"Clara" by Elena Mazzon

Performed at Ram Jam Records at The Grey Horse, August 2nd 2019
Also published in London Theatre Reviews, August 4th 2019: http://www.londontheatrereviews.co.uk/post.cfm?p=1582

The history of classical music – as with many other fields of human endeavour – sadly too often omits the presence of great women from its cultural and historical memory. Fortunately, writer and performer Elena Mazzon together with director Catriona Kerridge issues a bold challenge to this unjust patriarchal dominion with Clara – Sex, Love and Classical Music, a one-women show devoted to vividly bringing Clara Schumann, née Wieck, the brilliant classical composer, pianist, and later wife to the better-known Robert Schumann, back to life in full colour to tell her story to the world.

Mazzon is superb as Clara, single-handedly carrying the entire show and creating a relentlessly energetic presence so vividly realised that one almost feels as though the former Wieck herself has emerged into the present day. Her performance – ably assisted by Peter Wernock’s voice and movement coaching - is a richly coloured tapestry of shared humanity in everything from her fiery, righteously feminist speech to the subtleties of her bold and confident body language. Mazzon’s beautifully written, evocative monologue charts a course through every aspect of Clara’s storied life from her remarkable childhood through to struggling to be an artistically ambitious, unreservedly sexual woman in 1830s Europe, to the tragic end of her marriage to Robert and beyond.

The skilful performance and writing together, broken up by apropos samples of Clara’s work performed live on the piano by Mazzon to lend proceedings a musica a programma significance thanks to musical director Stefania Passamonte, broadens and deepens our perception of Clara’s lived history, and gradually reveals more and more of a story of human triumph which is by turns dramatic, funny, heart-warming, and tragic in all the ways a life is. As a one-hander performance, Mazzon’s work is a joy to behold; as a first-time debut writer, she proves herself hugely talented and accomplished.

The candlelit interior of Ram Jam Records’ piano bar also proves a beautiful, intimate surrounding, keeping us in close proximity to Clara’s presence throughout, and maintaining the all-too appropriate sense amongst the audience of attending a concert or recital, which, in this instance, with the candlelight seemingly our only light source, creates a thrillingly mystic feeling of séance and resurrection to bolster the sense of the spirit of Clara being brought back to life.

Superbly realised, evocatively written, and beautifully performed drama altogether. A triumph.

Review: "Nostalgia" by Clive Moffatt

Performed at The White Bear Theatre, July 31st 2019
Also published by London Theatre Reviews, August 2nd 2019: http://www.londontheatrereviews.co.uk/post.cfm?p=1578

A new lyrical revue from Nomadic Theatrical Productions’ writer-director Clive Moffatt, “Nostalgia” is a narrative tour of various pasts told through the different recollections of a vibrant ensemble cast of characters, exploring the meaning, importance, and relevance of our memories of years gone by, especially in older age, and in the remembrances of young adults recalling their halcyon schooldays.

Clive Elliot, central to the cast as a flamboyant narrator, proves a highlight as a great storyteller, by turns funny, compelling, warm, and sincere with a strong, visually distinct stage presence. Liam Weller provides a nice contrast as a younger, knock-kneed schoolboy, bringing a charm and innocence to his rose-tinted recollections of school, and Jayne Beaumont as The Woman gives one of the most powerful and emotive performances, recalling a deeply troubled and traumatic past. Nick Rutherford and Ian Recordon meanwhile bring their own presence and emotive command of the text to the work nicely.

The writing itself, whilst having isolated moments of genuine, evocative affect and good craft, can sometimes feel disjointed, as though the series of monologues which bind the work together do not form a single coherent narrative so much as a series of writing exercises on a theme. Clive Moffatt’s light-touch direction together with Gwenan Bain and Chuma Emembolu’s lighting and sound, though, help to bring things together into a coherent whole, with Emembolu’s sound direction in particular making good use of some musical staples of classical and big band fare to evoke the titular nostalgia for a different era.

More an avant-garde exercise on a theme than anything particularly ground-breaking, certainly, but enjoyable performances and affecting writing help to bring everything together into a consistently interesting, reflective evening of theatre.

Clive Elliot with Ian Recordon as the Narrator and Older Man. Credit: Matthew Partridge

Review: Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of The People by Jolley Goswald

Originally published in London Theatre Reviews, July 10th 2019 (http://www.londontheatrereviews.co.uk/post.cfm?p=1479)
Performed at the Playground Theatre.

Fringe company Here Now Ensemble, and their director Jolley Goswald, have certainly not shied away from the renewed social and political relevance of Henrik Ibsen’s original play. The dramatic tale of a principled, educated whistle-blower’s life being ruined by a corrupt, self-serving establishment that would rather profit from wilful ignorance of an imminent danger to the local community does indeed seem grimly topical in our modern, post-Brexit ,‘sick of experts’ political landscape, and the company’s very deliberate decision to perform in a venue literally down the road from Grenfell Tower places the writing within a chilling, morbidly timely new context.

It may have been enough, under these dire meta-fictional circumstances, simply to stage the original work and leave the audience to infer the modern meanings for themselves; but theatregoers expecting to arrive to a straightforward adaptation of Ibsen should leave their expectations in the foyer and prepare for an almost entirely new version of the play, one rewritten from the ground up to embrace modernity, and unafraid to explicitly name the problems of Brexit, austerity, capitalism and anti-feminism. Together with the production’s distinctly Brechtian fourth-wall-breaking sensibilities – its cast of characters named for their real-life actors, and lead Hannah van der Westhuysen explicitly halting the action to address the audience as participants, and state aims of using theatre as a forum for political engagement and calls to positive action - little remains here for fans of Ibsen but the bare-bones of his faithfully recreated plot, construed in an almost improvised, vulgar stream-of-consciousness by a talented and capable cast of performers with a strong stage presence. Purists may balk to find everything so changed, but it is a bold, fascinating approach to the text nonetheless.

Credit: Jolley Goswald

Goswald’s direction is full of laudable confidence in his vision and together with his actors he manages to never lose a refreshingly naturalistic, fast-paced feel and an engaging atmosphere which is always a pleasure, although it is not an approach that always works textually. At times, dialogue can feel a little too improvised, as though cast members are stumbling for where to go next, and perhaps, like Ibsen’s Thomas Stockmann, the writing’s great flaw is that it can sometimes be too upfront in its desire to tell its truths. One scene in particular, although very well performed by an energetic and impassioned Gabriel Akuwudike, veers perilously close to ludicrous soap opera melodrama that it can be difficult to take seriously, depending on one’s sensibilities. That said, at other times, when it works, there are genuinely great, pacey moments of compelling and affecting human drama that are well worth admission. It makes for something of a mixed bag, but one in which everybody is likely to find things they enjoy.

Meanwhile, Alys Whitehead’s compactly detailed set design visually helps along the writing’s ingenious transfer to distinctly modern, socialist millennial flat-share environs, Holly Ellis’ lighting lends dramatic thrust to all the right moments, and collaborating sibling Will Goswold’s sound design provides the enjoyable, youthful soundtrack. Doubtless many might find it an acquired taste, but it remains a brave, praiseworthy effort to revitalise the original text, full of talent, provocative originality, and life.

Review: Spitfire Sisters by Three of a Kind

(Originally published in London Theatre Reviews, July 5th 2019: http://www.londontheatrereviews.co.uk/post.cfm?p=1455)

Performed at The Space Theatre, July 3rd 2019

In 1973, the poet Harold Bloom famously wrote about what he called The Anxiety of Influence. The backbone of his theory of poetry, he thought that most new writers, inspired by reading about the greats that had come before, would feel too much pressure to measure up to them and to win their imagined approval. So they would buckle under the strain and end up producing derivative, ephemeral fare, of which the people they idolise would surely not approve.

Spitfire Sisters, the second offering from the writing team of Doc Andersen-Bloomfield, Catherine Comfort and Heather Dunmore, together known as Three of a Kind, is an ambitious work of new writing. Unfortunately, this fictionalised docudrama chronicling the history of the women serving in the Air Transport Auxiliary during World War II is let down by a host of peculiar, questionable creative decisions which keep the production – the earnest and laudable effort of giving women’s underappreciated history a sizeable platform and attempting to create something of which their forebears could be proud notwithstanding – from being all that it could be.
Things get off to a promising start with Sound Designer Kerri Chesser’s selection of classic Glenn Miller Big Band fare helpfully evoking the wartime spirit of the 40s, and the sparse set design suggesting the interior of the famous White Waltham Airbase, from which the women were deployed to deliver planes to the frontlines; but between lacklustre writing which the committed actors struggle to work with, Adam Hemming’s poltroonish direction and short-sighted staging, and Andy Straw’s confusing and irritating lighting design, things swiftly deteriorate into an unfocused, plodding bore which it is difficult to like, no matter how much one might want to.


Faye Maughan does her duty as Phyllis Griggs. Photography by Liz Isles

Above all, the distinctly one-dimensional writing, itself likely derivative of Giles Whittell’s non-fiction book Spitfire Women of World War II, pervades and tarnishes every other aspect of the production. The play’s cast of characters, all of which feel woefully underdeveloped and poorly written, especially in their oftentimes overformal and unrealistic dialogue, seem to be drawn from two historical figures each, leaving them feeling indistinct, and like poor substitutes for far more interesting individual historical figures. Faye Maughan’s Phyllis Griggs is clearly set in the mould of women like Rosemary Rees – whose husband urged her to purchase a personal Miles Hawk Major plane to improve her social life - and Pauline Gower – daughter of a high-up Tory MP, who fought for the right to wear trousers. Alessandra Perotto is the bold and brave Typhoon-flying, twice-Severn-Bridge-ducking Ann Wood and the spirited Jackie Cochran – who steadfastly refused to ever allow the British to “put her in her place” - at once, which unfortunately seems to cause her affected Appalachian American accent to constantly slip. Meanwhile, Mary Roubous endearingly combines the physically sickly intellect of Mary de Bunsen with the animal-loving introversion of the Argentine Picture Post pin-up Maureen Dunlop.

Unfortunately, this style of merging two distinct people and personalities together to create a single fictional analogue at best leaves the new characters feeling indistinct and underwritten, and at worst carries a meta-fictional suggestion that these women’s real lives and histories can be freely swapped around, tinkered with, and whittled down to useful storytelling props in the pursuit of crafting tiresomely didactic theatre. Their composite lives are unexamined and never fully realised, with the writing disinterested in saying anything more substantial about the significance of 40s-era women’s nobility, bravery, courage and sacrifice in wartime service to their country besides sternly finger-wagging at only the most glaringly obvious, almost cartoonish misogyny, and the self-evident economic injustice of a workplace earnings gap, lazily garnished with only the most superficial references to the real, unexamined history.

Indeed, for all the work’s promotional bluster about feminism, the writing is full of bizarre and ill-considered contradictions. In the course of the story – seemingly little more than a rudderless lecture on How Sexism Is Bad, which lacks any distinguishable narrative beginning, middle, or end - one so-called sister hands in her resignation early so she can run off to marry a rich man – naturally the most important priority in a woman’s life, never mind standing up to Hitler and the Nazis for her country. It is difficult to imagine that the late, great A.T.A pilot Joan Hughes, of the four-engine flight clearance elite, whom never married lest a man come between her and her love of flying, would approve of such antics.


The Spitfire Sisters face down an air raid in a dramatic moment. Photography by Liz Isles

Later on, a horrifically burned man (Steven Shawcroft’s RAF Airman Nigel in a totally unconvincing, obviously rubber face prosthesis) makes grossly inappropriate pleas to another woman not to risk flying because she’s too beautiful, lest a similar accident tarnish her pin-up model good looks (surely the only thing of value that she can contribute to the war effort) and then has his backwards attitude and thoroughly weird, stalky, out-of-nowhere infatuation – frightfully uncharacteristic of real A.T.A men that simply treated the women as respected colleagues - helpfully validated when she predictably dies in a crash. This despite many real female A.T.A pilots, like Amy Johnson, Audrey Sale-Barker and Joan Page, historically surviving numerous plane crashes and assorted in-flight emergencies, badly injured though they may have been. This way, he gets to feel justified in blaming the other women for her death, and claiming that it proves they don’t deserve to be paid properly for their work. Of course.

“Well, there we are, then.” one feels lead to think, “That’ll teach those uppity women not to do as they’re told by men who know better.” It’s all really rather troubling. This cast of characters seem at times to be a tragic far cry from their real-life inspirations; unlike Joan Hughes, who refused to marry and put paid to sceptical Air Force men, Jackie Sarsour who proclaimed flying “the most natural thing in the world…as though my entire life had led to this moment”, Mary de Bunsen taking to the skies explicitly to escape “the ghastly fate of the daughter-in-waiting”, Jackie Cochran’s life’s ambition to be known as “the greatest woman pilot in history”, Margaret Duhalde and Ann Wood both fearlessly giving male officers a piece of their mind, or Maureen Dunlop’s simple preference for animals over people, the fictionalised women’s excitement seems to peak most of all at the thought of getting to throw parties, wear pretty dresses, and talk about boys. It hardly seems fitting of the real legacy which supposedly inspired them to life.

Yet, instead of the rich storytelling potential of all of this history and legacy, we are left with the shallow, proscriptive writing pressing on the point of contemporary earnings gap concerns, with the stories of our war heroes seemingly being used as little more than an alluring backdrop to hang a portrait of misogyny which manifests in ways so unsophisticated and glaringly obvious that it feels risibly condescending, so much so that it does the far more subtle realities of misogyny itself a disservice in representation. Of course misogyny is real, and doubtless woven deeply into the fabric of our society and culture, sometimes into the very structure and form of language itself – far more deeply, surely, that a few tired, predictable, off-colour remarks of ‘but you’re only a woman!’ in so many drab variations. That much is – or certainly ought to be - obvious to anybody paying a modicum of attention. Indeed, in Russia, until World War II, one literally could not use terms like ‘infantry’ or ‘machine gunner’ or ‘tank driver’ without explicitly referring to a man. New words had to be invented from scratch just to create space for women in the army, because the very concept was unfathomable. Such is the deplorable breadth and depth of women’s oppression, whether in America, Britain, Russia, or anywhere else in the world we live in, be it in the 1940s, or the modern day.

That being said, the first rule of good writing is to avoid telling the audience things they already know.


Saluting noble efforts. Photography by Liz Isles

Matters are not helped by such a culturally, historically, and artistically informed work – uniquely by women, about women’s experience, and singularly for women - being left in the hands of a male director, which feels quite simply inappropriate in a great many respects. In practice, Hemming is forced into a grim Scylla and Charybdis scenario of either appearing to appropriate the work of women writers and to be bossing around a majority-female cast as he pleases, or else, all-too aware of these dreadful optics, being so overcautious and hands-off that he may as well have given up the task altogether. Either way, he is left doomed to such innate incompetence with the material that it really seems that the writing team has been recklessly inconsiderate in ever giving it to him in the first place. One can’t help but feel, with the production otherwise so intent on touting the importance of feminism and women’s representation, that a female director would surely have been more apt, and certainly far more competent at the task.

Hemming, though, seemingly opts for the latter directing style, and consequently, the play is left feeling too loose, disjointed, and lacking in firm directorial vision to make any positive impression. His cast struggle with a lack of direction or input on their characters, seeming only to read their lines as fast as possible, moments of drama fail to make any impact, and staging decisions are sometimes ridiculously impractical. More than once, actors are positioned so far to stage right that those sitting on the right-hand side in the back literally cannot see them. Meanwhile, Andy Straw’s irritatingly confusing lighting too often aims for ‘atmospheric low light’ and lands in ‘too dim to see anything from the back of the room’. Straw and Hemming are also far too fond of total blackouts, rankly abusing them for simple scene transitions to the point of the audience beginning to clap despite the play being far from over. It was of no help to the disjointed feel of the writing and the unconfident direction.

An earnest and experienced cast do their best despite it all, to be sure. Annabel Smith and Chloe Wade in particular do an admirable job of delivering characterful monologues which constitute some of the strongest writing in the otherwise weak text. Alas, to paraphrase Hitchcock: “To make a great play, you need three things – the script, the script, and the script.”


Chloe Wade and Mary Roubos as Jessie Harris and Georgia Smythe-West. Photography by Liz Isles

Spitfire Sisters is a disappointing, forgettable failure in nearly every aspect, crippled by the Anxiety of Influence – but Three of a Kind should not give up their worthy ambitions. Instead, they should and must try again. They must keep writing, keep improving, and keep on championing the cause of recording women’s erased history, and not only for themselves. At present, it is grimly true that women, especially those in the public eye – be they actors or writers – are not allowed to fail. Such is the ruthless, cruel, impossible perfection endlessly demanded of them. That this production has failed, given the weight of its own ambition and the daunting shadow of the legacy it exists in, is unsurprising and no-one should be too harshly blamed. Anyone would struggle in those circumstances.

More importantly, this failure is no bad thing. Women, like all people, must be allowed to fail and be given new chances to succeed, just the same as men. Only then we will have any sort of real equality.


Fly by night. Photography by Liz Isles.

(Slightly) Long(er) Read: On "Fix Up" by Kwame Kwei-Armah

(A rather more...bloggy first draft of a review published in London Theatre Reviews, June 28th 2019: http://www.londontheatrereviews.co.uk/post.cfm?p=1439)

Performed at the Tower Theatre, June 27th 2019

Disclosure: I have been involved with the Tower Theatre since 2016 and am personally acquainted with some of the crew.

First performed in 2004 at the National Theatre in London, Kwame Kwei-Armah’s powerful drama of black identity, forgotten history, and divided loyalties has had a homecoming of sorts in being newly staged by the Tower Theatre in Stoke Newington. Reborn within Hackney borough, the beating heart of one of London’s most thriving minority communities, proceedings are immediately given a striking metafictional edge. Reborn within Hackney borough, the beating heart of one of London’s most thriving minority communities, proceedings are immediately given a striking metafictional edge, only strengthened by the significance of a restaging of such an unapologetically black play in 2019, in the throes of a new wave of sustained civil rights activism throughout the African diaspora. There is, after all, really no such thing as apolitical art.

Fix Up sees its protagonist Brother Kiyi (Richard Bobb-Semple, making his Tower Theatre debut) struggling to keep his titular bookshop, devoted to all manner of black biographical history, from closing down for want of customers. Even whilst his adopted son of sorts, the endearingly hapless Carl (Isiah Bobb-Semple), brings in boxes of new books, it seems that their community is more interested in chasing popular trends and fitting into a predominantly white society than in really connecting with their own uniquely black history and culture. Then, one day, Jasmine Rachelle’s Alice, a young mixed-race woman caught in the midst of both worlds and struggling to find her own meaningful identity, visits the shop, forcing a devastating reckoning with a dark and troubled past as personal as it is political.


Richard Bobb-Semple as Brother Kiyi. Credit: David Sprecher

Kwei-Armah’s writing has a wonderful strength and dramatic power, his dialogue crackling with the energy and eloquence of lyrical, rapid-fire patois, and given a sharp edge by (viewer be warned) unabashed deployment of the most explicit reclaimed racial term. His writing is brought to life by a hugely talented cast of actors, chief among them Rachelle and the elder Bobb-Semple. Both give moving, powerhouse performances, showing huge range and ability, and doing much to sell the play’s moments of genuinely emotionally devastating impact.

Isiah Bobb-Semple is a pleasure as the complicated Carl, the young man on a journey to articulate and come to terms with personal and political history, with Isiah moving deftly from the vivacious, youthful energy of his affected happy-go-lucky demeanour to the much more sombre notes of a grim past Carl still struggles with, and making it all believable as he goes. Meanwhile, Valerie Paul’s seemingly larger-than-life, no-nonsense Norma has an infectious energy and boldness about her, deftly commanding every scene she’s in, and Kieron Mieres skilfully rounds off the cast with an enjoyable, confident take on the hypocritical Kwesi, the shop’s wannabe Malcolm X in-residence, suspiciously more interested in capitalism than radicalism. All the cast pull off the work’s variety of complex, deeply flawed characters with aplomb and, in all the best moments of powerful human drama and tragedy, are wonderful to watch.

Supporting the cast is the stand-out work of the creative team, chief amongst them Holly Spice, whose ingenious set design frames the dilapidated Fix Up bookshop as a microcosmic distillation of the running theme of the foundation of black historical knowledge itself withering away and languishing in distinctly outmoded ‘uncool’ surroundings, whilst the faces of great black thinkers look on from their portraits in the background, their legacies of thought and action haunting the present of black life.


The spectre of black history haunts the present. Credit: David Sprecher

Phillip Ley’s sound design together with Sarah Assaf’s musical arrangement compliments this visual storytelling wonderfully, with a soundscape evocative of neglected black history that centres Marcus Garvey’s surviving words of righteous anger and indignation as they repeatedly puncture through the listless mundanity of the day-to-day, demanding an audience that will listen and take notice. Nick Insley’s lighting lends a beautifully solemn, portrait-like pathos to some moving, emotive monologues from the leads and heightens all the most shocking moments. Kwei-Armah’s lyrical patois, meanwhile, is brought out nicely by dialect coach Peta Barker.

Although events do build to a compelling, energetic and emotionally devastating finale in the second half, this leaves the first half, by comparison, seeming slowed down and slightly lacking in the same energy and momentum, with some of the longer pauses unfortunately suggesting delayed cues rather than dramatic effect, though this can easily be remedied in the coming performances. Nevertheless, director Landé Belo, in her Tower Theatre directorial debut, has accomplished quite a feat of storytelling, bringing a clear and confident vision to the text and creating work which is a richly thought-provoking and powerful pleasure to watch.


Isiah Bobb-Semple as Carl and Valerie Paul as Nora. Credit: David Sprecher

A final thought: doubtless, in our modern age, it seems that there will be some who are compelled to cynically label the work as a “black play”, and to superficially declare it as being about “black issues”, as though “blackness” is something to be relegated, resented and shunned, much like “women’s issues” is so often nastily deployed; but this amateurish view by a (likely) white commentariat contingent should be warned that they devalue work like Fix Up at everybody’s peril, including their own.

Of course, a term like “black issues” invites a problematic, reductive aspect; it is manifestly absurd to suggest a single, universal “black experience” or any one set of “black issues” (certainly, the play’s collection of characters are not an abstract monolith of rhetorical blackness, but complex, flawed human beings in conflict with one another) and there is a universality to the plea to remember and respect shared history and to find belonging and acceptance that will resonate with every viewer, irrespective of race - but this should surely not require downplaying or dismissing the blackness of the messengers, or the significance of their uniquely black experiences in shaping the message they deliver to us all: that our shared history is important, and worthy of attention, preservation and celebration of its moments of triumph. To merely dismiss it as a “black play” and its themes as “black issues” whilst our libraries and high street book shops close down by the day under austerity, and our centres of cultural and social history and knowledge vanish from our lives whilst we look away, distracted by trends on our social media feeds, is insanity.

Nevertheless, Belo’s work is a timely, accomplished reminder that perhaps, whether black or white, we should all put our phones away and make the time to stop by our local Fix Up.


Isiah Bobb-Temple as Carl and Jasmine Rachelle as Alice. Credit: David Sprecher

Review: Fix Up by Kwame Kwei-Armah

(Originally published in London Theatre Reviews, June 28th 2019: http://www.londontheatrereviews.co.uk/post.cfm?p=1439)

Performed at the Tower Theatre, June 27th 2019

Disclosure: I have been involved with the Tower Theatre since 2016 and am personally acquainted with some of the crew.

First performed in 2004 at the National Theatre in London, Kwame Kwei-Armah’s powerful drama of black identity, forgotten history, and divided loyalties has had a homecoming of sorts in being newly staged by the Tower Theatre in Stoke Newington. Reborn within Hackney borough, the beating heart of one of London’s most thriving minority communities, proceedings are immediately given a striking metafictional edge.

Fix Up sees its protagonist Brother Kiyi (Richard Bobb-Semple, making his Tower Theatre debut) struggling to keep his titular bookshop, devoted to all manner of black biographical history, from closing down for want of customers. Even whilst his adopted son of sorts, the endearingly hapless Carl (Isiah Bobb-Semple), brings in boxes of new books, it seems that their community is more interested in chasing popular trends and fitting into a predominantly white society than in really connecting with their own uniquely black history and culture. Then, one day, Jasmine Rachelle’s Alice, a young mixed-race woman caught in the midst of both worlds and struggling to find her own meaningful identity, visits the shop, forcing a devastating reckoning with a dark and troubled past as personal as it is political.


Richard Bobb-Semple as Brother Kiyi. Credit: David Sprecher

Kwei-Armah’s writing has a wonderful strength and dramatic power, his dialogue crackling with the energy and eloquence of lyrical, rapid-fire patois, and given a sharp edge by (viewer be warned) unabashed deployment of the most explicit reclaimed racial term. His writing is brought to life by a hugely talented cast of actors, chief among them Rachelle and the elder Bobb-Semple. Both give moving, powerhouse performances, showing huge range and ability, and doing much to sell the play’s moments of genuinely emotionally devastating impact.

Isiah Bobb-Semple is a pleasure as the complicated Carl, the young man on a journey to articulate and come to terms with personal and political history, with Isiah moving deftly from the vivacious, youthful energy of his affected happy-go-lucky demeanour to the much more sombre notes of a grim past Carl still struggles with, and making it all believable as he goes. Meanwhile, Valerie Paul’s seemingly larger-than-life, no-nonsense Norma has an infectious energy and boldness about her, deftly commanding every scene she’s in, and Kieron Mieres skilfully rounds off the cast with an enjoyable, confident take on the hypocritical Kwesi, the shop’s wannabe Malcolm X in-residence, suspiciously more interested in capitalism than radicalism. All the cast pull off the work’s variety of complex, deeply flawed characters with aplomb and, in all the best moments of powerful human drama and tragedy, are wonderful to watch.

Supporting the cast is the stand-out work of the creative team, chief amongst them Holly Spice, whose ingenious set design frames the dilapidated Fix Up bookshop as a microcosmic distillation of the running theme of the foundation of black historical knowledge itself withering away and languishing in distinctly outmoded ‘uncool’ surroundings, whilst the faces of great black thinkers look on from their portraits in the background, their legacies of thought and action haunting the present of black life.


The spectre of black history haunts the present. Credit: David Sprecher

Phillip Ley’s sound design together with Sarah Assaf’s musical arrangement compliments this visual storytelling wonderfully, with a soundscape evocative of neglected black history that centres Marcus Garvey’s surviving words of righteous anger and indignation as they repeatedly puncture through the listless mundanity of the day-to-day, demanding an audience that will listen and take notice. Nick Insley’s lighting lends a beautifully solemn, portrait-like pathos to some moving, emotive monologues from the leads and heightens all the most shocking moments. Kwei-Armah’s lyrical patois, meanwhile, is brought out nicely by dialect coach Peta Barker.

Although events do build to a compelling, energetic and emotionally devastating finale in the second half, this leaves the first half, by comparison, seeming slowed down and slightly lacking in the same energy and momentum, with some of the longer pauses unfortunately suggesting delayed cues rather than dramatic effect, though this can easily be remedied in the coming performances. Nevertheless, director Landé Belo, in her Tower Theatre directorial debut, has accomplished quite a feat of storytelling, bringing a clear and confident vision to the text and creating work which is a richly thought-provoking and powerful pleasure to watch.


Isiah Bobb-Semple as Carl and Valerie Paul as Nora. Credit: David Sprecher

Review: The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare

(Originally published in London Theatre Reviews, May 24th 2019: http://www.londontheatrereviews.co.uk/post.cfm?p=1287)

Performed at the Tower Theatre, May 23rd 2019

Disclosure: I have been involved with the Tower Theatre since 2016 and am personally acquainted with some of the cast and crew.

The latest in the Tower Theatre’s long tradition of touring Shakespeare productions to London and Paris for the summer, this time it falls to director Rob Ellis and his assistant Ciara Robley to deliver a new incarnation of Shakespeare’s comedy of righteous double-crossing and spirited, wifely rage.

With many of its central characters returning from Henry IV Part I and Henry IV Part 2, Wives’ comedy is oddly situated in Shakespeare’s body of work as a sort of side-story spin-off in which the grasping (in more ways than one, rather) buffoon Sir John Falstaff, enamoured with the sizeable dowries of the Windsor town wives, concocts a daft scheme to woo their assets out from under them. Naturally, the canny wives are having none of it, and so all the women of Windsor band together to show the dastardly old pervert what for.

Sangita Modgil and John Chapman as Master Ford and Sir Falstaff. Credit: Robert Piwko

The cast and crew make the best of what is often Shakespeare’s least well-regarded writing, wisely excising much of the dull, superfluous detail from the original script to make for a much pithier, faster-paced and more compelling production. Meanwhile, Max Batty and Lynda Twidale’s respective set and costume design transport proceedings to a lavishly-realised 1950s white picket fence incarnation of Windsor which is a gorgeously detailed pleasure to behold, and Colin Guthrie’s together with Ellis’ musical selections, full of contemporary rocking surf guitar numbers, lends everything a delightfully jaunty, carefree summertime atmosphere.

Playgoers in search of the thematic depth of Hamlet or vivid characterisations of The Scottish Play may be sorely disappointed by Wives, and perhaps find its comedic premise and characters far more simplistic and one-dimensional than the Bard’s more well-known fare, but Ellis’ cast does their level best with the material regardless. Amongst the highlights is John Chapman in a spirited starring role as a repulsive, lecherous – indeed, some may say grimly modern – Falstaff who is hugely entertaining to watch. Meanwhile, the Mistresses Ford and Page (Jill Davy and Helen McCormack) are both wonderfully energetic and compelling, with great camaraderie and chemistry between them, joined by Madeleine Gordon in an entertaining turn as the delightfully cunning Mistress Quickly. Sangita Modgil’s gender-bent Master Ford performs with great enthusiasm and vitality, carrying off her deliveries with a lively aplomb bordering on Time Lord, whilst James Van Langenberg makes for both an infectiously upbeat Nym and an endearingly sympathetic Master Fenton. There are surely some who will come for the Bard and stay for Daniel Watson’s gregarious, strongly-accented Sir Hugh Evans.

All the cast give earnest, committed performances, and all are ably assisted by Chris Mason and Anna Kovacs’ respective lighting and sound design, which creates compellingly atmospheric, absorbing, and evocative imagery to compliment what are at times vastly detailed, beautifully staged scenes of comic farce. That this is perhaps not Shakespeare’s best work is sometimes reflected in fluctuations in the energy of the production, but it remains a boldly upbeat, creative, and gorgeously put together evening of theatre, full of talent, and which never fails to entertain.

Garden party. Credit: Robert Piwko