Review: 'Every Man for Herself', The Courtyard Theatre, 17th January 2013

It has got to be said, the cabaret scene in Mussolini’s Italy isn’t a topic that’s likely to pop up on Family Fortunes any time soon. Dario Polmanari’s ‘Every Man for Herself’ intriguingly illuminates the plight of this otherwise overlooked group, telling their story whilst cleverly steering clear of wartime cliché. Nestled into the Courtyard’s studio theatre, the choice to bypass glamour and overdone glitz in their costume and staging gives an appropriate image of decayed flambuoyance and extravagance amid a cruel fascist regime.

It’s a tricky business to successfully pull off performing a ‘performance’, and the audience is thrown straight into the ‘show’ from the off. Unfortunately the company just misses the mark. The backstage scenes where the performers, which include a Jew and a homosexual, reveal their fear of being arrested by troops who have charged into the show, falls somewhat flat where it could easily be heart-rending. It would be nice to see an observable contrast between the extravagant onstage personas and the shrivelled, fearful reality backstage. Unfortunately I didn’t.  The performers’ themselves aren’t quite sharp or energetic enough to suggest that they do this on a daily basis, whilst the ‘real life’ personas don’t display enough humanity for an audience to engage with.

The underlying problem is one of execution rather than content (aside from a slightly whimsical ending which I think could be cut). Polmanari’s writing is innovative and thought provoking, given a little more development and tighter direction, this play’s potential could be fully realised. 2/5 

Review: 'Top Story', Old Vic Tunnels, 9th January 2013

Excitingly billed as a ‘darkly hilarious and poignant new comedy’, ‘Top Story’ documents a nation’s countdown to the apocalypse from the perspective of two largely nonplussed men in a flat, falls far short of the mark in admirably dull fashion.

The first ten minutes are somewhat promising. Friends Gus and Tarflyn, having evaluated their non-existent travel options, make the choice to spend the apocalypse together. Seconds later, they break into unrestrained panic upon realising they haven’t enough booze to carry them through to the end of the world. After a swift trip to the shop, calm is restored. Unfortunately however, this is where ‘Top Story’ peaks, and at the interval I found myself wishing that there had been some miscalculation and the meteor would obliterate the possibility of a second act.

In fairness, the two lead actors do what they can with a flat, spark-free script, which infuriatingly seems to feel that the key to ‘lad’ talk lies in sticking ‘mate’ on the end of every other sentence.  Their scenes are spliced with action from a TV studio providing apocalyptic updates. These revolve around a central theme of fittie newsreader ‘Chrissy’ being sexually propositioned by various male news reporters, funnyish at first, but after an hour or so it wears pretty thin. Additional cast members include two white-clad and entirely superfluous ‘angels’ who occasionally drift onstage to observe Gus and Tarflyn whilst musing over vague philosophical points.

The person who had the misfortune to be dragged along with me requested fairly early on that we leave. Wanting to know how ‘the end’ was going to be performed, I stayed. Probably an error. Exceeding my reasonably low expectations the final minutes can only be accurately described as a cop-out.SPOILER ALERT. Meteor doesn’t hit. The end. 2/5