Tag: Rike Berg

Echo (Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen) by Nassim Soleimanpour, Royal Court Theatre, 19 July 2024

To the Royal Court Theatre on a Friday evening. “Why Friday?”, I hear you cry. Because the Royal Court is now, in its wisdom, starting Saturday shows at 6:30, which is a bit early for us in the summer months, when we like to take advantage of the outdoors in daylight.

We fancied this, as we had seen one of Nassim’s previous works, the eponymous one…

Nassim by Nassim Soleimanpour, Bush Studio, 29 July 2017

…and loved it.

This sounded a bit more techie but a similar idea.

That’s exactly what it was.

When we booked it we had no idea who we were going to see. We discovered a week or so before our evening that our performer was to be Rebecca Lucy Taylor aka Self Esteem.

This is what she looks like when she does one of her more regular things – singing contemporary music:

It is hard to review a piece like this because I imagine every performer stamps their own mark on the piece – that is sort-of the idea. But certainly the evening we spent at The Royal Court was a gripping 80-90 minutes of theatre, using multi-media the way theatre can use multi-media best. It added to the live performance rather than making me wonder whether we should simply be at home watching a film.

Here is a link to the Royal Court resource on this piece, including a list of other performers involved.

It seems to have had mixed reviews, but then different reviewers saw different performers respond to the piece in different ways. Here’s a link to reviews.

We found it moving and thought-provoking. We’re very glad we went and we’re very glad we saw Self Esteem. We could have done without the screaming groupies, but you can’t have everything…or rather you can’t omit everything that you don’t want.

Strange Fruit by Caryl Phillips, Bush Theatre, 15 June 2019

I have long been a fan of Caryl Phillips‘s writing; I discovered his novels in the mid 1980s and have several of his books in hard cover.

So I was excited to see that he had written a play, although, when I booked Strange Fruit at The Bush, I didn’t realise that it was an early work, written in the early 1980s, prior to the first of the novels.

Here is a link to the Bush resource on this play/production.

Below is the trailer:

I think Janie and I saw a preview, although it is hard to tell at The Bush when press night might be without doing deep research.

In any case, we found the production slick and the acting truly excellent.

Written and set in the early 1980s, the play covers some fascinating aspects of African-Caribbean culture and issues from that time, many of which resonate strongly with issues of migration and identity in our current troubled times.

In truth, the play is somewhat unsubtle, starting in a rather tinny, scene-setting style and tending towards melodrama at the end, in ways that Caryl Phillips clearly ironed out as a writer very soon after writing this play.

But there are flashes of brilliance in the writing and the characters, while somewhat stereotypical, are tragic and engaging.

In fact, the whole piece is engaging throughout; although the play is rather long for the simple story it tells, the piece held our attention throughout.

This is not a play that will cheer you up if you seek some light entertainment. It will make you think about the issues and if you like visceral drama then it is most certainly for you.

Formal reviews, if or when they come, should be available through this link – click here.

Bush Theatre
The Bush Theatre at night. Photo by Guy Bell –
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

The Bush does not shy away from producing plays of this kind and that’s one of the reasons we like the place so much.