We both thought this play/production was really excellent. The Bush Studio is one of our trusted venues these days – we rarely leave that place disappointed. This time we felt we had seen a very original piece of writing and some excellent performances.
The scenario is a simple one. A housing association block acquires a stench in the building which residents suspect might be caused by the demise of one no-longer-visible resident. But the residents seem powerless to get action out of the bureaucratic jobsworths “from the housing”.
The play is performed in a narrative rather than dramatic style, although the narrator/performers do slip in and out of characters – several each – while telling the story. A style that sounds iffy when described but it really worked for this piece. Below is the teaser/trailer fort his production.
The story is sad at many levels, yet there is a great deal of humour and humanity in the play. Performers Marcia Lecky, Safiyya Ingar & Sam Baker Jones all do a great job of bringing the story to life. Jess Barton directed the piece with a simple but very effective style.
The piece speaks volumes about the our society in the 2020s by telling a simple story, not by preaching or screeching about the issues that underlie that story. Farah Najib has written a really excellent short play here – we’ll be looking out for more of her work – that’s for sure.
This was our first visit to the Finborough for a while. We were pleased to see that the former pub underneath the theatre – which had been a closed down space on our last few visits since covid – is now a trendy Indian restaurant named Yogi’s. One to try…but not tonight.
1.17am is a two-hander, in which two twenty-something young women, Katie & Roni, whose close friendship has been shattered since he untimely death of Katie’s brother, spend a heart-wrenching 75 minutes delving into their shared truths, half-truths, white lies and fantasies.
Sarah Stacey’s directing is to be commended for making the piece flow so well. The play is a seamless one act play which could become laboured in less capable hands.
The production is running at The Finborough until 7 March 2026 – if you read this review in time and you like this sort of thing, we suggest that you book it before it’s too late.
Below is a charming little promotional vid, not that we were enticed by the vid. We were enticed because I am a bit of a George Eliot nut and this play is about an intensely difficult “coming of age” stage in the life of Mary Ann Evans, subsequently known as George Eliot.
It is the sort of story that could easily become mawkish and/or melodramatic, but we were in the safe hands of Alexi Kaye Campbell (playwright), Anna Ledwich (director) and a top quality cast.
The evening was hugely entertaining, with a beautifully blended mixture of comedy, tragedy and tragi-comedy. Owen Teale is no doubt the big name draw for this production, but the big name to be is surely Elizabeth Dulau – remember where you heard the name first – whose performance as the young Mary Ann Evans is simply masterful.
The supporting cast all played their parts well too, even those who were written, I’m sure deliberately, as caricatures of characters that Mary Ann Evans subsequently slipped into her great novels. Keeping most of the characters on stage much of the time, bringing them to life when needed, was a lovely directorial touch; I imagine a nod to the same “character forming in more ways than one” nature of this Mary Ann Evans story.
You don’t have to be mad on George to be mad on Bird Grove
Janie is not a George-Eliot-ista but still thoroughly enjoyed her evening – even after the nail-biting race we had to get to the theatre on time – having allowed 75 minutes for the North Circular Roadwork, which was only JUST enough time. They didn’t have such problems in the mid 19th century…
…but they did have their own issues back then.
I’m rambling. If you are reading this in time, grab yourself some tickets before it is too late. A great night of theatre. Well done, Hampstead, once again.
Let’s be honest about this – we wouldn’t have gone to see this play/production had it not been for the fact that Jan Goodman is in it. The Old Red Lion Theatre, although we had heard of it, has never been on our radar. But neither Janie nor I had previously seen Jan performing in the theatre – despite the fact that Jan and I appeared together at the National not so long ago, darlings…
…but the handful of January dates for the original run of The Paper Doll House didn’t work for us.
When Rohan postponed the ThreadMash I was going to attend 12 February, because Jan’s run had been extended…
…it made sense to me to book the show and go.
Janie had been cherishing the idea of a quiet night in for that evening, but as the day progressed started asking me questions about the show and eventually asked,
do you think I’d be able to get a ticket at this late stage?
…to which the answer of course was, “let me see – they are being sold on-line…yes we can!”
The weather was awful, as indeed the weather has been for most of 2026 so far. We worked out that the neighbourhood benefits from free parking on pay-bays and residents bays after 6:30. Despite me joking about “there be dragons” on my copy of the London maps for any area that doesn’t have a W in the postcode, actually I know those Clerkenwell and Islington roads pretty well, having spent so much of my life working with charities based on those mean streets.
Whatdya mean, mean?
The hard-boiled language is a segue into the play, The Paper Doll House. Set in 1956, revolving around a dramatic mother and daughter combination who might, or might not, have been the perpetrators of a notorious Hollywood murder in the 1920s.
The play unashamedly wallows in pastiche of the two golden periods involved, and does so very well. The play also makes knowing and homage nods to more serious theatre. Both of the abuser/victim pairs involved: the mother & daughter, plus the gangster & moll, have their Ibsenian Dolls House moments in the play. The piece also resonated with Williamsesque Glass Menagerie & Baby Doll themes.
An intriguing mix of camp fun and thoughtful drama, this play could fall flat without high quality acting. That’s where the cast, in particular Jan Goodman (mother) and Carol Been (daughter) come in. Their performances were top notch. Camp and comedic at times, sinister and tragic at others. Credit also to Tug J Wilson, the director, whose work with all four actors must surely have benefited from his long and varied career on stage and screen. Credit also to Tom Inman and Chloe Teresa Wilson, who played the less-developed roles of gangster and moll respectively with panache and measure.
As Janie and I so often say when we see top notch theatre in fringe/pub theatres, this play/production deserves a wider audience than it can achieve at The Old Red Lion, run extensions notwithstanding.
We enjoyed our evening of theatre and at last we’ve seen Jan Goodman perform on stage. Not before time!
Horror is not normally a genre that would draw me and Janie into the theatre. But this piece sounded fascinating when it was announced many months ago and we trust Hampstead Downstairs to look after us…even though the tickets came through saying “main stage” rather than “downstairs” (see headline image).
We also trusted that Jamie Armitage would look after us, following a similarly genre-busting experience with his play, An Interrogation, earlier this year – in that instance the genre was police procedurals – a genre we would normally avoid even more emphatically than horror.
We were right to trust our hosts and our playwright. A Ghost In Your Ear, which we saw on the first preview performance, was an entertaining and interesting evening in the theatre. It held our attention and teased our senses throughout its 90+ minutes. If anything, we felt a little over-stimulated, especially aurally so, having earlier seen another performance:
What both performances had in common was the use of sound in fascinating ways to trigger the desired dramatic effect. Also, both pieces explored ideas around the notion that the past can haunt the present, be that through nostalgia, elements of our past that were hidden from us…or that we hide from ourselves…or ghosts.
A Ghost In Your Ear uses a technique called binaural sound, which is “beyond stereo”, requiring the wearing of headphones in order to get a more genuine three-dimensional effect from the sound. Ben and Max Ringham are, apparently, THE go to sound engineers for this sort of sound engineering – this production has gone to the go to people. Jamie Armitage explains it in a short vid:
Janie and I certainly both got the sensation that the sound was all around us, which added a fair bit to the horror experience. At one point during our preview, the binaural quality of the sound dropped away for two or three minutes. I don’t think deliberately. For sure the sensation was diminished and then reinstated, when the binaural sound was fully restored. Our contemporaries who are now a little hard of hearing might get less out of the binaural sound effects.
But the reasons for seeing this piece go way beyond the clever sound (and indeed some superb visual) effects. In particular, we were much taken with George Blagden’s acting. He was not only on stage but absolutely central to the action throughout. He must speak 95% of the lines, which he did quite brilliantly – a top notch performance, we both felt.
It is also a very thought-provoking piece, beyond what I had expected from a ghost story play. Without spoiling the effect by disclosing the twists, it dawned on me, as the play unfolded, that people are far more readily haunted by things that have happened to them and things that they have been told, than they are haunted by ghosts. This play, using the “story within a story” technique that has been used since the dawn of story-telling time, deliberately messes with the ghost story genre in that way. Are the characters haunted by a ghost, or are they haunted by a ghost story, or are they simply haunted by their own, natural fears?
Jamie Armitage not only writes but also directs his own pieces. I have oft said that I don’t really approve of playwrights directing their own pieces – it often leads to self-indulgence and missed opportunities. But in Jamie Armitage’s case, based now on two experiences, I am prepared to make an exception. His heavily genre-based pieces work because he is writing his plays while fully-imagining how that genre might work on the stage. Armitage therefore needs to be heavily involved in the production, not just the writing of the play.
Well done Hampstead Theatre Downstairs – another top notch production. This one runs until 31 January 2026. Highly recommended by me and Janie if you get to book it in time.
I have known Rohan Candappa since we were eleven. I met him on my first day at Alleyn’s School, the secondary school we both attended 1973-1980. There he is in my first year class, 1973/74:
This half-century-old remembering is relevant to Rohan’s show, not least because most of the musical material into which Rohan is delving relates to the years that he and I were still in full-time education – including the university years following school.
Also to say, although Rohan and I lost touch after school, we have very much been in touch with one another again for best part of the last 20 years.
When Rohan “shouted out” to ancient pals, like me, that he would be doing a free gig as part of the Hornsey Town Hall Arts Centre grand opening day, how could I possibly say no? Even though Janie and I had tickets to the theatre that evening – it seemed to me that the hike from Hornsey to Hampstead Theatre (by car) would easily be achievable – thus we agreed to do both events.
We thought Rohan might need the support. We needn’t have worried on that score:
Nor need we have worried on behalf of Hornsey Town Hall Arts Centre generally – the place was heaving with visitors on its opening day:
Rohan was performing in the former Council Chamber, which was mighty grand. Janie and I had a theory that it would be good to get into the chamber early, as there would be good seats and not such good seats in such a place. We were right.
There’s me, one of the first to get in. Indeed, only the lady in the red hat – whom you might have got from central casting to play the role of the enthusiastically-right-on elderly lady – beat us to it. Apart from Rohan and the technical dude, obvs.
The lady from central casting danced magnificently to Free Nelson Mandela at the end of the show
Rohan started the piece with a bit of Hornsey Town Hall history from January 1937 – when Oswald Mosely held a public meeting there and protesters bravely made a scene.
Article from 26 Jan 1937 Daily Herald (London, London, England)
Rohan thought that four gutsy protesters had embedded themselves in the hall and taken on the fascist mob, but the embedded Daily Herald article [did you see what I did there?] suggests that there were six brave hecklers.
Anyway, Rohan took us on a tour de horizon of political songs from the 1970s and early 1980s, including Part Of the Union by The Strawbs, The Killing Of Georgie by Rod Stewart, Ghost Town by The Specials…you’ll get the idea if you are of our generation. Actually, you’ll get the idea – if not the nostalgia fix – however old you might be.
Most of Rohan’s choices were items I might have expected…although he omitted the two tracks that I had mentally put on my list of essentials before we arrived – we’ll return to those…
…but he did choose some items that were refreshingly and interestingly unexpected to me. For example, I wasn’t expecting All Gone Away by the Style Council, but was glad to hear it again in this context.
Nor was I expecting quite so much emphasis on anti-apartheid politics, despite the fact that my own political awakening was much-triggered by that cause. Rohan played a short excerpt from Coal Train by Hugh Masekela before playing the whole of Peter Gabriel’s Biko…
So which two “essential” tracks (in Ian Harris terms) did Rohan omit?…
I hear all you inquisitive readers cry.
Stand Down Margaret by The Beat and (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang by Heaven 17.
I had told Rohan (and his wife Jan) that I would demand all my money back if Rohan didn’t use both of my “essential” political songs and he used neither of them. Honourably, Rohan has promised to refund both me and Janie every penny I had forked out for those event tickets…
…what do you mean, the event was free?
I sense that this performance piece, which was excellent and suitably moving in parts, will serve as a pilot for one of Rohan’s more honed pieces in the fullness of time. I might have to pay for tickets to see the honed version.
As it was, the after show period between 5:30 and us needing to head off towards the Hampstead theatre gave us time for a very pleasant wine bar drink with Rohan, Jan and another of our pals from school, Steve “Peanut” Butterworth.
As Steve discreetly put it to Janie:
…a lot of people had far worse nicknames than mine…
This excellent production, which Janie and I saw on the second preview evening, made us feel uncomfortable in many ways. The central subject matter – addiction to violent on-line pornography – is a deliberately discomforting topic. Playwright Sophia Chetin-Leuner takes this topic on in an unflinching yet surprisingly nuanced manner in this play.
It is really a play about addiction taking hold of a bright individual and destroying their life. It just so happens that violent porn is the addiction in this case.
The acting was universally excellent. Ambika Mod, as the victim of the addiction, is, understandably, getting most of the plaudits. She is on stage almost throughout the play and what a challenging role it must be. Will Close, Lizzy Connolly and Asif Khan provide excellent support, playing multiple parts each and doing so convincingly.
Josie Rourke is a superb director. This is the first time we have seen her work since she returned from her career break. She’s certainly still got what it takes.
I said the production made us feel uncomfortable in many ways. Apart from our discomfort with the subject matter…not least the topicality of questions around abusive and violent sex…we were also visually and physically discomforted by the set/seating.
The carpeted set looked like seedy living space from the 1970s or 1980s – deliberately I’m sure. The audience is asked to put shoe covers on when entering, as if to symbolise a need for personal protection…but also perhaps for practical reasons to protect the set.
But most discomforting of all was the seating on those “carpeted steps” doubling as seats. No back support and 100 minutes of tense drama. We walked out of the theatre like John Wayne having just dismounted from his horse…or…[insert your own unsubtle and unsuitable metaphor here]. Still, it was worth it.
Janie and I saw a preview of this play/production. I am writing it up a few days later, ahead of seeing any reviews.
We had been looking forward to this play/production, as usually we do for the excellent small-scale stuff the Hampstead puts on downstairs. And we weren’t disappointed – a well-crafted script and highly professional production, performed by a trio of convincing actors.
We nearly didn’t go. We were exhausted by early evening, having returned to the house that morning to discover that we had been burgled. We’d only just said goodbye to the police and were still anticipating a visit from the forensics people the next day.
We steeled ourselves to the notion that a good piece of theatre would take our minds off our own domestic travails and the notion that “cancelling a treat” is not a good way to try and make yourselves feel better.
By the end of the evening, we were glad we pressed ahead.
We sat next to a nice lady whose face I recognised…it turned out from our previous visit to the Hampstead Downstairs. In chatting we realised that we had all attended the same evening of “The Billionaire Inside Your Head” a few week’s earlier.
We worked out that we’d all been there the same day when discussing the scary “voice in the head” character. The nice audience lady was relieved to learn that I was still alive after “verbally dicing with death” with that character.
To some extent we didn’t get quite what we expected. We thought the comedy element of the play would prevail, based on the description, but actually it is a bittersweet story, full of sadness expressed and supressed, together with an utterly reckless character, the father, who leaves chaos in his wake without recognising that he is a major…indeed at times the sole…cause of that disarray.
Nancy Farino, who both wrote the play and acted as the daughter, Joy, is a new name to us but certainly a name we’ll look out for in the future in both the writing and acting contexts. She was ably supported on stage by Shona Babayemi, as the understated lawyer, and Jason Thorpe as the hapless and hopeless dad.
This production might be remembered the most in theatrical circles for one highly ambitious, coup de theatre action scene, towards the end of the play, which would sound implausible in a tiny studio theatre if I were to try and describe it. But the team somehow pulls it off and the scene works.
However, I think I’ll remember the production more for Joy’s monologues and the depiction of her nightmares/sleep deprivation imaginings in her inner transcendental winter of depression.
It rather helped me and Janie in the recovery of our composure. We are fortunate not to suffer from depression. We’d just had a bad experience which we’ll deal with and move on from.
I wasn’t an unbeliever in this play/production, nor was I completely convinced
Janie and I saw the second preview of this one. Not that the preview lacked the polish of a honed Royal Court Theatre production, but it is possible that a few aspects were toned down/toned up or cut between previews and press night.I am writing this ahead of seeing any reviews, although I shall probably publish it a week or two after press night.
Another thing to say is that we saw this taught, psychological drama around 24 hours after learning of Bobbie Scully‘s unexpected and untimely death, which wasn’t an ideal mood setter ahead of seeing this sort of play.
It probably matters little what I say about this play/production anyway – it had effectively sold out even before the previews, let alone the press night and reviews. And why not? What a stellar list of contributors. We have very much enjoyed Nick Payne’s plays several times before – in particular Constellations was a triumph.
Similarly, Nicola Walker has long-impressed us as an actress. Although perhaps better known to most as a TV actress we have seen her several times on the stage, on at least one occasion (The Curious Incident…)directed brilliantly, as in The Unbelievers, by Marianne Elliot.
The list of recognisably excellent cast and creatives went on. That’s why we booked early. That’s why lots of people booked early.
The story is almost as unpleasant a scenario as you can possibly imagine. A middle-class family’s teenage son doesn’t return from school one day and disappears without trace. Did he run away? Was he abducted? Did he run away and then subsequently meet his demise? The play shows the impact of this horrifying event on the family, especially the mother, Miriam (Nicola Walker), over a number of years.
Janie got more out of this one than I did.
It felt, to me, as though the piece had been written as a virtuoso piece for the lead actress, which it undoubtedly is. Only an actress of Nicola Walker’s quality could carry such a part through 100 minutes or so of unbroken drama, during which she barely leaves the stage.
But the piece has a relentless gloom about it; it is not a spoiler to say that neither the family, nor the audience, get any answers to the mystery, The whole point is that the tragedy comes down to the belief the individuals involved, cast and audience, have in what might have happened and therefore how to live with the unknown.
Some elements of the play work brilliantly, especially the scenes where this question of belief is explored and illustrated through the drama.
But much of the play especially early scenes, felt like up-market versions of those television police procedurals that, frankly, I’d pay good money to avoid having to see. [Insert your own joke about the BBC licence fee here.]
I also found the light relief scenes rather forced and did not get the desired sense of relief from them. Janie thought they worked well on the whole for her, so perhaps that was more about my sombre mood than the scenes.
I was unconvinced, for example, by the character Anil, who came from a Society for Psychical Research-like organisation. He was trying to be intensely caring and professional, yet was unable to stop himself from answering his phone while in a meeting with distressed people. I think my unbelief in this character was down to the writing, rather than Jaz Singh Deol’s acting. Similarly, Harry Kershaw’s character Benjamin, the loquacious puffin-boffin fiancée of one of the daughters, given the context, was almost impossible for me to believe in, other than as a playwright’s device to try to lighten the mood of an increasingly dark play.
Nick Payne is a fine writer, it was a superb team of cast/creatives, and The Royal Court puts on fine productions, so Janie and I won’t be dodging these people and places in future – far from it.
But this one just missed the mark for me and only just made the mark for Janie.
This was a really interesting and enjoyable evening at the theatre. We saw the second preview, so you might be reading this ahead of formal press night.
Janie and I highly recommend this play/production.
We are big fans of the Hampstead Downstairs, which rarely disappoints us.
There seems to be something about Anna Ledwich’s work as a director (which we have seen several times), when she works with Allison McKenzie, that attracts quirky people to sit next to us:
Differently quirky people this time – no drink spillage but very interesting chat before the show…unfortunately they were a pair who like to chat to each other during a show as well, but never mind.
Meanwhile Allison McKenzie as Voice/Nicole opened the piece by talking at us, the audience…and then did so again a few times during the play. Be prepared to be challenged in more ways than one!
The play is about OCDs and the voices/compulsive thoughts that some people have in their heads constantly. The character Nicole is the personification of that voice to Richie, Nathan Clarke’s character. He and Ashley Margolis, as Nicole’s son and the OCD-challenged young man’s hapless yet caring friend, riffed off each other extremely well. All three performers were excellent.
As is so often the case at the Hampstead Downstairs, the design team somehow manages to get a lot of theatre out of a small space through ingenuity and some pretty impressive choreographed movements by the performers.
Enough of me prattling on. If you haven’t booked it yet, Janie and I suggest that you book it before it sold out. Read all about it here.
And if you are one of the people who was lucky enough to be in the audience on Saturday and you work out who I am, you might, if superstitious, be relieved to know that I am writing this on the Monday after, so I didn’t die the day after we saw the show. No fictional voice in the head bullies me!
