Tag Archives: Laurel Marks

Pickle

Pickle

★★★

Park Theatre

PICKLE at the Park Theatre

★★★

Pickle

“brims with gags”

 

Deli Segal’s Pickle, a one-woman show which is in the midst of a limited run the Park Theatre, is energetic and full of laughs. Segal’s playwriting debut follows Ari Fish, a 29-year-old Jewish woman who lives with her parents in Finchley, as she navigates her semi-cloistered Jewish community and an alienating secular life. Ari encounters awkward conversations at work and unfavourable comparisons to her frummer (more observant) brother at home. Dating becomes a treacherous choice between cringe-worthy family setups and endless faux pas from non-Jewish Hinge hookups. Segal’s impressions of the characters that surround Ari are specific and her performance is solid throughout.

Ari’s Jewish guilt, in the form of voiceover and a blue wash, barges in at inopportune moments. Though working with voiceover in one-person shows can be tricky, the decision to reserve it for this voice in Ari’s head, allowing Segal to inhabit the other characters in Ari’s life, makes for a seamless incorporation. Segal plays across from the voiceover with excellent comedic timing.

Pickle brims with gags, from a scroll laden with in-community references detailing the spectrum of London Jews from frum to not frum at all, to drunken karaoke performance of Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back to Black’. These mostly go over quite well. One particular gag, the retelling of a bris gone wrong featuring foreskin and salmon, leans excessively into slapstick and gross-out humour, which grates against the overall tone of the piece.

Transitions, both in terms of Emily Rose Simon’s sound design and Laura Wohlwend’s movement direction, tend to fall flat. Songs cut in and out abruptly without a related physical response. The accompanying movement feels uninspired and unspecific—the energy present in the rest of Segal’s performance does not carry over to these moments.

Though the writing at times becomes bogged down in explanation, which takes away space for Ari’s character to develop, Pickle is an entertaining and informative watch.

 

Reviewed on 16th November 2022

by JC Kerr

Photography by Danny Kaan

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

 

When Darkness Falls | ★★★ | August 2021
Flushed | ★★★★ | October 2021
Abigail’s Party | ★★★★ | November 2021
Little Women | ★★★★ | November 2021
Cratchit | ★★★ | December 2021
Julie Madly Deeply | ★★★★ | December 2021
Another America | ★★★ | April 2022
The End of the Night | ★★ | May 2022
Monster | ★★★★★ | August 2022
A Single Man | ★★★★ | October 2022

 

 

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PAYNE: THE STARS ARE FIRE

Payne: The Stars are Fire

★★★

Jack Studio Theatre

PAYNE: THE STARS ARE FIRE

Payne: The Stars are Fire

Jack Studio Theatre

Reviewed – 27th January 2022

★★★

 

“As in the first play, the drama is broken up by balletic interludes, but less successfully than formerly”

 

And so on to the second play of the duology The Dyer’s Hand produced by Arrows & Traps Theatre Company, written and directed by Ross McGregor. A delightful opening scene serves as a link between the two plays in which Cecilia Payne (Laurel Marks), having completed her studies at Cambridge, informs the ageing Gustav Holst (Toby Wynn-Davies) that she is about to take up a research post at Harvard; an opportunity impossible for her as a woman to achieve in the UK.

With a soundtrack of jazz and blues, and an array of American accents, we arrive in 1920s USA. The set (Designer Odin Corie) is retained from the first play but with the music room paraphernalia replaced by the scientific. Harlow Shapley (Alex Stevens) with bow tie and bravado is the director of the new Harvard astronomy department and oversees the work of historical scientists Annie Jump Cannon (Cornelia Baumann), Adelaide Ames (Lucy Ioannou), Donald Menzel (Edward Spence) and the newly arrived Cecilia Payne. There is little sense of drama in the work they do – counting and cataloguing stars – but a running gag about whether Donald can have a cookie and some stoical one-liners from Annie show there are laughs to be had. Lucy Ioannou lights up the stage as Adelaide with an effervescent performance that provides welcome colour amidst the grey. Marks continues her good work from the first play, portraying Payne as ambitious but socially awkward. When Payne makes her ground-breaking astronomical discovery, she is reduced to tears of despair by top scientist Henry Russell (Toby Wynn-Davies) when we might have hoped she would stand up to be counted. Wynn-Davies, with a desperado moustache and softly spoken drawl, brilliantly plays Russell rather closer to Bond villain than senior astronomer.

As in the first play, the drama is broken up by balletic interludes, but less successfully than formerly. An extended dance sequence mourning the tragic death of Ames distracts from the main direction of the plot. A very well created cinematic cartoon of a car journey, excellently mimed by Marks, Spence and Ioannou, provides light relief but does not fit within the style of the rest of the production.

A flash forward at the end of the play shows us Payne finally being awarded the Professorship she has long craved, and the play reinforces the well-made message that women have been held back in the field of science through centuries of male tradition and misogyny. A late scene also links the two parts of this epic undertaking with Payne and Holst reunited to reminisce on the journeys they have undergone. With it comes the opportunity to show again the on-stage chemistry existing between Wynn-Davies and Marks.

 

Reviewed by Phillip Money

Photography by Davor @TheOcularCreative

 


Payne: The Stars are Fire

Jack Studio Theatre until 19th February

Payne: The Stars are Fire is part two of Arrows & Traps new repertory season: The Dyer’s Hand

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
Holst: The Music in the Spheres | ★★★★★ | January 2022

 

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