Review: ‘The Irish Giant’, Cartoon De Salvo, Southwark Playhouse, 22nd May 2012

Cartoon De Salvo combine the factual and the surreal to tell the stories of Charles Byrne, a ‘freak’ of Georgian London who enjoyed short-lived popularity showcasing himself as ‘The Irish Giant’ before dying drunk and penniless at 22, and John Hunter, the surgeon fascinated with abnormal body types and their posthumous dissection. The dank, dripping tunnels of the Southwark Playhouse Vaults are ideal for this production depicting the seedy, grimy underworld of Georgian London and the clandestine business of bodysnatching. Pleasingly living up to its namesake, the company frequently burst into live music, switch accents at the drop of a hat and project rudimentary cartoons onto the walls of its delightfully juxtaposing surroundings. Traditionally grim subject matter is transformed into an endearingly silly and creative package.

This being said, the performance is marred by frustratingly avoidable flaws. At 1 hour 40 minutes with no interval, the cod-Irish accent and over characterised twitching of Byrne lose their initially novel appeal, the same can be said of the clichéd cockney warblings of the chief bodysnatcher. The booming songs delivered with such gusto in the first half hour seem disappointingly hollow 90 minutes later. Such a project requires a sparky cockiness, an ‘up yours’ to straight-laced historical re-enactment. In this instance the performers lacked that energy, beyond all other confirmation were the dejected faces at the curtain call. I couldn’t help thinking that the frequently referenced laudanum bingeing may have been a useful tactic for raising a bit of pep.   

For such a likeable, dynamic company, I’d wager that low audience numbers was the damning factor on this occasion. Refreshingly different, yet a little plagued by its own self-doubt. It’d be interesting to see if larger audiences in the future trigger a more self-assured performance. 3/5.

Review: 'Hip Hop Othello', Q Brothers, The Globe, May 6th 2012

Fully prepared for some cringey spectacle, (‘look kids, Shakespeare is COOL’). I was pleased to find that my fears for Q Brothers ‘Hip Hop Othello’ were wholly unjustified. The four performers bust out an Othello performed entirely in rap, delivering a production which, running at 90 minutes, is energetic, slick, and compact. The first intentionally funny production of Othello that I’ve seen (we won’t speak of the others), the success lies in the unashamed disclaimer that they’ve found out the ‘funny bits’, (is it just me or is everything somehow funnier in rhyme?). However, tragic content is equally confronted; the inspired decision to omit Desdemona’s onstage presence reinforces the fact that Othello’s fears and doubts fail to exist outside of his manipulated psyche. However gimmicky the concept appears, minimal props and uniform grey jumpsuits guarantee that the focus of this production is firmly on language and story. Fantastic, a company to watch. 5/5

Challenge! Twitter post-sized review of Collaborators, National Theatre, 14th May 2012

Collaborators,National Theatre. Interval thoughts, “He may be a manipulative despot,but Stalin is one funny guy!” Swiftly gets sinister. 4/5

Review: 'Macbeth', Teatr im. Kochanowskiego, The Globe, 8th May 2012

Teatr im. Kochanowskiego’s disclaimer ‘very adult content’, certainly doesn’t fail to disappoint; throat burning shots handed out by lascivious transvestites, King Duncan’s wrinkly birthday striptease and the unsettlingly realistic and bloody rape of Lady Macduff are just some of the attractions handed out in this ‘camp-tacular’ Macbeth.  One key criticism is Kleczewska’s decision to extend culpability of the murders to the witches, Ross and Lennox. The wider court’s complicity in the murders undermines the intense, claustrophobic and escalating depravity of the Macbeths’ relationship; the murders become not so much symptomatic of a couple’s sexualised pursuit for power but the collective actions of a ready-corrupted, shagging, powder sniffing court. Whilst the debauched cokey rave setting was a great choice, the group dynamic of the murders seemed to come at the cost of one of the most compelling elements of the play. Why not keep the character’s coked up and have them induced into paranoid, twitchy wrecks who are plagued with the suspicion that Big Mac’s started killing everyone? A solidly enjoyable production, but chaos took over from plot a little too often. 3/5