Tom Marshman Archives - thespyinthestalls.com

★★★

“the laughs and cheers throughout were evidence of a job well done”

Streaming Beauty is an online interactive adult panto. Hosted by the marvellously named Annette Curtains (Tom Marshman), it asks its Zoom attendees to complete silly festive tasks to help wake the eponymous heroine from her slumber, brought on by ‘fingering a prick’. The overarching tone is tongue-in-cheek queer naughtiness, and the show is peppered throughout with knowing pop culture references, with Hymen Bowel (Lotte Allan) presenting The Sex Factor, Angelina Unholy fetish icon (Peter Baker) and the Artist Formerly Known as Prince Charming (Edson Burton) all featuring. Here, as in real life panto, much depends on the gusto and spirit of the audience. More than any other theatrical form, panto really is what you make it. If you walk into the theatre, or switch on your Zoom, ready to contribute and to have a good night then you will. It says much about the resilience both of the form and the COVID-beseiged British audience that the panto spirit was firmly in evidence last night. Given that much of the show is in Zoom Gallery View format, the audience is quite literally on show as much as the performers, and the families, couples and singletons who were in attendance rose to the challenge admirably.

That being said, it does take an effort of will to supply atmosphere whilst staring at a laptop, and the sad reality is that it is impossible to be unaware of the limitations of the small screen in this most rambunctious theatrical form. Peter Baker and Tom Marshman adapted the most successfully to these strictures, by having an awareness of them and playing with close-ups and the edges of the frame. This is clearly a new-found skill in the actor’s arsenal, and, inevitably, some performers have been better able to take up the challenge than others.

Stephanie Kempson (director) and her company Sharp Teeth are clearly at the cutting edge of online theatre, and this panto comes hot on the heels of their successful online interactive Sherlock Holmes show, which also put the audience into breakout rooms and provided them with tasks to fulfil. Whilst being a natural fit for an immersive detective drama, this structure did feel like something of an imposition on the panto format, and this reviewer did pine for more panto and less escape room, but it seems that mine was the minority view, and the rest of last night’s audience clearly relished the games aspect of the evening. It was a full house last night, with 90 people logged in, and the laughs and cheers throughout were evidence of a job well done.

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

A Haunted Existence

Camden People’s Theatre

Reviewed – 2nd October 2019

★★★★

“It is a work of exquisite, tender beauty. A unique evening at the theatre.”

Camden People’s Theatre is an intimate venue. The theatre itself holds 60 people, and the pre-show meeting space is not unlike a little tea room, cosy and informal. It always seems slightly out of time, and set apart from 21st century London. Tom Marshman couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate place to stage his deeply touching and beautifully crafted piece of theatre, created in response to a piece of 1950s British queer history.

Marshman makes it clear from the outset that he is a storyteller. There is no ‘acting’ here; instead he talks to us, lip syncs, shows us images, plays us records and reads us letters, all of which serve the story that he wants to share. In 1953, a young gay man – Geoffrey Patrick Williamson – made sexual overtures to an older man on a railway train. This older man turned out to be a Railway Officer in plain clothes, and their encounter led to a court case, as a result of which 17 men were arrested, and nine sent to prison.

Marshman has researched the men involved in this case and the show is the result of his discoveries. Research of this kind can seem a rather dry and dusty pursuit; academic and removed from the emotional world. Nothing could be further from the truth here. Tom Marshman’s work is infused with tenderness. He handles these men’s stories with the greatest love and care, and there is a gentleness inherent in his movement on stage, and in the perfectly chosen 1950s records that he plays that provide his musical score. This is no nostalgic comfort-zone however. Although there are some happy endings, the persecution of these men destroyed lives, and also led to a suicide. Their treatment was brutal; the facts speak for themselves.

A Haunted Existence avoids sentimentality as it is artistically precise. Marshman is most definitely an artist, and one of exceptional skill. The gauze projections could stand alone as an artwork, merging, as they do, archive footage, and newly created black and white images of Marshman himself as period characters in the story. His movement too is spare – whether it be the semaphore alphabet that we see at the top of the show or the mesmeric solo ballroom dancing sequence a little later on – and it is beautiful. Marshman also lip syncs to the clipped 1950s tones of the presiding judge in the case, and to the words of Lord Owen, which laid early foundations for the Wolfenden report a decade later. This is, unexpectedly, extraordinarily moving, and a welcome reminder of the truly subversive power of this gay cabaret skill. Wonderful too, to have a brief lesson in Polari thrown into the mix, and a treat to hear that arch and creative language of subterfuge spoken out loud.

The effect of the whole is that of a delicate layering, a collage, reflecting the process, the careful unravelling of very personal and yet profoundly resonant histories.

Online via Bristol Old Vic

Reviewed – 19th December 2020

★★★

“the laughs and cheers throughout were evidence of a job well done”

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

Streaming Beauty

Online via Bristol Old Vic

Recently reviewed by Rebecca:

Camden People’s Theatre

Reviewed – 2nd October 2019

★★★★

“It is a work of exquisite, tender beauty. A unique evening at the theatre.”

The effect of the whole is that of a delicate layering, a collage, reflecting the process, the careful unravelling of very personal and yet profoundly resonant histories.

It is a work of exquisite, tender beauty. A unique evening at the theatre. Bravo.

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

Photography by Matt Glover

A Haunted Existence

Camden People’s Theatre until 4th October

Previously reviewed at this venue: