“a thrillingly inventive show, with strong and engaging performances from every cast member”
The programme promises an ‘electric’ performance ‘steeped in queer rage exploring how the most famous female character of all time is trapped within a life chosen for her’. This off-putting hyperbole shouldn’t stop you rushing to see this terrific re-imagining of Ibsen’s famous 1891 masterpiece.
Turn-of-the-century Norway has become present day London in Harriet Madeley’s sassy new play which is a co-production with A Girl Called Stephen Theatre, which has as its mission ‘queer/womxn led theatre for Reading and beyond’. The script is sharp and witty with heaps of semi-poetic dialogue that includes a knowing line about White Company bedlinen and another about school mums with ‘puffa coats and keep cups’. In this production there’s also clever use of a pair of microphones that heighten the audience’s appreciation of key passages of dialogue.
The cast of five is directed by Annie Kershaw. She has put together a thrillingly inventive show, with strong and engaging performances from every cast member. Anna Popplewell fizzes with magnificent frustration as Hedda, stuck in a new marriage with an innocent young academic called George. This may be her first stage role, but she has distinguished film and TV credits including the Chronicles of Narnia for Disney and Love in a Cold Climate for the BBC.
Mark Desebrock’s George (Globe on Tour, Beauty and the Beast at NT and many more) is likeably naïve and a perfect foil to Hedda. Ryan Gerald makes George’s publisher Brack a vividly gangling wide-boy. George’s former male colleague and new rival Eilert Lövborg has become Hedda’s lover Isla in this show. She’s played with energy and conviction by Jessica Temple (Peter Pan, National Theatre and roles at Nottingham and Bristol). Natalie Perera strikes just the right note for Thea, Isla’s slightly goofy and foolish lover and co-worker.
Designer Amy Watts has devised a striking set with a deep well almost like a boxing ring at its centre. The simple design enables some impressively creative lighting design by Murong Li. The sound design by Jamie Lu is similarly smart, with some subtle atmospheric sounds that ramp up the tension just when it is needed.
In the thrilling second half, the light-hearted verbal fisticuffs shift up several gears. To escape her trap, Hedda must ‘do something beautiful’. An impressive denouement is achieved at speed and with the shocking impact of the best classical tragedy.
“funny and glamorous and poignant and delightfully rude”
Salmaan Mohammed aces it in their one hour, one person show ‘Cybil Service’ from deep in the bowels of Waterloo at the VAULT Festival.
Somewhat misleadingly billed on the festival site as ‘cabaret drag and burlesque’, this is in fact a smartly funny and poignant piece derived from the performer’s own experience working first as a drag artist then for government under lockdown.
Their drag alter ego makes a glamorous entrance at the start of the show. The stuff is strutted for sure but the fabulous outfit is soon shed – with some audience help – for wicked stories of Zoom meetings gone wrong and some sharp commentary on diversity driven governmental box ticking.
Who knew the Department of Transport was so keen to accommodate a self-identifying ‘weirdo and misfit’? And what happens when gay life is in the way of a new bus route? The writing is smart and the delivery fast and telling. Dominic Cummings even gets a memorable mention as a sentient turnip.
Sal Mohammed was funny and glamorous and poignant and delightfully rude in this sparkling tour de force of a show.
