Tag Archives: Beth Duke

Superstar

★★★★

Southwark Playhouse

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Superstar

Superstar

Southwark Playhouse

Reviewed – 28th November 2019

★★★★

 

“It’s Wren’s warm and engaging delivery that makes this so delightful to observe”

 

What would you do if your older brother was the lead singer of one of the world’s biggest rock bands? Ride on their name, or strive to carve out your own career, purely on the merit of your own talent? Well, Nicola Wren faced such a dilemma. In an entertaining divulgence into her life, Wren ‘writes what she knows’ into a frank autobiographical one woman show that is tantalising.

Nicola was an accident. A few too many sherries on Christmas Day type of accident, where nine months later she was welcomed unexpectedly into the Martin household. The youngest of four other offspring, she was constantly playing catch up. Each of her siblings had found their ‘thing’ and it wasn’t until Nicola was on stage as Rabbit No.3 in her local village play that she knew she had found her calling. She was going to be an actor. No, a superstar. Everyone said so. Although, there was one thing that kept getting in the way. Her brother was the lead singer of this band called Coldplay and for some reason he kept getting all this attention… Through the ups and downs of crushed dreams and little triumphs, Nicola faces major reality checks and time to question her purpose in life.

Wren may have been driven to the point of changing her surname to stop the questions about Chris Martin, but this isn’t a play just about begrudging a celebrity brother’s fame. Instead, all of Nicola’s siblings feature as she shifts the narrative to the more universal and relatable theme of how it feels being the youngest, always having to prove themselves.

There’s plenty of in-jokes for the fellow struggling performers or theatre luvvies in the audience, which may go over the heads of the uninitiated, but this shouldn’t lessen any of the enjoyment or laughs through this show. Wren is as adept with physical comedy as she is finding the moments of thoughtful reflection and poignancy.

The set (Cara Evans) is reminiscent of what an eight-year old dreaming of fame would want: Flashing lights and tinsel curtains a la Saturday night TV game shows. A single clothes rail gives Nicola relished moments to put on costumes and reminisce over her previous ‘stellar’ acting roles, which sounds more pretentious than it turns out to be. Fortunately. That aside, the stage is fairly barren, giving space for Nicola’s brazen persona to bounce around.

The style of a show within a show has been used countless times by many solo performers, yet Wren does it solidly well, finding a way of making it her own and being completely self-aware about it. Other solo show staples like audience participation slip their way in, but are executed in an unobtrusive and natural manner.

Nicola is an extremely watchable entity. Full of charismatic charm, she wins you over and makes it impossible to dislike. Her life story is not hard-hitting or gritty, her predicaments hardly challenging, but it’s Wren’s warm and engaging delivery that makes this so delightful to observe.

 

Reviewed by Phoebe Cole

Photography by Karla Gowlett

 


Superstar

Southwark Playhouse until 21st December

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
The Rubenstein Kiss | ★★★★★ | March 2019
Other People’s Money | ★★★ | April 2019
Oneness | ★★★ | May 2019
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button | ★★★★★ | May 2019
Afterglow | ★★★½ | June 2019
Fiver | ★★★★ | July 2019
Dogfight | ★★★★ | August 2019
Once On This Island | ★★★ | August 2019
Preludes | ★★★★ | September 2019
Islander | ★★★★★ | October 2019

 

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Boxman – 4 Stars

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Boxman

Boxman

Blue Elephant Theatre

Reviewed – 4th July 2018

★★★★

“in Reice Weathers his lyrical style finds the perfect embodiment and exponent”

 

Ringo, a nickname imposed by a policeman who couldn’t pronounce his real name, is a displaced individual, living in a cardboard box in a park. The crouched, preoccupied form burbling away to himself on the darkened stage might be a familiar sight to many members of the audience as they enter the Blue Elephant Theatre in Camberwell, but his story is one of survival where many close to him have perished. An inner monologue opens out as the play starts and Ringo recalls his harrowing journey from child soldier to refugee, muses philosophically on his mental state and is transported by ecstatic reveries of his childhood, “Listening to voices I will never hear again.” The monologue culminates as he tries to reconnect with the receding shadow of his former self.

The show, by Flugelman Productions, is a partnership with refugee charities and creates a serendipitous link between the talents of an Australian dramatist now in his sixties, and those of this young South London actor. As a writer, Daniel Keene plainly has the ability to put himself in the shoes of others and express their stories through compelling structure and telling phrases. In interviews he professes a liking for poetry, a bare stage, and an underdog. “Boxman” provides all three, but in Reice Weathers his lyrical style finds the perfect embodiment and exponent.

The set by Jo Wright is limited to Ringo’s few belongings. Sounds of traffic and barking dogs (Sound Designer, Beth Duke) and occasional adjustments in the amount of daylight (Lighting Designer, Jess Bernberg) create an unembellished sense of the ordinary which allows Reice Weathers a simple canvas on which to create Ringo’s unnervingly cheerful character, as well as his often comic, sometimes horrifying and always vivid internal world. The characterisation was so convincing that in the Q&A afterwards a representative from the Refugee Council instinctively deferred to the bemused actor on the refugee experience.

The Blue Elephant is a community theatre whose work is far from parochial. In its support for refugees it addresses a pressing global issue, but it is also active in raising money and recruits. Their belief is that, in order to see the refugees as more than a statistic (according to UNHCR, 68 million people were forcibly displaced around the world in 2017), we must first see them as individuals. This short, one-man play is a powerful choice to deliver that objective, as it precisely reveals that inside each of those crouched figures there is a past, a childhood, a faltering trajectory. Edwina Strobl’s understated direction works well to frame the subject, though perhaps too hands-off in the build-up to the ending, but it is the central performance that stands out. Urgent, likeable, sad, powerful, but also original.

 

Reviewed by Dominic Gettins

 


Boxman

Blue Elephant Theatre until 6th July

 

Related
Previously reviewed at this venue
The Conversation | ★★★★ | November 2017
Desert Dust at The Star of Bethlehem | ★★★★ | December 2017
Sisyphus Distressing | ★★★★ | March 2018

 

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