed and taken advantage of by her therapist, and while she tries to help those in need, she finds there only sadness.

Her one love is Henry, a child who is much operated on and calls her Mimi. She sees love between the ancient McGowens a married couple one of whom cannot live without the other. She has friendship adventures with a tumour-inflicted lady, but all end hopelessly.

If that makes this drama seem quite bleak, I suppose cumulatively it is, but the effect of the music (twice Maggie and her accompanist strikingly add their soulful music to the unflinching tale) is to lighten and enliven the mood, even if everything we fear about Maggie mostly happens.

In the end, we are left with that generic question to which there is no answer: ‘Who takes care of the carers?’ On a more individual level, we have to question whether we deserve the commitment of anyone like Maggie, who cares when no one else will.
The play lasts about 60 minutes and the music is very good.

Review by Michael Spring

IF You Find This by Luci McNair
4th – 8th August 2021 at Etcetera Theatre
https://camden.ssboxoffice.com/events/if-you-find-t

REVIEW: Banged Up Abroad at Canal Cafe

One of the best ways to visit Camden Fringe is not even to try finding out what to expect. What, after all, could you expect from a show titled ‘Banged Up Abroad’? A withering investigation of foreign jail conditions? Tribulations of pregnancy in a hot climate? Fortunately, Banged Up Abroad (which featured two nights at the Canal Cafe, with two nights at the Hen and Chickens yet to come at the end of August) is neither of those. Instead, it’s three comedians all born abroad, each taking a turn in front of the microphone.

So they all offer a view of us Brits and our curious ways, most disconcertingly, perhaps in Runi Talwar’s tale of an unknown Asian man playing his music way too loud on a bus. Who do all the other passengers expect to intervene? And of course it’s a non-verbal thing too, so as typical as roses in a front garden.

The three individuals here are Hannah Brissenden (from Australia), Runi Talwar (from New Zealand, out of India) and Kiran Saggu (American, but also with that Asian heritage).

Hannah Brissenden opens the show. She is a yoga teacher and vegan, resident in the UK for a while, so her targets tend to be yoga-loving, vegetarian millennials, and particularly ex-boyfriends. Runi Talwar follows, investigating some odd moments of racial stereotyping around the globe, including being called ‘Slumdog’ in New York by an African American. As he points out, racism isn’t always straightforward.

In introducing the show, Hannah Brissenden has pointed out that this is a ‘work in progress’ but apart from one or two consultations of notes and the odd pause, you wouldn’t really know.

The last of the three is Kiran Saggu (be careful how you pronounce it), a feisty woman from Indiana, a state with a notoriously reactionary heritage, though  that’s not something you could accuse her of. Ex-boyfriend Nathan (he who took her virginity) seems to be in the audience, though he escapes relatively unscathed from her verbal assaults.

If you like your comedy tinged with an unresolved attitude to race, sex and eating habits, this show may well be for you, and while it was not always the kind of thing that prompted outrageous laughter, there were lots of smiles and it will become tighter as the performers find their well-travelled feet.

Review by Michael Spring

Banged Up Abroad
Runi Talwar, Hannah Brissenden, Kiran Saggu
3 August 2021 at Canal Cafe Theatre
28-29 August 2021 at Hen and Chickens Theatre
https://camden.ssboxoffice.com/events/banged-up-abroad/

Review: Sezar Alkassab – Telling Stories at Camden Comedy Club

Sezar Alkassab is a Glaswegian comedian, whose family are from Iraq. His new show Telling Stories explores his heritage, managing cultural differences, misconceptions, gender politics and more in an hour of comedy that felt impressively assured for an up and coming comedian.

Despite treading some controversial and arguably worn ground, i.e. the difference between men and women on a night out, Alkassab’s warmth lends this a friendliness and self-deprecating charm that allows him to pull it off. He even expertly compares his Muslim background to a Catholic school he grew up in, comparing Jesus and Mohammed and the inconsistencies in both religions with such insight and respect that it never felt controversial, only funny.

Self-deprecating humour is where Alkassab shines, with a particular highlight his comparison of his lack of conversation skills to the opening of a Jay-Z song. Whenever this veered into lad humour, something he criticises himself in the show, it inspired a few eye-rolls and felt weak in comparison to his other material.

He worked the crowd with a confidence and openness that made him immediately likeable and refreshingly positive, inspiring belly laughs from everyone throughout. An exceptionally talented comedian with a no doubt bright future in comedy.

Review by Natalie Beech

Sezar Alkassab: Telling Stories
9.30pm 14-15, 21-23 August at Camden Comedy Club
https://camdenfringe.com/show.php?acts_id=2491