Theatre Review: The Backroom at the Cock Tavern, Kilburn
by Natalie Bennett
If you were to categorise The Backroom as a play, “edgy romantic comedy” might well do it. It’s about emotions, about relationships, both sexual and platonic, and you could easily imagine it in many different settings. This one, however, just happens to be set in a gay brothel, focusing entirely on a small group of workers there, which does, you’d have to say, give it a certain edge…
Still, if you ignore that, what you have is a pretty standard storyline, of a new boy arriving into an established group. He upsets old alliances and allegiances, knocks off the top-dog, and generally causes a major realignment of relationships.
The new boy here is Charlie (Daniel Sharman), the young public schoolboy who has adopted the pseudonym Sebastian and is determined to make his way in the new world, along the way upsetting the strutting pretentions of the dim bodybuilder Dallas (Benedict Fogarty), who’s small fragments of brain would appear to be located in his biceps, possibly driven their by steroid intake.
Supporters
–>UK immigration service–<
The brainy one of the bunch is Sandy (Miles Mlambo), who’s also the most balanced, while also being vulnerable, desperate to a serious relationship.
Indeed it’s only Sandy and Charlie who are fully developed characters, the others being more sketched stereotypes, a trend most pronounced in Will Stokes’ Madonna, who’s heading further each day into crossdressing and maybe more.
(more…)
Theatre Review: The Tempest (a gender-reversed version) at the Cock Tavern Theatre
by Natalie Bennett
The names are familiar, more or less. The plot is that familiar mix of slapstick farce and dramatic magic. Yes this is certainly The Tempest, but it’s the Bard’s work with a twist: the embittered exiled former ruler of Milan is a duchess, not a duke.
For this is a woman’s world — the rulers, the sailors, the court are all female. The only male presence that of Mirundo: the soft, tender virgin flesh being offered here for a mother’s own purposes is male.
It’s an ambitious attempt by the young Good Night Out Presents company in the debuting venue of the Cock Tavern Theatre to find something new in the familiar. If the alchemy doesn’t entirely come off, it’s still a brave and interesting effort.
The greatest fault lies perhaps in the enormous ask being made of Prospera (Karen Paullada). To call on a young and inexperienced actor to play an embittered matriarch wielding magical powers who gradually rediscovers her humanity is asking rather a lot. Much more might be done too with Bella Westgarth’s Gonzalina in attempting to convey some real sense of age.
In the early part of the play I found myself almost grasping something deeper and more difficult in the work of adapter and director Simon Beyer - asking if it was me or society that was finding a “female Prospero” difficult? That’s not, however, a question that this production manages to sustain.
(more…)
From the editor, Natalie Bennett: I've lived in London for seven years, and I still love every minute of it. With the theatres, the museums and galleries, the streets dripping with history, there's so much here that many visitors miss. On this site I and a few friends share our enthusiasms, and provide tips of getting the most out of visiting, or living, here. 