I blame Geoffrey Chaucer. Over six centuries ago he created one of the most interesting women in English literature (until the nineteenth century, anyway). Alyson, The Wife of Bath is not a nun, young virgin, princess, witch or prostitute. She is independent, forceful and sexually active – enthusiastically so – with five husbands, literally under her belt. And she has found a vibrant, entertaining, truthful new lease of life in Zadie Smith’s play The Wife of Willesden which is written in unforced but flowing verse just to add another layer of referential cleverness and remind us of the source.

We’re immersively in a traditional mahogany-countered pub

(totally convincing set by Rupert Jones). I suppose there’s a hint of the Tabard Inn where Chaucer’s pilgrims foregathered and chatted but this is 21st century Brent and it’s modelled on the pub over the way on Kilburn High Road. Alvita, the titular wife of Willesden (Clare Perkins)  is telling the other nine drinkers about her husbands and sharing her thoughts. The first two thirds is effectively a long monologue with dramatic illustrations from a talented, versatile cast who play all the roles often at hilarious speed. Marcus Aldolphy, for instance, is a treat in his brief appearances as Black Jesus, another actor holding a brass tray (usually used for pub glasses) behind his head as a halo. And Crystal Condie delights as the urbane author at the beginning, later becoming Alvita’s best friend among other roles.C

Perkins struts, hunches in exasperation and times every line to perfection. There’s sex, pathos, sadness, irritation and honesty all in the mix. “I hate anyone who tries to rein me in” she declares. She has a wonderful way with facial expressions too. One husband (Andrew Frame) is a bit past it and we see her trying, unsuccessfully, to get him going. The exasperated look on her face is a brilliant comic moment in a show which is not short of them. It’s a bravura performance and I hope she wins lots of awards for it.

Because she is clearly a character who interests him very much Chaucer gives his Alyson the longest section of his prologue – and twice as many lines as she gets for the tale she tells on the journey. Smith follows the same pattern giving about an hour to the prologue and half an hour to the story in this 90 minute, interval-free show. The story is a variation on the traditional loathly damsel  tale whereby a bachelor finally accepts an ugly, elderly woman (Ellen Thomas – good) on her own terms and is rewarded by her turning into a beautiful maiden. It’s very hard to make that work in 2021 even if you throw high production values at it (I loved the giant jelly fish). It feels like an add-on. And although it’s mildly funny it’s effectively a play-within-a-play and it’s too long. Actually I’d have been happy  to have stopped at the end of the marvellous, ingenious, immaculately directed,  five star  prologue section. But I’ve docked a star because of the last half hour.  And now I’ll duck below the parapet because the press night audience was pretty excited about the whole show …

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-wife-of-willesden/

After two long years it’s a real treat to be back in the room with the ebulliently enthusiastic West Wickham Operatic Society. The cast and everyone involved with this show were clearly on a totally justifiable high.

And there is a lot to like about this production of the ever-popular Kinky Boots directed by Kevin Gauntlett who also plays the factory foreman, George, stuck in his own time warp but, like almost everyone else, on a voyage of open-minded discovery. Price and Sons, a shoe factory in Northampton narrowly avoids the buffers by a switch to niche marketing – making strong female boots for men. Most people in the audience know the story. The 2005  film did very well as did the West End  musical version and tour.

Danielle Dowsett’s choreography is splendidly slick and full of visual interest.  She has every single chorus member drilled to be totally present and a dynamic part of the action at all times.  She also gets some fine work out of the chorus of drag queens although, for me, they don’t look glamorous enough. Some of their make-up inches towards grotesque.

Michael Simpson’s lighting makes every scene look good, especially the catwalk in Milan. And the eleven-piece pit band, led by MD James Hall is outstanding.

Amongst the principals, Kemal Ibrahim  – “triple threat” fully sewn up – is a show stealer as Lola. He struts, purrs, and gleams in his nightclub numbers, sings in a range of moods and brings a really poignant sense of vulnerability to the nakedness of finally finding the courage to be his gay, male self. The toilet scene is always the best bit of any production of Kinky Boots and Ibrahim gives us a warm, moving performance here with Stephen Bradley (good actor) as Charlie.

On the other hand this Kinky Boots felt under-rehearsed on its opening night. There were too many missed mic cues, tuning problems in the singing and technical theatre problems including clumsy scene changes – you aren’t supposed to hear the thumps and bumps of things being moved about. And please could this company work a bit harder on diction in general and consonants in particular ? Several cast members are inaudible when speaking and many words disappear during the singing.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/kinky-boots-2/

Winsome Pinnock’s powerful play about drug trafficking (premiered at The Royal Court Upstairs in 1996) hasn’t dated at all. Its issues are still alarmingly pertinent and, of course, it’s good to see an all female play, featuring lots of actors of colour, with meaty parts for eight women, several of whom do some neat doubling.

Bridie (Trudi Dane) is running an international drug trafficking business. She’s glamorous, beautifully dressed and charismatically convincing so, of course, young women fall into her hands whether they’re fed up in Jamaica, lost in London or anywhere else. Dane brings an interesting combination of cheerful ruthlessness and, at base, vulnerability to the role. I had, however, difficulty hearing some of her lines at the beginning.

There is some intelligent acting in this production – skilfully exploited by director, Lande Belo. Tyan Jones stands out as the ebullient Lou, full of joie de vivre and carefully delivered Jamaican accent. But she wants more and a trip to London might just provide it although her sister Lyla (Oyinka Yusuff – good) takes a bit of persuading.

I also liked Vanessa Tedi Wilson’s Allie, the young shop assistant who has run away from her home in the West Midlands (judging by her accent) because, we eventually learn, she feels let down by her mother and the latter’s abusive boyfriend. She has a little money and no street wisdom. The rather predictable scene in which she is mugged/drugged and robbed in the park put me in mind of the cat and the fox in Pinocchio. Tedi Wilson seems wooden in her opening scenes (first night nerves?) but eventually brings real depth to the role as she begins to work for Bridie and then, when she has to, finds ways of working though the inevitable consequences.

This play made me think about a lot of things which are outside my everyday experience. There are some very smooth, predatory operators out there ready to take on the vulnerable and delude them into feeling secure and cared for – the Fagin type. And it’s even more chilling, somehow when it’s women exploiting women. Moreover, there are practical issues: I had never stopped to think how desperately uncomfortable it must be to carry a packet inside your body. “You just need more lubricant” purrs Trudi Gane’s character at one point. Ughh. Never let it me said that theatre doesn’t educate you.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/mules/

All photos: Pamela Raith Photography

Oh yes, this apparently perennial show has certainly bedded in beautifully since I first saw it (twice) at Arts Theatre three years ago. Totally original and gloriously sassy, it remains the sort of spellbinding theatre which keeps you smiling for the full eighty minutes. And it can now afford high level production values so the cheerfully assertive on-stage, all female four-piece band is surrounded by some (literally) flashy lighting, courtesy of Tim Deiling’s flamboyant design. Think dozens of traffic lights changing colour … and more.

In case you’ve been on a different theatrical planet for the last three years: this show, by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, presents the six queens of Henry VIII meeting for a competitive pop concert. Using a whole range of styles from Beyonce to Adele and from Ariana Grande to Alicia Keys, each tells her own story. This means that each of the six queens gets a spot to present events from her point of view – and we see the whole six wives phenomenon through a 21st Century feminist lens. Underneath the funny, outrageous costumes – very glittery with Tudor hints – the throwaway lines, the jokes and the irreverent lyrics (“Don’t be bitter because I’m fitter”) there are some serious points being made here. And that’s why it works so well. Like all the best shows it is multi-layered.

There are three versions of this show at present: the one I’m reviewing here in the West End, a touring production and one on Broadway. The Vaudeville theatre version has six named cast members, three “queens in waiting” and two cast as swing. At the performance I saw the six on stage were Jarneia Richard-Nioel as Aragon, Cherelle Jay as Boleyn,  Collete Guitart as Seymour, Alexia McIntosh as Cleves, Sophie Isaacs as Howard and Hana Stewart as Parr. Because, presumably, this particular team isn’t fully accustomed to working together there were one or two minor hitches in the dialogue but songs and Carrie-Anne Ingrouille’s entertainingly energetic choreography worked well – as ever.

All six flirt with the audience and pack sky-high levels of dynamic stage presence. I especially like big, bold McIntosh’s Anne of Cleves who, arguably gets the best deal – pensioned off to live independently in a palace as she keeps reminding us. And Cherelle Jay, who keeps popping up chirpily to point out that being beheaded is a bit final, is good value.

This show is a case study in runaway success. It began as the brainchild of two young people at Cambridge who took a little show to Edinburgh – since then, despite the pandemic which darkened it several times, it has been almost volcanic in its seemingly unstoppable growth. Perhaps it’s just what people need in these often uncertain, potentially gloomy times: lots of glitz, glamour, laughter and some good music.

Billed as a “show in development” this 60 minute piece – by definition –  needs more work. But it is already an arresting hour of intimate theatre.

I have known for a very long time about the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in which hundreds (there is no accurate record of exactly how many) of Indian families were shot for “insurrection”  by British Troops in 1919.  But many British people don’t and I certainly wasn’t taught about it at school. They tended not to dwell on British shame when I was growing up.

Samaadhi explores the horror of that event  and reflects on colonial policy from a number of angles. And part of the aim is to make the appalling events of 1919 better known. We meet an old man remembering. We see early silent film actors discovering bullet holes in a wall. We hear the poetic, chilling rhetoric of the officer in charge and we watch a lot of shooting and dying. It’s pretty uncompromising, visceral  theatre for grown ups.

Mohit Mathur and Ivantiy Novak, the two actors who make all this happen, are both highly accomplished performers. The play uses mime, dance and physical theatre as well as speech – and maybe that’s one of the areas which needs refining because the structure feels episodically bitty in places and some of the sequences are arguably too long. The opening scene in which they are silent film actors with ragtime piano background is, for example, entertaining and beautifully done but feels a bit self indulgent given what the piece is actually about.

Novak, who wrote the play, has a quality of eloquent stillness and attentive listening which I found compelling. And he has one of the most attractive speaking voices I’ve heard in a young actor for a very long time – I hope he’s going to record some poetry (Shakespeare sonnets maybe) very soon if he hasn’t already done so.

Mathur is intensely moving as the elderly grandfather telling his grandson what he remembers and  when he depicts a man confronting a wolf, which presumably symbolises the enemy.  Both men are lithe, eloquent dancers and the choreography of the balletic movement sequences is excellent.

All this is accomplished without set and using just pink and blue Indian floral scarves, a walking stick and a single bullet. The scarves mostly show which side the man is on – red for Britain and blue for India and are folded and tied in different, imaginative ways to suggest, for example, a turban or a skirt. Even so the characterisation isn’t yet always clear as we move from one scenario to another. Perhaps as the piece develops the audience could be given slightly more explicit visual clues.

This was the first time I’ve been to the Bridge House Theatre, Penge since it reopened under new management. It now uses an upstairs black box studio space and has a pretty busy and eclectic opening programme. We had to vacate the auditorium quickly after Samaadhi because they needed to set up for a production about internet dating.  Variety and all that!

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/samaadhi/