★★★★★

“a true ‘play for today,’ rooted in current political reality, spiced with delicious humour, razor sharp with insight and sparkling wit”

This satirical and hilarious look at the Brexit dilemma, two years on, is superb. It’s 2020 and a newly elected Prime Minister is taking the helm, attempting to steer the country through the convoluted Brexit morass. Nothing has happened since 2018, how will he manage to keep everyone, or even anyone, happy? It’s like a sitcom for the stage, with echos of ‘2012’, and ‘Yes Minister’, but far more biting and to the point. The Prime Minister, Adam Masters, is brilliantly played by Timothy Bentinck, better known for his many tv roles, and for being the voice of David Archer in ‘The Archers.’ His self-important, doubt ridden PM is a fantastic study of a Tory in trouble, trying to balance the different factions of his fractured party, and deliver something. Anything really. And to stay in office for longer than Andrew Bonar Law’s two hundred and eleven days.

There are some brilliant one liners, ‘You may have a triple first in sycophancy and beef wellington but that doesn’t give you the right….’ says Pippa Evans’ Diana Purdy, a ‘soft Brexit Tory,’ to Thom Tuck’s horribly oily, Rees Mogg like Simon Cavendish. Diana again, this time to the PM, ‘You can’t continue to govern over Schrodinger’s Brexit.’ Evans and Tuck are on opposing sides of the hard/soft Brexit divide, could they work together? Ultimately it’s all about power. And the man behind the power of the Prime Minister, and his election, is Campaign Manager and Chief Political Advisor, Paul Connell. Adam Astill plays him beautifully as a put upon, hard working power broker, who would prefer to stay on the sidelines. The Machiavellian power behind the throne. The final character is Lucy Montgomery’s, effortlessly in control, Helena Brandt, the chief EU negotiator. She is the epitome of elegance and understated power, that word again. The cast don’t put a foot wrong.

This play is much more than the one liners. The writing is pitch perfect. The creative team of Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky have given us a true ‘play for today,’ rooted in current political reality, spiced with delicious humour, razor sharp with insight and sparkling wit. Salinsky also directs, using the simple set with an economy that works really well. Credit must also go to Nicholas Holdridge and Jamie Robertson for the lighting, music and sound design.

If you can get a ticket do go and see this. It’s well worth it, and it’s a relief to actually be able to laugh when Brexit is mentioned, rather than sigh with despair!

Reviewed by Katre

Photography by Steve Ullathorne

Canoe

King’s Head Theatre

Reviewed – 25th October 2018

★★★½

“the language is frequently astoundingly beautiful and provocative and could be listened to for weeks on end”

Canoe is a show that welcomes you in to its story and hugs you farewell at its close. That’s not a metaphor – writer and performer Matthew Roberts literally greets and bids goodbye to every audience member personally as they enter and leave the theatre. Moments like this encapsulate the heart of pure gold that the show carries; albeit one that occasionally beats a little too frantically.

The plot centres around Tom and David, a couple who have lost two of their adopted children in an accident and are struggling to process their grief. Canoe is an expansive and nuanced introspective into coping with loss, the legacies we leave behind, and how people can live on through their stories, incorporating a myriad of cultural and social touchstones to provide immense texture – social media, religious homophobia, Theresa May, and Charlotte’s Web are to name but a few. Roberts’ script is a textual hotbed of intersecting concepts and insights, told through spoken word and rhyme that is verbally meteoric; the language is frequently astoundingly beautiful and provocative and could be listened to for weeks on end.

However, the content beneath the words is at times lost by a script that has been adapted from a four-person show to a one-person show with the aid of director and dramaturg Struan Leslie. As Roberts bounds between characters and plot threads and anecdotes, Canoe’s strain to maintain the multiple moving parts an additional three actors on stage would allow shows, with the ways in which different story strands would inform and complement each other often feeling lost. Roberts gives a blazing performance from a script that feels it’s demanding too much – the huge leaps between characters, emotional states, and accents that are given are impressive, but it came across as though it was one man trying to sing every note in a harmony at once, where there should have been a choir; it didn’t allow for the show’s many facets to truly resonate with each other.

Canoe feels like a fervent puppy dog – desperate to please and endearing, but pouring bounds of energy into so much at once that it’s overwhelming. With a greater sense of narrative clarity, Canoe stands to make some serious waves.

King’s Head Theatre

Reviewed – 1st November 2018

★★★★★

“a true ‘play for today,’ rooted in current political reality, spiced with delicious humour, razor sharp with insight and sparkling wit”

If you can get a ticket do go and see this. It’s well worth it, and it’s a relief to actually be able to laugh when Brexit is mentioned, rather than sigh with despair!

Reviewed by Katre

Photography by Steve Ullathorne

Brexit

King’s Head Theatre until 17th November

Canoe

King’s Head Theatre

Reviewed – 25th October 2018

★★★½

“the language is frequently astoundingly beautiful and provocative and could be listened to for weeks on end”

Canoe feels like a fervent puppy dog – desperate to please and endearing, but pouring bounds of energy into so much at once that it’s overwhelming. With a greater sense of narrative clarity, Canoe stands to make some serious waves.

Reviewed by Tom Francis

Canoe

King’s Head Theatre until 26th October

Previously reviewed at this venue: