Soho Theatre Archives - Page 24 of 36

★★★★

“deft comedic timing and skilful showmanship”

Upon entering the theatre, we’re greeted by a puppy-like forty-year old man eagerly giving out badges and wearing a ‘Hovis’ bread bag on his head with a little straw poking out like a Britney mic. It’s certainly a confident start, but one can’t help wondering if he’s regretting quite how tight the bread bag is…

We begin with what is either painstakingly rehearsed or completely off-the-cuff rambling, hopping frenetically between subjects, each story or thought almost always followed by the slightly manically delivered parenthesis, ‘Is it worth sharing? I don’t know.’

As he excitedly paces back and forth, William Andrews repeatedly forgets to take the mic with him, and often as he grabs for it, accidentally unplugs it – again, hard to tell if this is an orchestrated laugh, or whether the microphone is actually broken.

Andrews does finally land on a kind of narrative, but whilst the topics remain in orbit of his own quiet family life, his dealings with them combine both the profound and the ridiculous, often in one breath. We follow him on a Dave Gorman-esque single-minded hunt for a late-night tv clip of a dog on a motorway, for example, and along the way we’re considering the struggles of gender dysmorphia; we’re both laughing and staring agape (if it’s possible to do the two simultaneously) as we hear Andrews discuss his first brush with adulthood at eight years old when he attempted (‘attempted’ being the horrifying aspect here) to kill a fish.

What becomes apparent is how deceptively haphazard this show is. Hamish MacDougall’s direction sees Andrews lean in to the idea of a jabbering amateur ‘giving it a go’ whilst actually showcasing deft comedic timing and skilful showmanship. His attempt to bring it all neatly together in the last five minutes, as though he had been telling one hour-long story, doesn’t quite work, but it doesn’t matter. Balancing frivolity and gravity in equal measure, he has created a very funny and artfully executed performance.

Reviewed by Miriam Sallon

Photography by William Andrews

Mouthpiece

Soho Theatre

Reviewed – 4th April 2019

★★★

“It becomes too clever and self-aware and we disengage”

Above Edinburgh on the Salibury Crags, Declan, a talented, working class young artist pulls a body back as it tries to jump. This body belongs to Libby, a middle-aged, middle class fading playwright who is drunkenly considering the end. So two worlds meet. As Declan talks about the realities of his life, an abusive step-father, his love for his little sister, Libby begins to write for the first time in far too long. She needs his story, she needs his words, but at that point, the play asks, does telling someone’s story become exploiting it?

Lorn Macdonald as Declan is the heart and energy of the piece. He comes to life, quick and funny, surprising and vulnerable. His story is the one we are interested in hearing, and Macdonald is simply fire on stage. I cannot fault his performance. Unfortunately Neve McIntosh’s Libby feels comparatively unreal. This is not her fault, but an impossibility within the way the character is written. She is unlikeable throughout. Her suicide attempt, which opens the story, is so lightly commented upon in the rest of the play that it seems completely unbelievable and rather half-hearted, trivialising suicide, and contributing to a version of Libby that is self-absorbed and ingenuine. She is used as a device by the playwright (Kieran Hurley) to make comments about the world of theatre, meaning she struggles to emerge. He gives her an extended monologue about the state of playwriting, about theatres and audiences, that is so self-aware it makes us self-aware. That isn’t a character speaking, and it removes us from the world of the play with immediate effect. Even her trajectory isn’t believable. She jumps from suicidal to mentor to lover to exploiter with no apparent journeys in between.

Mouthpiece is interspersed by Libby directly addressing the audience, telling us what makes a good play, walking us through the necessary ingredients as they are created onstage, foreshadowing the way the narrative must inevitably go. Sometimes this works really well. But the plot gets lost in this, and the end in particular suffers as a result. It stops being about the characters, about their story. It becomes too clever and self-aware and we disengage.

The story that is at the heart of ‘Mouthpiece’ is a fascinating one of an unlikely relationship, of exploitation, class and culture, but it gets lost in a weary exercise of meta-theatricality, in an attempt to comment on playwriting, when the story is powerful enough to make this comment on its own. Let the story speak, and we will be powerless not to listen.

Soho Theatre

Reviewed – 11th April 2019

★★★★

“deft comedic timing and skilful showmanship”

We begin with what is either painstakingly rehearsed or completely off-the-cuff rambling, hopping frenetically between subjects, each story or thought almost always followed by the slightly manically delivered parenthesis, ‘Is it worth sharing? I don’t know.’

As he excitedly paces back and forth, William Andrews repeatedly forgets to take the mic with him, and often as he grabs for it, accidentally unplugs it – again, hard to tell if this is an orchestrated laugh, or whether the microphone is actually broken.

Reviewed by Miriam Sallon

Photography by William Andrews

William Andrews: Willy

Soho Theatre until 13th April

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

Soho Theatre

Reviewed – 4th April 2019

★★★

“It becomes too clever and self-aware and we disengage”

Reviewed by Amelia Brown

Photography by Roberto Ricciuti

Mouthpiece

Soho Theatre until 4th May

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue: