“Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen, and let me invite you into my askew little project…”
So begins The Gog/Magog Project, a dark comedy and “absurdist circus in a cage” from Random Acts Theatre, making their London debut at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre in Camden. More than a decade ago, Alexander Gog embarked on a radical experiment, caging himself in a theatre and delivering nightly performances from his cell for a period of one year as part of The Gog/Magog Project. Tragically, what was meant to be one year has become fifteen, with Gog moved from venue to venue, country to country, and made to survive on a diet of The Daily Telegraph and Banana-Flavoured ‘Moon Pies’.
“Broadly speaking the show is about the lengths a person will go to for the sake of artistic expression,” explains Kate Wilson, the show’s producer, “though it is also something of a critique of much contemporary commercial theatre. Alexander Gog acts as a voice against the mundane, run of the mill plays we are so often subject to. The Gog/Magog Project is a witty social commentary with culture at its heart.”
Gog’s situation has caught the attention of civil rights authorities, who claim that he’s being exploited for the financial gain of the pharmaceutical industry, sporting goods manufacturers, and government interests, and call for his immediate release despite his seemingly voluntary imprisonment. From behind the bars of his home, Gog – played by Random Acts co-founder Adam Brummitt – takes audiences with him in “a virtuoso performance which is as unnerving as it is hilarious”.
It all sounds a bit disturbing, particularly since the show is billed as “not for the faint hearted”. Should we be scared…? “No, I don’t think so,” says Kate. “The humour is somewhat dark, and sometimes a little uncomfortable, though even as Gog’s grip on reality begins to recede the play continues to draw laughter.”
Random Acts Theatre was founded in 2001 by Adam Brummitt and Khnemu Menu-Ra, when they were both drama undergraduates. Since then, the company has produced work consistently in St Louis, Chicago, and Exeter, where Kate came on board and helped produce the first two runs of The Gog/Magog Project. “As a company, Random Acts Theatre is dedicated to confronting issues from which people might otherwise shy away. Given this, the idea of a play which critiques mainstream theatre seemed an obvious choice. It is also an outstanding piece of writing in its own right, from a playwright whose work has not been produced in London before now.”
In fact The Gog/Magog Project is Random Acts’ first London show in their 15-year history. “We are extremely excited about the first of many shows in the capital, and the prospect of introducing audiences to a host of innovative and original productions.
“The Gog/Magog Project is the perfect antidote to the sameness of many of the plays housed on the West End. Jason Lindner’s script, with Adam Brummitt’s additions, make for an entertaining and memorable evening, and one which will make viewers consider their role as an audience member.”
Two actors playing all 21 characters in an adaptation of one of the most popular novels of all time. What could possibly go wrong?
As it turns out, nothing. Not a thing. In fact I may need to issue a gushing alert for this review, because I loved Two Bit Classics’ adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice so much I’m already trying to work out how I can fit in a return visit. Hilarious, inventive, yet completely faithful to Austen’s original text, it’s a work of genius and I didn’t want it to end.
Photo credit: Carrie Johnson
Joannah Tincey and Nick Underwood play all the characters – and that really does mean all the characters. At two and a half hours long, this is not an abridged version of the story, and so we have Bennets, Bingleys, Lucases, Mr Darcy, Mr Wickham, Mr Collins, Lady Catherine… A couple of minor characters get the chop, but anyone with any significance to the plot makes an appearance, and gets the opportunity to narrate their own part in the story.
With so many parts to play, there’s an obvious need to make each one distinct, and this characterisation is where the production really excels. Each individual has their own unique identifiers – be it a habit, an accessory or piece of clothing (often produced from one of the many nooks concealed around Dora Schweitzer’s abstract set), their way of speaking or their bearing – and we always know exactly which of Austen’s brilliant creations we’re looking at, often before they’ve even started speaking. There’s also a fair bit of gender switching, which proves yet another source of fun, with Nick Underwood taking on at least four female roles from the giggling Kitty to the demure Jane, and Joannah Tincey regularly sweeping aside her skirt to reveal the trousers of Mr Bingley.
The production is fully aware of its limitations and doesn’t try to gloss over them, but instead plays them for laughs. And so Mary – the forgotten Bennet sister – is replaced by a music stand, while one of the biggest laughs of the evening is prompted by the inventive recreation of Pemberley’s family portraits.
Photo credit: Laura Martin
Most mind-blowing of all is the stamina of the performers, who never flag in energy and easily hold the audience’s attention for the entire two and a half hours. Under the direction of Abigail Anderson, the action is non-stop, moving seamlessly from one episode to the next, with the actors frequently having to play several characters even within one scene, yet they never falter. This astonishing feat of endurance and dexterity alone justifies the standing ovation at the end of the evening.
For P&P fans and newbies alike, this is a glorious celebration of Austen’s book; the drama, comedy and romance we know and love are all there to be enjoyed almost word for word. But with so many ‘classic’ adaptations already in existence, this production brings with it a unique twist that makes the story feel simultaneously fresh and familiar, and – dare I say it – even funnier than the original.
Can’t see the map on iPhone? Try turning your phone to landscape and that should sort it. I don’t know why but I’m working on it… 😉
With Halloween just around the corner, The Hope Theatre’s kicking off its gothic season with a new musical thriller written by Luke Adamson and Dan Bottomley. Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, The House of Usher is creepy without being terrifying, at times darkly humorous and always faithful to Poe’s descriptive writing style.
The story begins with the Narrator (Richard Lounds) being summoned by old school friend Roderick Usher (Cameron Harle) to visit him at his ancient family home. But the House of Usher holds dark secrets, and with Roderick descending into madness and his sister Madeline (Eloise Kay) suffering from a mysterious affliction, will any of them make it out alive?
Photo credit: Elisha Adamson
Anyone familiar with gothic literature will recognise the minutely descriptive style, which is faithfully recreated in every monologue, dialogue and musical number. This attention to detail means the story takes quite a while to get going, and the pace in Act 1 feels at times a bit on the slow side. Act 2, in contrast, is a whirlwind of drama and madness – catching us off guard after a first act whose tone is decidedly tongue-in-cheek, and which includes several unexpected laugh out loud moments.
Dan Bottomley’s music is equally varied in style, with a score that includes folk, rock and classical, performed by the cast of three actor-musicians, accompanied by musical director Rob Gathercole on piano. The mournful tones of clarinet and cello make for a suitably chilling soundtrack at times, although there are also moments when the instruments and other sound effects build to a dramatic climax and render the vocals hard to catch.
This isn’t helped by the fact that the show’s performed in the round(ish), and the cast can’t be facing everyone at once. On top of that, a lot of the action takes place in three of the four corners, which means, depending on the choice of seat, audience members spend a good deal of the evening craning backwards over our shoulders to try and see what’s going on. (For the same reason, it’s difficult to appreciate all the finer details of Verity Johnson’s set.)
That said, this arrangement does help to build the atmosphere, which is oppressive and unnerving from the start. With the actors retiring frequently to their corners, it’s hard to shake the lingering knowledge that there’s someone behind you who may jump out at any moment (call me a wuss, but I find that unsettling). Add to the mix some fantastic light and sound effects from Tom Kitney and Matthew Williams, and a climactic scene that’s genuinely quite frightening – and you’ve got the recipe for, if nothing else, some pretty messed up dreams.
Photo credit: Elisha Adamson
The cast of three give it their all: Richard Lounds revels in his role as storyteller, interacting directly with the audience and reacting to all the horror he uncovers with a suitably British stiff upper lip. Eloise Kay is sympathetic as the beautiful damsel in distress who veers back and forth from playful to hysterical, and Cameron Harle falls somewhere between Heathcliff and Russell Brand as the sharp-tongued, wild-eyed, leather-trousered and increasingly deranged Roderick.
Once it gets going, The House of Usher is an enjoyably creepy story that takes pleasure in catching its audience unawares, in a variety of ways. It’s not all-out terrifying (for which I’m grateful, by the way), but it’s certainly unsettling and atmospheric enough to get the Halloween season started.
Can’t see the map on iPhone? Try turning your phone to landscape and that should sort it. I don’t know why but I’m working on it… 😉
Legal Aliens are an international company, dedicated to telling European stories at a time when others might be tempted to shy away. The result of this determination is their Translating Europe series, which opens with the English premiere of Petr Kolečko’s Poker Face.
Translated by Eva Daníčková, the play tells the story of Jana (Lara Parmiani), a hugely successful international poker player, who in her youth may or may not have got pregnant by the writer, revolutionary, and later first president of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel. The resulting child was Pavlína (Daiva Dominyka), now a young woman and in a relationship with the idealistic Viktor (Mark Ota), who wants to start a revolution of his own, if only he had the funds…
Photo credit: John Watts
Considering the play was written by a Czech playwright, in Czech, (presumably) for a Czech audience, the story and its context are surprisingly easy to understand for British viewers. Although, inevitably, we may not catch every reference in Becka McFadden’s production, even someone with no knowledge at all of Czech history or politics – or poker, come to that – can make sense of what’s going on, and the family drama that unfolds between the characters could almost be happening anywhere.
At the centre of the story is Lara Parmiani’s Jana, whose poker face remains in place even away from the card table, in her troubled, brittle relationship with her daughter. Yet we also meet a younger, more emotional Jana, who longs for news from her absent father (Arnošt Goldflam, on screen) and looks forward excitedly to a meeting with her adored Havel. Lara Parmiani skilfully embodies both versions of the character, so that even as we dislike the woman she’s become, we can’t help but feel – if not sympathy, then at least understanding of the events that have brought her here.
Photo credit: John Watts
Pavlína, played by Daiva Dominyka, is the polar opposite of her cold-hearted mother; sensitive and romantic, she’s struggling to understand who she is and where she fits within her family and her society. As her boyfriend Viktor, Mark Ota probably has the closest to a comedy role within the play; a skilled speaker, he knows how to turn on the charm and deliver a good soundbite, and even his darker scenes are shot through with a surreal humour that’s as entertaining as it is slightly bewildering.
The use of video is effective, if occasionally a bit frustrating – this is particularly the case in the opening scene, when Arnošt Goldflam, the man we later learn to be Jana’s father, speaks at length in Czech. There are subtitles, but positioned as they are at the bottom of the screen, reading them involves a fair bit of neck craning for anyone not sitting in the centre of the front row. The later footage of Havel’s funeral works really well though, playing silently in the background and looming over the family’s dysfunctional attempt at a Christmas celebration.
Poker Face may be set in a foreign country, and it may make reference to events we’re not all that familiar with, but that doesn’t make it any less relatable. At a time when it’s becoming all too common to regard anyone not from our own country as inherently different, this play offers a timely reminder that while we may not speak the same language or share the same politics, at the end of the day we’re all human beings. And while that might not be an especially new or surprising message, it’s nonetheless one that – increasingly, it seems – needs repeating.
Can’t see the map on iPhone? Try turning your phone to landscape and that should sort it. I don’t know why but I’m working on it… 😉
Over the past three years, Arrows & Traps have become well known for their unique adaptations of Shakespeare and other classic works – most recently Macbeth and Anna Karenina. But the company’s latest project is their most ambitious to date, as they prepare to perform Twelfth Night and Othello in repertory at Highgate’s Upstairs at the Gatehouse this November.
The decision to take on two plays simultaneously stemmed from director Ross McGregor’s interest in exploring the duality in Shakespeare’s work. “Shakespeare’s comedies are not just simply throwaway funny things that end in orgiastic shotgun weddings. His tragedies are not just gloomy tear-stained stab fests. Iago, the antagonist in Othello, is darkly funny whilst he does unspeakable things to innocent people, and the comic treatment of Malvolio in Twelfth Night descends into dark cruelty and manipulation. The blending of light and dark seemed to be interesting to explore.
“But it was also a practical decision. If I was asking audiences to come back and see a second show, I wanted to provide a varied menu. Twelfth Night is an unrelenting carnival fun fair of laughter, love and lyricism – and it’s also a full blown musical – whereas Othello is a psychological thriller, set in a hyper-sexualised, racist and cut-throat world of politics and militia. So I thought people would enjoy seeing the same ten people navigate the different worlds and present two sides of the same coin: the birth and demise of love.”
Of course, performing two plays at once brings with it new challenges: “I’m currently running a sweepstake on which of the cast comes onstage in the wrong costume and says the wrong opening line,” says Ross. “It does impose more time constraints on us; we have to work faster, move on quicker, correct and evaluate with more brevity, there’s less room to devise and experiment. Choices are still being made, options are still being explored, but there is now a much more pressing sense of the need for producing work each day and drawing a line under it.
“The line-learning element doesn’t seem to be too much of an issue; I’ve structured the castings so that each actor has a main role in one of the shows, and a supporting part in the other, so no-one is drowning under a tidal wave of iambic pentameter. We use the same set for both, so I suppose that might challenge us to create different stage pictures across the two shows, but with the material being so different, and the characters each actor plays being so contrasting, I haven’t noticed any repetition. In fact, there’s some nice echoes in there across the shows, for instance the bed that Pearce Sampson (Orsino) woos Pippa Caddick (Viola) in is the same one where he (now as Iago) contrives her death (as Desdemona). So I’m enjoying that aspect of it.”
Anna Karenina
Unusually, the cast for the two plays features only two new faces: “We usually have more, but this project seemed to represent the culmination of the last three years, so I wanted to show that in the casting. We have David Grace, playing the lusciously adorable and insipid Sir Andrew in Twelfth Night, and then the lovesick puppet Rodorigo in Othello, an altogether darker and more tragic role. I’ve been a fan of David for about two years, so it’s an honour to finally get to work with him. He brings an energy and dedication to his work, he’s one of the most specific actors I’ve ever heard in terms of his delivery and responses to the text; he’s flourishing as an Arrow and it’s a pleasure to support.
“Then we have Lloyd Warbey playing Feste in Twelfth Night – the lady’s fool and her “corrupter of words”, and Lodovico in Othello. You may be familiar with Lloyd from his work on Art Attack on the Disney Channel, and he’s worked all over the country, so it’s a privilege to have him involved. For Feste, you need a showman, an entertainer and a comedian, and yet there’s a melancholic sadness to him; he’s broken, lonely and jaded, and it’s great to see Lloyd switch in and out, hear him spin the language with a cheeky grin on his face.
“The other eight members of the cast are my core members, the people I would trust with any script, and the people that without them there would be no Arrows & Traps. There’s no greater gift for a director than having a cast like this. They’re a pleasure to see every day, and the amount of effort and energy they put into both shows is humbling.”
As always, the Arrows are keen to delve into the text and find something fresh and original: “I think the main element of Twelfth Night that feels new to me is the darker and melancholic elements. I’ve seen quite a lot of productions of the play that focus on the comedy but ignore the other elements. Shakespeare first staged Twelfth Night on the anniversary of the baptism of his own twin children, one of whom had drowned several years before. I think this was deliberate. On one of the days of the year where he perhaps thought of his son the most, Shakespeare put on a play where two twins find each other again after both nearly drowning. There’s a wish-fulfilment, a consoling father fantasy in that which is heartbreakingly sad. Twelfth Night to me is a dreamscape where your wildest dreams can come true, where gender and sexuality are fluid and transient, where chaos flies with majestic abandon.
“In terms of Othello, I wanted to examine what it means to be a Moor in modern times. So often, we take the word “Moor” to simply refer to someone’s race, to be black or North African, but it originally referred to their faith – that they were Muslim. We’re staging this in November, during the month where Donald Trump may or may not become leader of the most powerful nation in the world – a man who’s built a campaign on fear-mongering against Muslims, a man who campaigns for power on the promise that he will exclude, interrogate and remove people of a particular religion. Othello seems timely to me in that regard.
“I also wanted especially to show Desdemona in a better light. So often she’s portrayed as this weak, blonde willowy girl who meekly accepts her own murder, but to me she’s incredibly strong-willed and independent. She goes against her father for the man she loves, she rejects prejudice and society’s expectations of her and is unwilling to let it oppress or minimise her. She’s seduced by stories of battle and violence, tales of the unexpected and grotesque, which to me shows that this is an adventurous, outspoken, and vivacious young woman, and I wanted to show a Desdemona like that, which is something I’d never seen before.”
Macbeth
And now for the big question – to see just one play, or both? “I’ve directed the two shows to be able to stand on their own two feet independently of each other, but there’s something exciting about seeing both,” Ross suggests. “There are also five days in the run where you can see both in the same day, which would be something of a marathon, but since the Gatehouse is above a pub, you can have dinner in-between, have a drink and make a day of it.
“But if you could only see one of them, you have a choice between a clown-filled chaotic musical of love and passion and confusion, or a darkly thrilling study of the breakdown of a relationship in a violent and brutal society. They’re two hours each, so we’re not talking about a four-hour snore fest, but two fast-paced, visceral rollercoasters. Of course, the producer in me would like to add that if you book for both you get £2 off your second ticket…”
Theatre Things 