Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Rebecca Lenkiewicz’

Unusual Unions

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 10, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Who’d have thought you could say so much in a 15 minute play. Multiply that by five and you’ve got a theatrical feast. Put them in normally unseen spaces all around the building for groups of less than ten and it adds another layer of fascination and a great deal of intimacy. This was a genuine treat.

You split into five groups and each group sees the plays in a different sequence. The first play my group saw took place in a dressing room with a balcony (now we know where the actors go for a fag!). Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Anhedonia is an intense story of a woman who has experienced sexual abuse and the actions she takes to hide it. The unusual union is a builder where she works, whose intuitively knows anyway. Rona Morison was compelling as Girl.

The Golden Hours by Frances Ya-Chu Cowing was set in a meeting room with extraordinary views of London’s rooftops, now a room where Shinger & June’s mother is laid to rest before her funeral, which was the subject of the brother & sister’s exchanges. Sarah Lam’s real tears at close quarter made this a deeply moving experience.

To a stairwell for Rachel De-Lehay’s My Twin, a captivating monologue by Sarah Ridgeway telling us her experiences of being the slightly younger twin. This was funny and touching in equal measure and felt like a one-to-one conversation.

Down underneath the stage in a workshop Phil, brilliantly performed by Alan Williams, tells us about his project to build a rocket in the garage where he works while the boss is away and his unusual union with the off-stage Helen who he meets at a slimming club and allows to rehearse in the garage for her Bowie tribute performance. Tom Wells’ Phil in Space is a quirky little comic gem which I didn’t want to end.

We ended with fighting and tension beneath the stage as two brothers, one in the army and the other in CND, discuss the evolution and history of their relationship. Appropriately called Bruises, Keiran Hurley’s play was superbly performed with great tension by Richard Rankin and Brian Ferguson.

I found it astonishing that you could get five very different plays of such quality, and such committed performances, that are only going to be seen by less than 150 people. Should it return, you should be queuing for tickets. Wonderful.

Read Full Post »

Turn of the Screw

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on January 24, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Though there have been numerous TV and film adaptations, there have been surprisingly few stage adaptations of Henry James’ late 19th century novella; possibly because of the difficulty (more so in the past than now perhaps) in pulling off the ghost stuff effectively. That’s actually the major strength of this production, though it still doesn’t match Benjamin Britten’s opera; conclusive proof of the power of music?

Playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz has been faithful to her source, though perhaps more explicit, and Director Lindsay Posner and his designer Peter McKintosh have been just as respectful with their staging and design. James’ story starts with Sackville interviewing a new governess for his nephew and niece, orphaned by the death of both their parents and left with a housekeeper and governess in the family home (with infrequent visits from their uncle). As the play unfolds, we learn about the death of the previous governess and another employee, who now seem to be haunting or even possessing the children. There is more than a suggestion that in life they may have preyed on them sexually.

McKintosh’s design is excellent and Scott Penrose’s effects, Tim Mitchell’s lighting and John Leonard’s sound design are all terrific – the staging of the apparitions was good enough to get a lot of gasps and a few squeals from the audience. The performances are excellent, led by Anna Madeley’s governess (who seemed to have a cold, which somehow added something to her more emotional scenes) and Gemma Jones’ housekeeper Mrs Grose. The children, Laurence Belcher and ANO (there are three alternating as Flora!) are exceptional in what are big roles with lots of lines.

The major problem is the pacing. It’s slowed down by a lot of scene changes, despite their slickness using the Almeida’s revolve, though ironically the second half – with more scene changes – is better paced! In the end, I felt that despite the quality of it all, it doesn’t transfer well from page to stage (without music, anyway) but in all fairness, I’m not really a ghost story fan and it is, after all, an up-market ghost story.

Read Full Post »

Faeries

Posted in Dance, Theatre, tagged , , , , , on January 3, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I think Covent Garden should rename the Linbury Studio Theatre the Tuckett Studio Theatre, such is the number of Will Tuckett’s dance theatre shows it has mounted! This one started life in the smaller Clore Studio a couple of years ago and has now been promoted to the Linbury for a long 30-show Christmas run.

Like Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella at Sadler’s Wells, this is set during the second world war when a brother and sister are evacuated from London. When the brother finds he’s to be separated from his sister, he escapes and ends up in a park with the fairies where most of the action unfolds.

Rebecca Lenkiewicz’ story is a bit convoluted for the younger part of its target audience (7-14, though again parents think they know better and there were a lot of bored or scared under 7’s) & a bit overlong at 80 minutes without a break. There’s far too much pointless running around passed off as ‘choreography’ and as dance theatre it fails.

However, I really liked Martin Ward’s score, played live by keyboards and clarinet, and the  puppetry by Blind Summit is excellent (except when they’re part of the pointless running around!). It looks like they haven’t changed the design from the smaller space and it looks a bit lost in the Linbury. The performances though are good all round and as theatre it’s a partial success.

If they scaled it up and shortened it, it would be a whole lot better. I found myself looking at my watch half-way through feeling as if I’d got as much out of it as I was going to get out of it.

Read Full Post »

Women Power & Politics

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 27, 2010| 1 Comment »

OK, so nine short plays on the history of women in politics (and the ‘testimonies’ of five living politicians) isn’t everyone’s idea of fun on a hot, sunny Saturday in June! Well, helped by the Tricycle’s aircon, it proved to be a theatrical feast I wouldn’t have missed for the world.

The Tricycle is the only theatre with the bravery and balls (inappropriate terminology, I know) to stage this. It’s only a year since they did a thrilling whole day history of Afghanistan in the same way and I have to confess I never thought they’d match it – but they have.

The nine plays take us from Elizabeth I to all-women selection lists and the writing, by nine different women playwrights, was even more consistent than The Great Game, with an intriguing and unpredictable selection of subjects and innovative approaches to them. There really wasn’t a dud amongst them, though Sue Townsend’s albeit funny contribution steered furthest from the theme in the cause of her cartoon-like relentless and tired snipes at the New Labour project.

Marie Jones and Rebecca Lenkiewicz gave us fascinating new historical perspectives on the suffragettes and Liz I respectively. Moira Buffini’s take on Thatch & Liz II was clever and funny yet insightful. Lucy Kirkwood reminded us how we’ve virtually eliminated Greenham Common from history. Joy Wilkinson shows us that little has changed between the 1994 and 2010 Labour leadership contests. Zinnie Harris viciously but accurately shows us many men’s attitudes to all-women selection lists. Sam Holcroft stages a very intelligent debate about pornography through a conversation between a successful pornographer and a PM let down by her husband. Bola Agbaje is bang up-to-date with her study of the power of sex. Add to that verbatim contributions from Shirley Williams, Edwina Currie, Oona King,  Jacqui Smith & Anne Widdicombe, and a late addition (?) from Nick Clegg which proves to be the most chilling of all! Well if that doesn’t live up to my ‘theatrical feast’ epithet, I don’t know what does!  

Indira Rubasingham, assisted by Amy Hodge, has given each play a fresh directorial perspective with Handbagged, Bloody Wimmin and Acting Leader getting particularly inventive staging. She’s assembled an excellent ensemble of twelve actors who play up to six roles each, except Lara Rossi who gets to play Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, John Prescott, Peter Mandelson, Clare Short and Margaret Beckett’s husband in the same play – a tremendous debut from someone still at LAMDA! It was particularly good to see Kika Markham, Tom Mannion and Stella Gonet again.

If you saw The Great Game, you shouldn’t miss this different but equally exhilarating experience. If you didn’t, suspend disbelief and go see this and you’ll be back for The Great Game when it’s revival follows it. Seeing them all together, it’s an intelligent, relevant and thought-provoking experience – and great entertainment too.  

Yet again, The Tricycle leads the way.

Read Full Post »