Rosie Wood
Reviews | Opinion | Interviews
Category: Uncategorized
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Politics, manipulation and deceit: these are the themes that connect the two plays — the tragedy Julius Caesar and the comedy Measure for Measure — that the Shake-Scene Shakespeare theatre company have paired together in this split bill. The real defining feature of the evening, however, is the company’s cue-scripted performance. Cue scripting is a historical performance method in which…
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American actor and comedian Shenoah Allen takes us to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for an hour of stand-up about his upbringing that plays out like a warped cartoon memoir. He performs it accordingly: an array of wacky voices, rubber-limbed physicality, and a face that seems capable of rearranging itself at will. His spirit appears equally malleable, surviving stories…
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Two “Creepy Boys” shuffle onto the stage in sleeping bags as gastropods with vagina mouths. They regurgitate and eat a spoonful of beans, sing a song about Donald Duck and his lack of trousers, strip to reveal duck-like underwear with a strategically cut hole, offer the audience sweets, and eventually unleash a pantomime horse that…
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More people than they would like to admit feel a flicker of excitement at the word PowerPoint. Few elements of office life have been resurrected for entertainment purposes so enthusiastically: fringe shows, TikTok trends, even full-blown PowerPoint parties. With ta-da! Josh Sharp makes the most of this format while stripping it to its bare bones — mostly…
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Going to see a Samuel Beckett play, there is a certain expectation: no loud costumes, wild plots, or pelting gags. Audiences strap in, sharpen their senses, and prepare to notice every small detail and stylistic choice. This one-off production of Krapp’s Last Tape at Stanley Arts Centre, followed by a short Q&A with David Westhead, who plays Krapp, and director Stockard Channing, is…
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The League of Improv returns for another monthly show, part of an ongoing series in which a guest stand-up comedian — on this occasion Morgan Rees — effectively emcees the night. Rees chats to audience members, extracting information and jokes, which the improvisers then use as the basis for a series of short improvised sketches. It is a…
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At LAMDA’s Carne Theatre, director Dhruv Ravi takes on Strategic Love Play, a new play by Miriam Battye. It follows a date between Man or Adam (Emmanuel Olusanya) and Woman or Jenny (Amber Grappy), arranged through an app, that goes… very strangely. The play feels distinctly of the moment: its characters are scarily real, it’s funny, and it’s always buoyed by…
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Even in comedies, jokes are often treated as decoration rather than substance – meant to entertain while pointing to deeper themes. But the RSC’s new production of Twelfth Night, directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, doesn’t shy away from a focus on fun. Devoting more time to clowning and the comedic subplot – in which Olivia’s uncle Sir Toby Belch…
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So many comedy plays rely on oddness as their engine, but this kind of humour is far harder to execute than it appears. Surreal jokes need to feel genuinely strange — surprising, even dark and a bit disturbing. When the oddness isn’t odd enough, or the darkness not quite dark enough, or the ideas not…
Rosie Wood 