Writer & Director: Emma Rice As much a gory tale marred with crimson, the folktale Blue Beard casts an eccentric shade over the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, until March 30th as a part of its UK tour. Crammed with music, movement, and theatrical enchantment from the vaudeville to the magical. An age-old tale of a man, this time a showbiz conjurer, who plucks women for his wives – murdering them and stowing them away in a locked chamber. And for such a grim and melancholy premise, what audiences are about to witness couldn’t be more flamboyantly mischievous and awakening. It defies the odds cast against…
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Music: Alan Menken Lyrics: Glenn Slater Book: Cheri Steinkellner & Bill Steinkellner Director: Bill Buckhurst The latest in a seemingly endless line of stage musical adaptations of cinematic classics hits Brighton’s Theatre Royal in the form of Sister Act: A Divine Musical Comedy. The original 1992 film starring Whoopi Goldberg as a club singer sent to live disguised as a nun to escape the wrath of her criminal boyfriend fused culture clash comedy with uplifting musical set pieces. It would seem the perfect candidate for a stage adaptation, but the songs by Oscar-winner Alan Menken mostly eschew the gospel and…
Writer and Director: Adrian Apanel School, a character opines in Horror Story, does not prepare us for real life. This may be the central point of Adrian Apanel’s somewhat scattershot satire on modern life, particularly the difficulties facing young people at the start of their working lives. Having graduated with a degree in banking and finance Tomek (Jakub Zajac) moves to Warsaw to start his career. His hopes are high including that success will re-ignite the relationship with his former girlfriend. However, his funds are limited, necessitating renting a room in a crumbling villa. Tomek’s job search does not go…
Writers: Andrzej Golda and Jan Holoubek Director: Jan Holoubek A doppelganger is defined as an apparition or double of a living person. It is appropriate, therefore, that Director Jan Holoubek’s film Doppelganger (co-written with Andrzej Golda), is so stuffed with deceptions it does not feature an actual doppelganger. In 1977 Hans Steiner (Jakub Gierszal) is reunited in Alsatia, France, with the birth mother who was forced to abandon him when the Nazis invaded Poland during World War II. Actually, Hans is a cuckoo in the nest; his real name is Józef Wieczorek – a spy working for Polish intelligence and…
Writer and Director: Elliott Hasler Vindication Swim, written and directed by Elliott Hasler, takes its inspiration from real-life swimmer, Mercedes Gleitze. In 1927, at her eighth attempt, Gleitze became the first British woman to swim the Channel. Jeopardy is provided by a rival swim a few days later by another British swimmer, Dorothy Cochrane Logan (here renamed Edith Gade), who claimed to have completed the swim in two hours’ less, time, thereby discrediting Gleitz’s achievement. Gade’s swim is revealed to be a hoax, but there remains a question mark over Gleitz’s reputation: what evidence was there that she had actually…
Writer: Sam Selvon (adapted by Roy Williams) Director: Ebenezer Bamgboye Leading dramatist Roy Williams has an enduring fascination with Black British identity, most recently explored in the National Theatre’s inspiring Death of England: Delroy, and in Hampstead Theatre’s patchy The Fellowship which sees sisters row while their ageing mother lies dying upstairs. In some respects, Williams’ adaptation of The Lonely Londoners, Sam Selvon’s 1956 novel about Windrush Generation immigrants, feels like a prequel to both. Broodingly atmospheric, impeccably performed in Caribbean patois, and uplifting and joyous in its celebration of the power of community, the piece nevertheless struggles to shape…
Writers: Mauricio Carrasco, Edouard Salier and Thibault Vanhulle Director: Edouard Salier Although presented as a science fiction film Tropic is closer to the bleak morality tales of Franz Kafka or a dark domestic drama. The film does not confirm to norms of the science fiction genre- instead of becoming a focal point a mysterious substance which causes the mutation of a character is quickly forgotten- but concentrates what might be regarded as the more mundane issue of a family in crisis. The title of the movie, directed by Edouard Salier who co-writes with Mauricio Carrasco and Thibault Vanhulle, suggests that,…
Writers and Directors: Lukasz Konopa and Emil Langballe Theatre of Violence is fascinating, a deeply disturbing documentary about the atrocities committed in northern Uganda for three decades by Joseph Kony and his terrorist military force, the Lord’s Rebel Army. Kony, believing himself to be divinely appointed, has children as young as six abducted to become child soldiers, trained to brutalise their own people. Written and directed by Lukasz Konopa and Emil Langballe, the film focuses on the trial at the International Criminal Court in the Hague of Dominic Ongwen, a prominent commander in the LRA, the only one successfully detained…