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Parenthood

The Space

Reviewed – 23rd July 2019

★★★½

“just about every one of the songs was catchy, cleverly composed and brilliantly witty”

Nothing makes you feel more inadequate than parenthood. You have a successful day, go to bed feeling good about yourself and wake up to a child telling you that they’ve just stuck a marble in their ear. So going to see a musical revue all about parenthood, would either leave me in hysterical laughter at other people’s misfortunes, or bring back that nervous twitch.

This brand new original show has music, text and lyrics all written by Kent based couple Emily and Pete Moody, Emily also directs. The show comprises of about twenty five scenes delivered in either sketch form or musical number. The subject matter starts with pregnancy, moves rapidly to delivery and runs through notable landmarks up to when the children leave home for university.

The small stage at The Space was decorated with about a dozen large building block cubes, coloured sheets and a cot. The sheets were imaginatively used and the cubes provided good height when seating was required. Sound was well timed and all musical numbers were delivered to a backing track. Costumes were nicely thought out with bright primary colours and occasional bursts into fancy dress.

On this opening night, there were a few technical issues with feedback from a speaker and a few of the actors microphones seemed to stop working. This meant that they lost projection and the sound levels had balancing issues, I hope these are easily resolved. Scene changes I found to be a little clunky, with the stage going to sometimes prolonged blackout whilst blocks were moved and cast members changed, I feel it would be worth investigating if this could be done another way to add a bit more continuity to the piece.

A lot of this play is very funny and yet interestingly, I found that some of the spoken sketches fell a little flat, although the scene with parents reading a school report whilst a teacher translated what he really meant, was utterly hilarious. However, this show really comes alive with the musical numbers. Each of the nine strong ensemble had an excellent voice and just about every one of the songs was catchy, cleverly composed and brilliantly witty. Personal highlights were the school playground number, well observed, insightful and a lovely touch from the lone dad. An amusing song from a sleep deprived mother, a high-kicking pair of grandparents and a beautifully poignant song from a mum expressing her thoughts to her late mother, a lovely change of pace and delivered incredibly naturally.

I feel that Fluffy Top Productions are on to something here, it needs a bit of tightening up and a little re-writing, but it went down very well with the audience and has a lot of highlights.

I finally feel that a big shout-out needs to go out to all the cast for putting such energy into their performances on a quite frankly, absurdly hot summer evening.

Reviewed by Chris White

Parenthood

The Space until 27th July

Previously reviewed at this venue:

The South Afreakins | ★★★★★ | February 2019

FFS! Feminist Fable Series | ★★★★ | March 2019

The Conductor | ★★★★ | March 2019

We Know Now Snowmen Exist | ★★★ | March 2019

Post Mortem | ★★★★ | April 2019

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★★★

“a reminder yet again of the power of theatre to bring into the light, things that would rather hide in darkness”

Matthew Gouldesbrough’s play Holy Land is a grim and disturbing look at the dark web. For audience members unaware of the dark web, it is the part of the internet not indexed by search engines. Those who post and access material on it, do so anonymously. Holy Land begins with a character describing the ease with which he can buy a gun on the dark web, no questions asked. In the space of eighty minutes, we find that the purchase of the gun is really just the final purchase in a long line of chilling acquisitions that include videos of pornography, including pornography with violence.

Harrowing stuff indeed. Nevertheless, Holy Land is an inventive script that tells its story by putting together three characters who address the audience in a series of monologues. We eventually come to understand that they all have a shared past which involves encounters with predators on and offline. Rick Romero as Jon, gives an intense, athletic performance as a bewildered father trying to hold his family together against a predatory local church. Gouldesbrough, in addition to writing the script, is the young computer nerd Tim, lured into situations of increasing horror as he tries to avoid a psychopath he first encountered in school. Hannah Morrison gives an all too believable performance as Kate, a teenager with chronic and ultimately fatal self-esteem issues, who is groomed in all sorts of online nastiness. In the ironically titled Holy Land, Gouldesbrough has created a modern morality tale where there are no winners, and no comfort for the survivors, either.

Holy Land is an economical show that focuses on the actors, with a bare boards set. But because it’s a play about the internet, the actors are also always on stage with screens. This is not an entirely successful device. Meant as a counterpoint to descriptions of videos online, the images are often presented as grainy and indistinct, but the overall effect can be distracting. Even when used to present a kind of livestream action at the end of the play, to underpin the “this is happening now in front of you” theme of the videos being presented online, the use of screens in this way comes across as a gimmick rather than illuminating. In any event, the actors have all the words they need to tell this tragic story.

Holy Land is not a play for family audiences, and there will be theatre goers who find this play challenging to sit through. Nevertheless Elegy Theatre Company deserves credit for bringing such a difficult subject to the stage. It’s a reminder yet again of the power of theatre to bring into the light, things that would rather hide in darkness.

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Greg Goodale

The Space

Reviewed – 23rd July 2019

★★★½

“just about every one of the songs was catchy, cleverly composed and brilliantly witty”

I feel that Fluffy Top Productions are on to something here, it needs a bit of tightening up and a little re-writing, but it went down very well with the audience and has a lot of highlights.

I finally feel that a big shout-out needs to go out to all the cast for putting such energy into their performances on a quite frankly, absurdly hot summer evening.

Reviewed by Chris White

Parenthood

The Space until 27th July

Previously reviewed at this venue:

The Space

Reviewed – 12th June 2019

★★★

“a reminder yet again of the power of theatre to bring into the light, things that would rather hide in darkness”

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Greg Goodale

Holy Land

The Space until 15th June

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue: