Addison Waite Archives - Page 13 of 26

Sh*t-faced Showtime: Oliver With a Twist!

Leicester Square Theatre

Reviewed – 29th March 2019

★★

“the show feels very artificial and flat”

If you’re not familiar with Magnificent Bastard Productions’ Shit-Faced Showtime, the concept is simple: The company parodies a classic musical, and one cast member gets drunk before the show. They rotate which performer will be inebriated each night, and you don’t know ahead of time which character will be ‘shitfaced’.

The press night performance of Oliver with a Twist featured Oliver, played by Issy Wroe Wright, as an allegedly smashed orphan. However, while Wright may have had several drinks over the course of several hours prior to the performance (as the programme explains), it was obvious she was not drunk, let alone ‘shitfaced’. Whether due to health and safety laws, or the company not wanting to accept risk, the reality is a barely-tipsy performer acting drunk.

Unfortunately, Wright’s impression of being wasted is largely unconvincing. Her occasional missteps feel contrived, and a lot of her movement is obviously choreographed. What’s meant to be spontaneous comedy from ‘alcohol-inspired’ lines is either scripted, or improv that has nothing to do with being drunk. Oliver asks Dodger if they’re going to stay in an Airbnb, and if Mr Brownlow has done one of those internet DNA tests. The lines aren’t particularly funny, and it’s unclear how to interpret them. Are we meant to believe Wright is so hammered she doesn’t know she’s in a play?

Writer/director Katy Baker, who plays the MC, makes a big deal in her introductory speech about how the already ‘sloshed’ actor will have to drink during the performance. Two audience members are given instruments to play (once each) to signal Wright to drink. However, when the instruments are played, Baker pours beer into a pint glass, nowhere-near full, and Wright takes one (exactly one) tiny sip. Audience members who notice Wright isn’t drinking yell for her to do so. Wright gives a snarky response that she’s “going to drink it,” and then never does. She eventually disappears off stage and comes back empty-handed. Her second drink doesn’t go near her mouth, and is finally neglected on the stage. It’s baffling why this is part of the show. If the actor doesn’t drink, the gimmick only serves to remind the audience how fake the whole thing is.

The play’s comedy is built around the concept that a cast member is drunk. But because Wright is not drunk, and not very good at pretending to be, the show feels very artificial and flat. I’ve seen drunk theatre before, real drunk theatre, which is uproarious and wild. This is a highly produced, sterilised version. Its ‘West-End’ nature perhaps requires it to be that way, but the question then is why do it? The false advertising rankles. The audience are not children who don’t notice the actor flagrantly not-drinking in front of us. The play is much stronger when it is genuine parody: Bill Sikes (Hal Hillman) with his dog, and Nick Moore’s multi-roling. Pub theatres are the natural habitat of drunk performances; Shit-Faced Showtime proves they’re best left there.

Reviewed by Addison Waite

Photography by Rah Petherbridge

Sh*t-faced Showtime: Oliver With a Twist!

Leicester Square Theatre until 12th April

Last ten shows covered by this reviewer:

Timpson: The Musical | ★★★ | King’s Head Theatre | February 2019

We’ve Got Each Other | ★★★½ | The Vaults | February 2019

Without That Certain Thing | ★★★ | Network Theatre | February 2019

Alcatraz | ★★★ | The Vaults | March 2019

Anna X | ★★★★ | The Vaults | March 2019

Essex Girl | ★★★★ | The Vaults | March 2019

Feed | ★★★★ | The Vaults | March 2019

Mary’s Babies | ★★★ | Jermyn Street Theatre | March 2019

Six | ★★★★★ | Arts Theatre | March 2019

Vulvarine | ★★★★★ | The Vaults | March 2019

Click here to see more of our latest reviews on thespyinthestalls.com

★★★

“a hugely ambitious play that doesn’t quite succeed in its intentions”

In the 1930s, Dr Mary Barton and her husband, Dr Bertold Wiesner, founded one of the first clinics to treat infertility with donor insemination. Because the practice was new, there were no regulations regarding donor selection. Barton said she had a small pool of select donors, but thanks to DNA testing, we now know the majority of the 1,500 women who were treated by Barton were inseminated with Wiesner’s sperm.

Written by Maud Dromgoole and directed by Tatty Hennessy, Mary’s Babies imagines various intersecting lives of a handful of people who discover they share Wiesner’s DNA. There’s considerable skill in Dromgoole’s windows into lives that are rich, genuine, and occasionally touching. However, despite the creative team’s best efforts to maintain clarity, with just two actors multi-roling so many different characters with such abrupt alternation, a lot is lost in the shuffle.

Katy Stephens and Emma Fielding take on a total of thirty-nine different characters, although the play primarily revolves around five. Stephens and Fielding are strong performers (they admirably handled a technical difficulty which stopped the show midway), and Stephens in particular impresses with her vivid transformations. An ingenious set design (Anna Reid) that displays the names of the characters on a wall, which light up according to who is in each scene, is indispensable.

But even with first-rate multi-roling and displayed character names, the play can be difficult to follow. Hennessy’s choice of minimalism for an informationally dense piece, and Dromgoole’s choppy, short scenes with vague dialogue, leave large gaps for meaning to fall through. Entire scenes often hinge on one word that is too easily lost. I missed the word ‘eulogy’ in the opening monologue, so didn’t get why Stephens was reading off a script, thinking it couldn’t be possible she didn’t have the lines memorised. I missed the word ‘polydactyl’ in another scene, and was perplexed by the fuss about Stephens’ hand.

Additionally, the characters’ ages don’t transmit well. A reveal toward the end that two characters are twins doesn’t click; I spent the performance believing one was about ten years younger than the other. All of them, who are dating and planning/having children, seem to be in their thirties. Kieran, arguably the main character, comes off as early twenties. They jar with the maths, which says their age range is forty to eighty (the play takes place in 2007 and the clinic closed in 1967). It’s evident Dromgoole wanted to write younger characters. The play may have been stronger if it were set in the present, about a fictional artificial insemination scandal in the 1980s.

This is a hugely ambitious play that doesn’t quite succeed in its intentions. Too much visual and verbal information fails to communicate. The script seems better suited to film, which would solve a lot of its problems.

Reviewed by Addison Waite

Photography by Robert Workman

Leicester Square Theatre

Reviewed – 29th March 2019

★★

“the show feels very artificial and flat”

Reviewed by Addison Waite

Photography by Rah Petherbridge

Sh*t-faced Showtime: Oliver With a Twist!

Leicester Square Theatre until 12th April

Last ten shows covered by this reviewer:

Jermyn Street Theatre

Reviewed – 22nd March 2019

★★★

“a hugely ambitious play that doesn’t quite succeed in its intentions”

This is a hugely ambitious play that doesn’t quite succeed in its intentions. Too much visual and verbal information fails to communicate. The script seems better suited to film, which would solve a lot of its problems.

Reviewed by Addison Waite

Photography by Robert Workman

Mary’s Babies

Jermyn Street Theatre until 13th April

Previously reviewed at this venue: