Out Of Season by Neil D’Souza, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 2 March 2024

We really enjoyed this play.

It is a simple story about a trio of 50-something fellas who were a band when they were college age, returning to the scene of their exploits in Ibiza 30 years later.

Neil D’Souza not only wrote the play but also plays one of the lead parts, very convincingly – actually all of the actors do so: Catrin Aaron, Kerry Bennett, Peter Bramhill and James Hillier being the other four. Alice Hamilton does a grand job from the director’s chair.

Here is a link to the Hampstead resources page for this production.

The play is a comedy but it has a thoughtful and edgy twist to it too. In particular, the second half starts off full of fun and laughs, but soon “bloke meets woke” in a rather shocking way, changing the tone and bringing the story home in a nuanced way.

We really like comedies that have enough going on that we still have stuff to talk about over a meal or two afterwards. This is one of those.

Here is a link that should find plenty of reviews, which seem to have been very good almost universally.

If you only read one review, I’d suggest Anya Ryan’s from the Guardian which pretty much sums up how Janie and I felt about this piece.

Running until 23 March 2024, if you catch this write-up early enough there’s still time.

Jab by James McDermott, Finborough Theatre, 24 February 2024

There’s something gloriously quaint about the Finborough Theatre. Even by the standards of pub theatres, it seems gloriously wedded to the past.

In part, that’s because The Finborough is, at least at present, a few rooms above a corner building that used to be a pub, rather than an actual functioning pub.

But also, it is the sort of place that clings to its roots, even in the matter of archaic ticketing practices. These days we receive, when booking The Finborough, a very modern style e-mail ticketing with a QR code for each e-ticket. On arrival at The Finborough, though, the ticket office still asks for your name and digs out the old-style paper tickets, just like the old days.

Don’t you have a gadget that goes beep and reads our e-tickets?

I asked the nice young woman on the desk.

Do we look like the sort of place that has a gadget that goes beep to read tickets?

She asked in repsonse.

Not really. Except that you did send us -tickets with QR codes on them.

I persisted.

We have no idea why they do that.

The nice young woman thus closed that discussion.

Anyway…

…the reason we go to the Finborough is not to admire the ticketing system. We tend to see consistently good small-scale theatre there.

Jab was no exception. A very good two-hander set during the Covid-19 pandemic, about a marriage that disintegrates during the crisis…although you sense that the marriage had been doing a fair bit of disintegrating prior to the pandemic.

Here is a link to the Finborough Theatre production stub for this show.

Very well acted and directed. Kacey Ainsworth, Liam Tobin & Scott Le Crass take a bow…well, the first two named actually did.

Just 80 minutes long, if you like your shows two hours plus this type of play is not for you. Janie and I have really acquired the taste for shorter plays. Never mind the young folk having short attention spans, we older folk have short buttocks-stuck-in-one-small-space spans these days.

Lots of good reviews for this one and deservedly so. Here is a link to a search that should find many such reviews.

We went home thoroughly satisfied, theatre-wise. After collecting and then, once home, eating our Mohsen dinner, our appetites for food were also thoroughly satisfied.

This Might Not Be It by Sophia Chetin-Leuner, Bush Theatre Studio,  3 February 2024

Photo of The Bush Theatre by Spudgun67, CC BY-SA 4.0

Our first visit to the theatre of 2024 and it was worth the wait.

Set in an NHS mental health service unit for juveniles, the play tells the simple story of a youngster who enters the workplace imagining that he might make a difference in a hurry.

Then reality bites.

The play is beautifully written by Sophia Chetin-Leuner, and very well directed by Ed Madden, who should, if nothing else, pick up a nominative determinism award for directing this particular piece.

Despite the plethora of short scenes, the story and characterisation develop organically and clearly over the 90 minutes or so of the piece. I had to suspend a fair bit of belief around the central conceit that a youngster might implement an NHS patient administration system alone in just a few weeks without encountering or causing any profound issues, but that only proves that I have spent too much of my working life thinking about informatics.

The cast all performed their parts convincingly, with top marks to Debra Baker who played the “seen it all before administrator” Angela.

Denzel Baidoo was the most comedic of the three, playing the naïve trainee Jay. One short scene, set to music, when Jay thinks he is alone in the office will live long in our memories.

You should be able to find formal reviews here, through this search. Mostly very good.

If you are reading this piece soon after I have upped it, you have a chance still to see this production at The Bush, as it has been extended to 7 March. In Janie’s and my opinion, it deserves a transfer to gain a wider audience. It is a fun piece that made us both laugh a lot, but it also tackles a great many pertinent issues of our times in a thoughtful and warm-hearted way.

To Have And To Hold by Richard Bean, Hampstead Theatre, 18 November 2023

Since lockdown, we’ve not been going to the theatre anything like as much as we did before. Partly, I suppose, because we got out of the habit. Partly, we think, because there is not so much to our taste on offer, as theatres tend to play it safe, with many more revivals and musicals on offer than we remember in the past.

Indeed this was our first visit to the Hampstead Theatre since lockdown, although we have kept our membership going throughout. Our previous visit to Hampstead theatre was to see The Haystack, just before lockdown.

In these difficult times, Janie and I wanted to see something light-hearted and yet with some serious aspects to it. This looked like it would fit that bill and indeed it did.

Janie and I tend to enjoy Richard Bean’s plays – we have seen several. To Have And To Hold was an enjoyable evening at the theatre.

The play avoided the worst excesses of drama about elderly parents, which can easily fall victim to tired cliché and, in our case, a sense that “we can get all that at home”!

In the event, I read a bit more into the play than Janie did, until we discussed it afterwards. Janie sensed that she had gone with the comedic flow of the play without reading as much into it as I had. In particular, I thought there was interesting irony and pathos in a nonagenarian, sharp-sensed former policeman being scammed, at least in part because of his digital exclusion as well as his physical frailty.

Great cast for this one: Alun Armstrong, Marion Bailey, Rachel Dale, Hermione Gulliford, Christopher Fulford and Adrian Hood. All played their parts well, under the joint directorship of Richard Wilson and Terry Johnson.

Here is a vid of the two Richards (Wilson & Bean) discussing this play/production:

The reviews, as is often the case with Richard Bean plays, seems to have divided the critics. Click here to find many/most of the reviews if you wish.

Word-Play by Rabiah Hussain, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 29 July 2023

The Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square by Stacey Harris, CC BY-SA 2.0

This was our first visit to the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs since before the pandemic. Until then, we were fairly regular visitors to that small space. Our previous visit, in 2019 had been a rare miss for us…

Word-Play was definitely not a miss for us, far from it, although Janie did find the short scenes with the actors playing different characters in different times and places more than a little disconcerting.

But we both agreed that the acting by all five cast members; Issam Al Ghussain, Kosar Ali, Simon Manyonda, Sirine Saba, and Yusra Warsama, was superb. Many of the scenes worked terrifically well, especially the more intimate ones. Word-Play is a very ambitious piece of writing and we shall certainly look out for Rabiah Hussain’s work again.

Here is a link to the Royal Court resource for this play/production.

This link should find plenty of reviews, most of which are good or very good – one or two not so.

It’s running until late August 2023 and we would certainly recommend this innovative piece of theatre if you get to this page in time to get a ticket.

Cuckoo by Michael Wynne, Royal Court Theatre,8 July 2023

Artwork grabbed for identification & to assist The Royal Court with this link

Janie and I really enjoyed this play/production, which we saw in preview. The acting was superb. The direction and design very high quality, as we have come to expect at The Royal Court over the decades.

This play was seemingly superficial, yet beneath its slight surface are some fascinating issues of our times. The “joke” that this family is spending its together time with each individual surfing their own virtual world quickly became tiresome – especially as some of audience members nearby were finding it hilarious. But that humorous conceit was soon revealed as a foreshadowing of some darker elements of the characters’ inner/virtual worlds.

Yes, as some of the critics have said, not a lot happens, but this particular “not a lot” is both amusing and highly thought-provoking.

OK, I have a confession to make.

When I booked this, my main criterion for booking it was a recollection that one of Michael Wynne’s previous plays, The People Are Friendly, had pleased us both a lot.

2002, we saw this at The Royal Court (not yet Ogblogged)

Soon after the start of Cuckoo, which shares a couple of the lead actresses and Royal Court production aspects with The People Are Friendly, I realised that we had not liked The People Are Friendly; we found it soap-opera-ish and not to our taste. I was confusing The People Are Friendly with Richard Bean’s England People Very Nice:

I shall revisit the play text of The People Are Friendly before writing up our 2002 experience, as it is possible that I will read more into that play now than we did 20 years ago.

Anyway, apologies to Messrs Wynne and Bean for the confusion. The word “People” in the title shouldn’t be enough for such a muddle really. I just jumped to a conclusion…

…and talking of conclusions, Janie and I both thought the ending of Cuckoo was really rather wonderful, both as a coup de theatre and also as a piece of stage design.

Here again is a link to The Royal Court resources on Cuckoo, which is running until mid August.

While this link should find most/all the formal reviews for you, if you like those and/or don’t trust our judgment.

NewsRevue, Canal Cafe Theatre, 6 July 2023

Artwork grabbed from Canal Cafe Website for identification/link purposes and because I know that Emma won’t mind

NewsRevue has been running for ever. OK, not quite for ever, but since 1979. It is the world’s longest running live comedy show, as affirmed by a Guinness World Record. Some people describe it as “The Mousetrap of comedy”, except in this case it is perfectly acceptable for me to confess, “I dunnit”.

I wrote for the show from 1992 until I ran out of steam towards the end of the 1990s. But I still hang out with the self-styled Class of ’92, e.g.:

We’ve lost some great characters over the years. In the last 12 months, sadly, we lost our founder and mentor, Professor Mike Hodd.

So when Emma shouted out that the Edinburgh run this year was to be at the Pleasance Grand, was dedicated to Mike and that the show would be previewing for a short while at the Canal Cafe Theatre, I decided to make the effort. (Not much effort in my case crossing from one end of W2 to the other). I checked my diary, booked a convenient slot and shouted back that I had grabbed a seat on Table 2, suggesting that other “Ninety-Two-niks” might choose to join me.

In the event, Barry Grossman, Mark Keegan, Jonny “Two Phones” Hurst and a couple of members of Jonny’s visiting family made up our table.

The show is good, as I’d expect for an Edinburgh run.

Lots of big numbers – a long Spice Girls medley to start and similarly long Queen one to finish.

Slightly less variety of material, in my opinion, than in our day, but then the culture of a fairly large group of comedy writers gathering most weeks, sharing ideas and watching the show before scattering to the four corners of the South-East and writing stuff…is ancient history.

Some of the news stories felt very early 1990s – an exhausted, useless Tory Government unable to control its (and our) own destiny. Royal family nonsense…we even had a “Camilla Queen” section of the Queen medley which echoed interestingly the late great Debbie Barham’s “No Camilla Queen” song from the mid 1990s.

I could go on…

…actually I already have.

It was great to see fellow writers at the Canal again – we usually meet in chain restaurants these days – and it was great to see the show again – my first visit since the pandemic.

Previewing in London until 23 July, then running in Edinburgh in August

A Brief List Of Everyone Who Died by Jacob Marx Rice, Finborough Theatre, 20 May 2023

Janie loved this piece. In truth, I found it a little mawkish.

The short scenes only occasionally allowed enough space for the emotional impact to flourish.

Lights out theatre?

To be fair, the piece did “exactly what it says on the tin”, in terms of cataloguing the deaths that enter the orbit of one character, Graciela, throughout her life.

Being The Finborough, of course it was all very well acted and extremely well produced, within the limitations of one of the most pint-sized theatres above a pub anywhere.

Let us not forget that The Finborough won “Pub Theatre of the Year 2022” despite there not being an actual pub below then or indeed now.

All the cast were very good, but Vivia Font stood out in the lead role, morphing from tantrum-ready nipper to accepting oldster via all the stages of life in between.

Here is a link to the rubric about the play/production. If that link ever goes awry, try this link instead.

Reasonably well received, this piece. Click here for reviews.

There was a Q&A with the playwright and cast afterwards, but we didn’t stay for it, hungry for a Persian meal that we would not be able to procure after the Q&A.

On exit, we ran into one of my real tennis friends, Tony Joyce, and his good lady. I thought this was quite a coincidence, especially as they are not regular Finborough-istas – indeed they were trying the place for the first time. Tony agreed, not least because, as he said:

…we two couples made up nearly a quarter of the audience.

Slight exaggeration that – I think the place has room for 40 or so people each performance, but still.

August In England by Lenny Henry, Bush Theatre, 6 May 2023

I hate to sound smug…actually that’s not true…I delight in the smug thought that it was my idea to book this one, back in November when the Bush Theatre spring season was first announced.

Janie had of course consented to booking it but then largely forgotten all about it, as indeed had I, until the date grew near and we re-engaged with the production.

“Isn’t Lenny Henry a stand-up comedian? I don’t like stand-up comedy,” said Janie.

“He moved on from stand-up comedy a long time ago. Lenny Henry writes – this is a proper play.”

“Do you think he’ll be there on the night?”, asked Janie, who had clearly retained even less about this production than I had.

“I do hope so. It is a one-man show written and performed by Lenny Henry, so it will be more than a little bit disappointing if he doesn’t show up.

Lenny Henry did show up. His grounding in stand-up comedy was never too far away. He opens the play by endearing himself to the audience, not least by giving a few lucky punters a tot of rum. He then tells the story of his character, August Henderson, through a mixture of witty, bitter-sweet and some out-and-out funny anecdotes.

August’s life in Dudley/West Bromwich echoes that of the young Lenny Henry, although August must have been born a few years before Lenny Henry and, unlike Henry himself, the August character was born in Jamaica and brought to England by his mum as an infant. This subtle distinction is fundamentally important as the story unfolds.

Lenny Henry has superb stage presence. Not only does he still “have what it takes” to deliver anecdotes like a top-drawer stand-up comedian, he also dramatizes August’s sad story masterfully through words, expressions and movement. He tells the tale of his love for Clarice and the three children they produce. Also his love of reggae and ska music. His anecdote about skinheads especially resonated with me:

They loved reggae and ska in the beginning, but after a while they stopped loving us. I still don’t know what changed.

I’ve always wondered about that.

The nub of August’s story – or at least its denouement – is the Windrush scandal – the appalling 2012 Government policy creating a “hostile environment” for people who do not have leave to remain in the UK. While this policy was not targeted at people who had been British citizens in former Empire and Commonwealth countries, thousands of people from the Windrush generation – mostly people who came as children from the Caribbean in the 1950s and 1960s, were caught by this ill-considered change in law and policy. People lost their homes and/or their jobs – many were even deported, despite protections that had been enshrined in earlier laws specifically to prevent such injustices. I shouldn’t get on my own political high horse about this, but I’m going to anyway – the whole affair was a shambolic political sh*t-shower which made me (and many others who share my sense of justice) profoundly ashamed of my own Government.

August’s story unfolds with more subtlety than my paragraph above. Yes, really.

The ending of the play is shocking, poignant and thought-provoking. I especially liked the technique – borrowed from verbatim theatre – of getting several real people who were caught up in these injustices to tell their own stories on the screen. It brought home the reality in a way that the comedy drama – delivered by Lenny Henry’s flawed but loveable character August – could not manage alone.

Here is a link to the Bush resources on this play/production. I’d recommend this play/production highly. Unfortunately this run is sold out, but hopefully it will get a transfer as it deserves a bigger audience than five or six weeks-worth of Bush Theatre aficionados.

Mostly rave reviews and deservedly so. Click here for a link that should bring up most if not all of them.

Smug? Moi?

The Retreat by Jason Sherman, Finborough Theatre, 29 April 2023

Our first visit back to The Finborough Theatre since the pandemic. Coincidentally, our previous visit was our last visit to any theatre before the pandemic, and that piece was also at least partly about Israel:

Since that 2020 visit, The Finborough has been awarded a coveted Pub Theatre Of the Years Award 2022, which is quite something…

…especially as The Finborough currently has no pub. But that’s not important to us, as we were always “only there for the theatre”, not “only here for the beer”.

Here is a link to the Finborough’s resources on The Retreat.

Janie and I were both very taken with The Retreat. It is set in 1993, in the shadow of the Oslo Peace Accords, although the play is set in Canada, pitting a Hebrew School teacher/would-be script writer with a pair of seasoned but warring (with each other) film makers.

If the play errs at all, it is a bit long, running to nearly two-and-a-half hours. Ironic, really, given that the central conceit of the play is about script editing. But that space gives room for the characters to develop and for the darker recesses of their behaviours to become apparent to the audience.

Janie and I thought all four cast members performed very well but were especially taken with Jill Winternitz as the somewhat vulnerable young woman and Jonathan Tafler as her father.

We’re back at The Finborough in a few week’s time to see the next thing and can hardly wait after enjoying this production. We’d almost forgotten how much we like this type of small-scale intimate drama.