Tag: Peter Bramhill

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.

Corpus Christi by Terrence McNally, Pleasance Theatre, 29 October 1999

An unprecedented hat trick of evenings at the theatre concluded with this piece. Little did we know when we booked it that this to be a highly controversial play.

Here’s a newspaper clipping from the following day:

Corpus Christi FatwaCorpus Christi Fatwa 30 Oct 1999, Sat The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Perhaps we should have known, as apparently it had been hugely controversial when first produced in the USA a couple of years earlier.

In truth, we didn’t think all that much of the play and production.

Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard liked it:

corpus de Jongh Standardcorpus de Jongh Standard 29 Oct 1999, Fri Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

No-one else seems to have reviewed it. The other papers seemed obsessed with news of the play’s controversy rather than the play itself, which is a a shame.

I recall that we rather liked the Pleasance Theatre but not its location.

We had been traipsing around that day, having been to the City for a do (neither of us can remember) and then a stop off to see some oriental art at the British Museum before The Pleasance. Would we have the energy for all that 25 years later? Would we have the energy for a hat-trick of evenings at the theatre?