★★★★

“There are wonderful moments of humour and wit”

Lady Emma Hamilton was a truly fascinating figure. Reading her Wikipedia page is akin to a modern gossip column – salacious affairs, a secret love child and an obsession with keeping up appearances for the media. Emma is perhaps most well-known for her ‘attitudes’ – alluring tableaux vivants in which she portrayed sculptures and paintings – made her an international superstar and started a fashion for a draped Grecian style of dress.

Directed by Michael Oakley and written by April De Angelis, Infamous delivers a neat summary of it all whilst asking its audience to consider whether a woman can really be famous and respectable.

Using a hand time skip, Infamous presents Emma at two different points in her life: 1798 and 1815. In the former, Emma is played by Rose Quentin and her mother-cum-housekeeper, Mrs Cadogan, played by her real-life mother Caroline Quentin. Here, Emma is vivacious, at the peak of her fame. Married to Sir William Hamilton, she lives in the beautiful Palazzo Sessa overlooking Mount Vesuvius. However, Emma has her sights set on becoming the mistress or indeed wife of the great Lord Horatio Nelson and climb further up the social and political ladder.

Yet, by 1815, Emma (now played by Caroline) is near-destitute living with her daughter by Nelson – Horatia (Rose) – in a barn in Calais. Abandoned by Nelson’s family after his death, the duo has nothing to her name. Emma, consumed by drink, encourages Horatia to pursue the local mayor’s son in hopes that her daughter will repeat her own success in rising to high society. Horatia serves a similar purpose to Saffy from Absolutely Fabulous – the sensible foil to her eccentric mother.

There is great chemistry between the two Quentens. Caroline is expectedly wonderful – demonstrating her incredible range by playing two entirely different characters with such ease. Rose is good too – best as Horatia. Rose’s young Emma is a bit overblown at points – her accent a bit too overblown. The younger Quenten also appears to be a fan of a knowing glance to the audience which at points unfortunately undercuts her performance and our immersion in the play. Riad Richie provides great support despite most of his lines being in French or Italian for his respective roles – Vincenzo and Jacques Fournier – in the two halves.

There are wonderful moments of humour and wit. Caroline excels as mad old Emma and her rendition of the attitudes for a confused Jacques garners the most laughs. The second half has a quicker pace and more interest of the two – we are at first amused by our selfish lead’s fall from grace but then feel tremendous pathos at her death, in no small part to Caroline’s amazing performance.

The set is excellently designed by Fotini Dimou. The painted wall panels of the Italian villa transform seamlessly into the haphazard wooden slats of the French barn in which Emma and Horatia are forced to reside. Christopher Naire provides gentle but effective lighting – the soft but vibrant light of dusk and dawn rendered beautifully.

Lady Emma Hamilton was a woman of pure ambition. Lampooned in the media and gathering equal number enemies and supports wherever she went, it is hard not to admire her dedication to fame, fortune and influence. Infamous shows a bit of everything, never feeling too rushed or too slow, and has a great acting duo at its heart. Well worth a watch.

KATE at the Soho Theatre

★★★★★

“A true tour de force and a must-see show.”

Kate Berlant is an excellent comic. The eponymously titled KATE is the second of her one-woman shows to be directed by fellow comedian Bo Burnham and explores the events in her life that have brought her to the London stage. Semi-autobiographical with a good helping of the surreal, Berlant becomes KATE, a young actress (with a devastating secret) who simply cannot cry on camera. The show is deeply ironic. Platitudes and parody abound – Berlant’s material is as smart as it is silly.

KATE laughs openly at the self-importance of the acting world. Before even entering the auditorium, graphics of Berlant are plastered on the walls of the theatre’s stairs. Berlant herself even sits outside the theatre space holding a large sign that reads ‘IGNORE ME’ whilst front of house staff wear t-shirts and hats branded with her name.

The show begins with a five-minute slideshow of quotes from Oscar Wilde, Stanislavski and other theatre greats next to professional photos and videos of Berlant pouting and her iMDb page. These opening slides are amusingly in the same typeface and colour scheme as the Royal National Theatre.

For the following 70 minutes, the audience is treated to snapshots of Berlant’s exaggerated life. Her birth (where she was first captured on film), her difficult family life as half-Spanish, half-Jewish (“They don’t even have a word for that!”), and her move to find fame and fortune in New York City (cue Frank Sinatra). Throughout, Berlant considers who she really is – her love for acting fuelled by a desire to escape her own reality.

Berlant’s character craves the camera. Positioned stage left, certain scenes – such as an audition – are livestreamed up close and personal on a large projector screen. Our star leans into clownery here, her face contorting impressively, as she mocks the acting differences between theatre and the silver screen.

Berlant breaks character numerous times, and it is never quite clear what is scripted and what is not. She giggles at her questionable British accent, expresses frustration at the one-second delay between her camera and the screen, and reruns scenes when she thinks she could do better. The ego of the actor is constantly lampooned – the show is set up as a display for an important Disney+ executive – and descends into angry chaos when the incompetent stagehand Isaac reveals that he has not shown up.

There are some excellent moments of audience interaction. Berlant – playing a seedy bar dweller who has met her character at a bar – shines a torch on an audience member and engages in fantastic nonsensical banter. Knowing looks to the audience and direct addresses are also peppered throughout. Even as the show seemingly falls apart, you know you are in safe hands.

Few props or set pieces are utilised. The screen backdrop displays in simple lettering the location – Porch, Apartment, Nightclub – and Berlant does the rest. She often uses excellent (and hilarious) movement to set the scene or speaks with off-stage or imagined characters to flesh out the space. A particular highlight is a scene of her ‘Irish’ mother (in fact from Santa Monica and an accent she prescribes to explore motherly emotions) rifling through imaginary drawers while cooking and cleaning at great speed.

KATE is very, very funny. It is gripping, clever and brilliantly self-referential. A true tour de force and a must-see show.

INFAMOUS at Jermyn Street Theatre

★★★★

“There are wonderful moments of humour and wit”

INFAMOUS at Jermyn Street Theatre

Reviewed on 12th September 2023

by Flora Doble

Photography by Steve Gregson

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Infamous

Infamous

KATE at the Soho Theatre

★★★★★

“A true tour de force and a must-see show.”