I suppose this piece “does what it says on the tin” by not being funny. For us, I’m afraid, this play, which we saw in preview, is not entertaining or enlightening either.
We’re huge fans of The Bush and are rarely disappointed when we visit either the main house or the studio, but this one missed the mark for us.
Which could easily be a line from this play…indeed it could be many lines from the 90 minutes of achingly mawkish conversation and attempts at comedic patter, as the tragedy-struck couple in this two-hander try to use performing stand-up comedy together in an open mic session as therapy.
We thought that both performers, Tia Bannon & Jerome Yates, dragged as much as could be dragged out of the script. For us, it was the conceit of the play and the predictable story that emerged through their attempts at making comedy out of tragedy, that didn’t work for us.
Here’s the trailer.
The run has been extended even prior to the show opening, so the idea of it has clearly sold well. Running until 13 June if you want to take other people’s word for it rather than ours.
Janie and I thoroughly enjoyed this simple five-hander, about a purportedly successful young woman returning to her home town near Manchester.
Much of the play is set in the pub, which gives the piece a bit of a soap-opera-like feel, as does the play’s narrative arc. But there is depth to the emotions and interactions in this play that take the piece into dramatic territory that works wonderfully well as live theatre.
Janie and I would highly recommend this production.
The performance starts (or pre-starts) with an element of immersive experience. The Charlene character is singing karaoke in the pub. Bad Romance by Lady Gaga, seeing as you asked. Go on, give it a go. It’s not easy to belt, so hats off to Olivia Forrest for fooling Janie for a few seconds before we walked in.
Members of the audience were invited by barman/DJ Valentine (Aaron Stanley) to give it a go. No, Janie and I resisted the temptation. But one pair of women from the audience gave a pretty serviceable account of Flowers by Miley Cyrus, then a cunning chap volunteered to sing Tequila, which must be the “minimum effort, maximum reward” option for karaoke. Finally , one brave fellow tried singing Crocodile Rock, perhaps secure in the knowledge that his falsetto la, la-la-la-la-las could almost make up for the inadequacy of the rest. That’s karaoke for you.
Mercifully, the play proper started after that. Rowan Robinson, Deka Walmsley, Olivia Forrest, Sophie Stanton and Aaron Anthony all acted their roles superbly well. Well directed by Katie Greenall, whose name was new to us, but we’ll be looking out for that name again henceforward.
Having praised the pre show Bad Romance karaoke rendering, I should also, for balance, praise Sophie Stanton’s karaoke Brass In Pocket towards the end of the play. Not an easy one.
I guess you might describe it as stand-up theatre. Just one performer, Yousef Sweid, telling and acting out his story:
Yousef was raised as a Christian-Arab-Palestinian-Israeli kid in Haifa, and is now raising two Jewish-Arab-Austrian kids in Berlin. Only he’s facing a custody battle, so things are getting complicated…
On entering the theatre, Janie and I ran into my old pal from the health club and Lord’s, Stephen Barry, who I hadn’t seen or heard from for quite some time…
…with his wife, Lindy. Being the Royal Court Upstairs, we were able to sit together and chat a while before the play started. Stephen does wonderful charitable work with refugees from that part of the world, but in any case, it seems, has become even more of a Royal Court regular than me and Janie, although this is the first time I remember overlapping with him there.
Anyway, returning to Between the River And The Sea…
…this beautifully written and performed piece seemed, to us, pitch perfect in illustrating the human side of the tragedies unfolding in the Middle East. Yousef Sweid is highly charismatic and his story is told with eloquence, charm and humour. Not everyone can tell their stories in this way, but everyone from that part of the world has their stories about their childhoods, their friendships, their animosities and their tragedies.
I would challenge anyone who has a heart to hear the final few sentences of the piece without being profoundly moved. I’m sure Stephen wouldn’t mind me letting on that he quietly shed a few tears
This Royal Court run is sold out – it probably sold out soon after I bought our tickets some months ago.
As I often find myself saying, but mean with special intensity in this case – this production deserves to be seen by a much wider audience.
Another excellent evening of theatre at the Hampstead Downstairs. We saw a preview of this one, which technically opens on Monday 16th and only runs until 11 April. If the thought of it grabs you, we suggest you grab a ticket while stocks last.
The play is about venture capital, tech-entrepreneurism, purportedly-ethical-investing and all that sort of thing.
But if that all sounds like a massive turn-off theatrically, don’t be put off. Aaron Loeb has written three all-too-believable, three-dimensional characters who are ensnared, and ensnare each other, in a web of their back stories, ethical dilemmas, rapid technological advancement and the resulting commercial/regulatory environment…with real human interest.
(Aaron Loeb, if by chance you are reading this – that is meant as a compliment).
One conceit of the play – that “the powers that be” might not appreciate a discovery that solves so many problems that their markets and jobs might be eroded – reminded me of an Ealing film I remember seeing on the TV and thinking about a lot as a child – The Man In The White Suit.
Enough about the piece. the acting was excellent throughout. Lloyd Owen, Letty Thomas and Millicent Wong all played their parts superbly well. All three (especially Lloyd Owen and Millicent Wong) were on stage for most of the 100 minutes the play runs, which must take some energy. Chelsea Walker directed the production, making 100 minutes pass without seeming like it was far too long without an interval. But 100 minutes is, by definition, a bit too long without an interval – the audiences aren’t getting any younger, you know.
But my minor quibble is there merely to show balance. This is yet another triumph for the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs. I do hope, for the sake of the wider audience that should see this production, that the production transfers.
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…
