Category: London theatre

Review: Netherbard at the Hen and Chickens Theatre

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Why go and see one Shakespeare play when you can see several all at once? In Netherbard, the debut show from Budding Rose Productions, Kate (Rosemary Berkon), Amy (Tayla Kenyon) and Lena (Katrina Allen) have been cast as the three witches in Macbeth. In between rehearsals they take time out to moan about Abby (Lucinda Turner), who’s snatched the role of Lady Macbeth from under Kate’s nose – along with Lena’s boyfriend and Amy’s dream role in Eastenders.

Their light-hearted banter takes an unexpectedly dark turn when Abby herself arrives, and the trio realise they’re no longer rehearsing Macbeth, but King Lear. By the time they realise what’s happened and why, there’s no going back, and so begins a mad chase through a selection of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, uncovering a tale of envy and ambition the Bard himself would be proud of. The only difference is that here the women are taking their destiny into their own hands, instead of slinking off to die quietly backstage while the men do the fighting.

Even the most diehard fan would have to admit women don’t always get a great deal in Shakespeare’s world, so it’s refreshing to see the girls stepping into the spotlight and taking on some meatier roles. Despite some sombre themes and nefarious deeds, Netherbard is very much a comedy, and under Rosie Snell’s direction the energy never wavers. The cast are clearly enjoying themselves and keep pace well with the rapid-fire dialogue – though it’s not always so easy for the audience to keep up, particularly later in the play when things start to get a bit chaotic and the actors are talking over each other. At just a couple of minutes under an hour, it’s all over very quickly, but manages to pack a lot of action into that brief time, and I would have happily stayed for more.

Janice Hallett’s lively comedy is great fun for Shakespeare fans, and a perfect opportunity for those who want to show off by identifying all the famous speeches that come up in the script (although it is possible to cheat a bit thanks to Greg Spong’s set, which is full of clues – some obvious, some less so). But the play’s equally enjoyable for lovers of Eastenders or reality TV where, let’s be honest, you’re just as likely to find people stabbing each other in the back as in any Shakespearean tragedy. 

Netherbard is an impressive debut from an exciting new female-led company. It’s a shame the initial run was just two days, but hopefully it’s not the last we’ve seen of this offbeat tribute to Shakespeare and the cut-throat world of showbiz.


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Review: Flycatcher at The Hope Theatre

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Gregg Masuak’s Flycatcher is unsettling from the start, kicking off with an eery, monotonous chorus of “nobody likes me, everybody hates me…” led by Emily Arden’s unblinking Madelaine, while the rest of the cast emerge from the corners, where they’ve been frozen like waxworks since we entered.

From there, things get increasingly disturbing and bewildering as awkward waitress Madelaine becomes obsessed with Bing, an idealistic young life insurance salesman. Unfortunately, he in turn is obsessed – though in a (slightly) less creepy way – with Olive, a gallery owner who reminds him of his idol Grace Kelly and is herself trapped in an unfulfilling relationship with a married man. When Madelaine befriends Olive, you just know it isn’t going to end well… Meanwhile a seemingly unrelated subplot involving Madelaine’s grandmother Mae, growing old disgracefully in a desperate bid for attention, circles back in the play’s shocking final moments to complete the intricate web connecting all the characters to each other.

It’s a bizarre play, part thriller, part comedy and made up of a lot of very short scenes – some literally a few seconds – that keep the cast of eight moving constantly on and off stage. Though the action predominantly revolves around the four main characters, the other actors (Nathan Plant, Susanna Wolff, Bruce Kitchener and Melissa Dalton) work just as hard, in a variety of eccentric and distinct supporting roles that intersect with the central characters at different points. This structure could have resulted in a very stop-start production, but under the direction of writer Gregg Masuak everything flows smoothly, and the actors – who frequently retire to the corners of the space to prepare for their next scene – never miss a beat. There’s still a lot to take in from one minute to the next, but it’s difficult to fault the way the snapshot scenes are presented.

Emily Arden is genuinely quite scary as Madelaine as she weaves her web of deceit around Bing and Olive, glowering all the while at a world that’s never accepted her (though her rare attempts at a smile are even more frightening), and visibly growing in stature and confidence as she puts her plan into action. She makes an unlikely pairing with Alex Shenton’s Bing, a charming salesman who wins over his customers by selling them a dream of a better world; one of the biggest tragedies of the play is seeing him lose the puppy dog eagerness with which he pursues Olive, played by Amy Newton. Their relationship progresses very naturally through the awkward flirting stage into something resembling stability, but is equally convincing as both it and they begin to fall apart. Completing the core cast as Mae, Fiz Marcus offers some light relief, although her vulnerability and desperate need for someone – anyone – to listen to her is heartbreaking; she spends most of the play talking into a void as all the other characters avoid or scorn her.

There are elements of the story that are strange and confusing, and I’d be surprised if anybody left feeling they understood everything they’d just seen. However, the performances, design (I really loved the simple effectiveness of Anna Kezia Williams’ spiderweb set) and direction combine to create an atmosphere of foreboding and drama that keeps us engaged even when we don’t really know what’s happening. A distinctly odd evening, and the style may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but this is undeniably an excellent production.


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Review: The Very Perry Show at the Hen and Chickens

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People are odd. Which is a good thing; if we were all completely normal, life would be very dull. You only have to tune into a neighbour’s conversation on the train, or look at the other customers in a cafe to appreciate how wonderfully weird human beings are.

Kate Perry knows this more than most. She likes to collect people – and then share them in all their delightful eccentricity. So it is that we come to meet the likes of Carmel, a pensioner with a Ken Barlow obsession; Jimmy, a pigeon fancier from Bolton; and Bridget, a little girl making friends – whether they like it or not – with her fellow passengers on a flight to the States. These are just three of the characters brought to life in the comedy monologues of The Very Perry Show, a fun-filled one-woman performance that stops off in London this week on its way to New York.

Directed by Jeremy Stockwell, the show takes a no frills approach; each character has one or two accessories to differentiate them visually from the rest, but they’re really just a bonus thanks to Kate Perry’s talent for embodying completely each distinct personality. The affection she feels for each of her creations is obvious – even Suzie, a bored twelve-year-old from Surrey who’s just been expelled (again), and to pass the time plies her mother with tranquillisers, then calmly films the ensuing carnage for a web series she likes to call Mummy on the Brink.

That slightly dark episode aside, all the characters are interesting and lovable in their own ways (though in Bridget’s case, there’s a big difference between ten minutes in a theatre and several hours on a plane). And of course there are a lot of laughs, even in the stories we might not expect to be that amusing – like Marie, who’s reminiscing about the day she heard her father had died; not a cheerful topic, yet Marie ultimately ends up getting one of the biggest laughs of the night.

The final character in the collection is Mary Peachy-Bender, an Amish wife and mother of “six childrens” (and she does not want any more). The extreme circumstances in which Mary lives offer plenty of opportunities for comedy, but there’s also a sadness to this character as she imagines a different life, and that makes her somehow the most believable of them all.

Kate Perry is a great performer – quite apart from her talent for creating characters we can both relate to and laugh at, as a host she’s warm and inviting, addressing the audience directly but not in a way that will make anyone uncomfortable. The show is an hour of good, clean fun that moves along at a gentle pace without ever losing our interest, and proves that there really are interesting characters everywhere if you take a look around.


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Review: The Red Lion at Trafalgar Studios 2

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There’s a clip from The IT Crowd in which Moss and Roy, in a bid to impress some new guy friends, have ended up at a football match. “Hooray,” says Moss unenthusiastically. “He’s kicked the ball.”

I must confess this is pretty much how I feel about football (though I might have used another IT Crowd gem – “Did you see that ludicrous display last night?” – at work a few times, just for fun). But I also know that for many people it’s more than a sport; it’s a way of life. There’s even a certain theatricality about it: 22 players performing for an excited audience who are all thoroughly invested in a happy outcome – for their side, anyway. And I can’t deny feeling a grudging respect for the fans who give up their time and money to devotedly follow their team come rain or shine, good times or bad.

Photo credit: Mark Douet

Patrick Marber took that devotion to another level a few years ago, when he became the joint owner of his local football team to save it from bankruptcy. And this passion is both the inspiration for and the central theme of The Red Lion, in which three men see their fortunes rise and fall in the sweaty confines of a players’ changing room. Kidd is the wheeler dealer manager of an unnamed semi-professional football team – relocated under director Max Roberts to the North East of England. Yates is a local legend; once a star player, then a manager, now he’s the kit man, but still as loyal as ever to the club he loves. And then along comes Jordan, a star player in the making. Both Kidd and Yates have plans for the young man’s future – but with one of them driven by money and the other by honour, there’s no way those plans can ever coincide.

While Patrick Connellan’s locker room set is undeniably impressive in its attention to detail (you can even smell the Deep Heat), the play’s real power lies with its cast of three incredible actors, each of whom brings something different to the table. Dean Bone is a picture of youthful naivety and helplessness as Jordan, a pawn referred to most often by the other two men as simply “the kid”, while John Bowler’s fragile Yates speaks his lines with a loving, almost hypnotic caress that can make even a non-believer appreciate football’s poetry. Last but definitely not least, Stephen Tompkinson gives a powerhouse performance as Kidd – one minute he has us roaring with laughter, the next he’s apoplectic with fury, and the next broken by the threat of losing everything that matters to him. All three actors know how to deliver a funny line, and do it brilliantly, but it’s the moments when they face the possibility of life outside the four walls they’ve come to call home that really make an impact.

Photo credit: Mark Douet

It might help to be a football fan – or at least a little bit in the know – to keep up with the play’s fast-paced dialogue as the three characters dissect matches and haggle over transfer deals. But the good news for the rest of us is that you don’t really need to know anything about football to enjoy this play. At its heart, The Red Lion is a story about the complex relationships between three men from different generations, with nothing in common but their love of the game. And that love – poured into every line of the script and felt in each moment of three excellent performances – is more than a little infectious; I reckon even Moss would be impressed.


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Interview: Kate Perry, The Very Perry Show

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Kate Perry is an actress, radio presenter and writer originally from Dungannon, Co. Tyrone, known and loved by audiences worldwide for her comedy monologues and colourful characters. This November, Kate brings The Very Perry Show – which she describes as “a happy hour of comic monologues featuring a pair of glasses, a rubber hat and a can of WD40” – to London’s Hen and Chickens, following huge success in Edinburgh, San Francisco and beyond. After the London run, she’ll be heading to New York to perform the show in the prestigious United Theatre Solo Festival.

The story of Kate’s career begins back in the 1990s: “I started my writing and acting career presenting my characters in a little venue called The Marsh in the Mission district of San Francisco, which is still going strong today,” she explains. “I was also a member of The Fifth Province Theatre Company, that put on contemporary Irish plays and I got a lot of experience acting with them. While still living in San Francisco I adapted the novel No Mate For The Magpie for the stage, which premiered in the U.S. and toured Ireland to critical acclaim.

“When I returned to Ireland in the late nineties I continued to write and perform my own material but was also offered opportunities to write for radio, which opened up doors for me on RTE, the national broadcaster, and then BBC Radio 4. I completed an MPhil in creative writing in Trinity College, Dublin then made the move to London in 2014. Since then I have been developing The Very Perry Show, performing it in London, Ireland, Edinburgh and San Francisco.”

In a career spanning almost three decades, it’s not surprising that there have been a lot of highlights. “One of the biggest has been getting commissioned to write a Woman’s Hour series based on sketches I had written for The Dublin Fringe Festival,” recalls Kate. “Also, writing monologues and short stories for BBC Radio 4 for the fabulously talented Tamsin Grieg, Doreen Keogh and Conleth Hill. More recently I have been given the opportunity to perform my show in New York, on 42nd Street as part of The United Theater Solo Festival, the largest solo festival in the world.”

The show’s directed by Jeremy Stockwell, and features a collection of eccentric characters, including an unhinged documentary maker, a pious pigeon fancier and a six year old ‘entertaining’ a captive audience on a long distance flight. But which of Kate’s creations is her favourite? “Hard to say, I like them all but I do have a soft spot for Mary Peachy-Bender, a disgruntled Amish woman with too many children,” she confesses. “She’s quietly subversive and audiences are always intrigued about where her story is leading. So am I!”


Even now, Kate admits to still feeling pre-show nerves, but she’s looking forward to introducing her characters to new audiences in London and New York: “I’m terrified before I step on to the stage; it usually starts with a gulp, gulp, and barf. But once I’m up there and have a receptive audience who connects with the material, then it’s a real pleasure to make people laugh and bring a little sunshine to their day.

“I think the key to good comedy is a matter of taste. Because I do character work I think it’s important to give the audience something recognisable. Someone they can latch on to and care about. You need to make it real, even if the characters seem ridiculous or are left of field.”

So why should we come and check out The Very Perry Show this November? “There’s something or somebody in it for everyone,” says Kate. “The characters include everything from a 5 year old to a 75 year old and everything in between. Even a man! And it’s only £8.50 a ticket…”

Catch The Very Perry Show at the Hen and Chickens from 7th-11th November.