Tezza's Theatre Place

Liv Alexander, Georgia Bradshaw and Beccy Lane, courtesy of Tom Grace For a man fast approaching his late fifties, you wouldn’t think a tale of teenage angst set in an American Roman Catholic boarding school would be that interesting. But you would be wrong, as one of my favourite shows ever is  Bare: A Pop Opera . So, I’m sure you can imagine my excitement when asked to review the latest version of this show as it opens at The Vaults Theatre. At St Cecilia’s Boarding School, the pupils are celebrating a mass on the Feast of the Epiphany. It’s a pretty normal service, worthy but dull, and as the priest (Mark Jardine) preaches, most of the teenage congregation find their attention drifting. As with all children on the brink of adulthood, there is much to occupy their minds. This is particularly true of altar boy Peter (Daniel Mack Shand) who is hiding two terrible secrets. Not only is he gay, but he is in love, and enjoying carnal relations with his roommate, and St Cecilia’s r...

Riot Act – Credit Dawson James It’s Pride Month and that means that London is full of building flying rainbow flags and the theatre scene is gayer than ever with a plethora of LGBT+ themed shows hitting the stages of the capital. Some are just OK, some are good and a small number are absolutely awesome. I was lucky enough to get to experience the latter type of show as Alexis Gregory’s  Riot Act  arrived at the Arcola Theatre, This one-man show is a verbatim portrayal of conversations Alexis has had with three gay men, whose stories are told in three separate monologues over the sixty-minute run. First, we have Michael-Anthony Nozzi, one of the few remaining people who were present at the Stonewall riots in 1969. Michael paints a graphic picture not just of the Stonewall Inn itself but also the area around Greenwich Village. This completely changed my perception of the events of June 28th. Over the course of the monologue I learnt so much about the event, its background an...

Vulvarine (c) Lidia Crisafulli I’m not really much of a comic book fan. Having said that, I do know many of the characters that inhabit the Marvel and DC worlds. In fact, I could probably put together an alphabet of superheroes from Captain America, through to Professor X. But, how many on that list would be female? Probably not a lot. There is definitely a higher ratio of male to female superheroes in the comic book universe. However, that ratio has now changed thanks to Fat Rascal Theatre and their creation  Vulvarine , who has flown into the King’s Head Theatre this week. High Wycombe is a boring town where nothing ever happens. This is particularly true for tax clerk Bryony Buckle (Allie Munro) who, after saying goodbye to her cat, Elton, spends her working day at the desk she shares with her best friend Poppy (Katie Wells) thinking about lunch and dreaming about her co-worker Orson Bloom (Jamie Mawson). Then two events happen to change Bryony’s life. First, Orson asks her...

Scott Le Crass It’s been a great few days for me. Not only did I get to visit the Omnibus Theatre to review Simon Stephens’ excellent one-act play  Country Music  but I also got a chance to have a chat with the show’s Offie and Broadway World Nominated director, Scott Le Crass. I started by asking Scott to tell me a little bit about himself. SLC: I started out as an actor, trained at Arts Ed. A couple of years out I had a change of heart and just wasn’t enjoying it (the acting) anymore, so changed career and spent around 4 years teaching drama. I was directing in the college I was working at and was getting a real taste for it, and I was really enjoying it, so I started to do little projects on the side such as scratch nights, a bit of assisting here and there, and then I left my job and started to work as a freelance director. I’ve been doing this for about six years, doing lots of different stuff. So, I have a show (Elmer for Selladoor) which is a musical for kids us...

AFTERGLOW – Jesse Fox, Danny Mahoney, Sean Hart photo Darren Bell. Being honest, an open relationship wouldn’t work for me. However, I have friends who have the ability to keep sex and their relationship separate and really enjoy both. Whilst I agree that is fine in theory, for me, that separation would not be that easy and emotions always become involved somehow. In many respects, this is the issue that is at the heart of S. Asher Gelman’s play  Afterglow  at the Southwark Playhouse. Josh (Sean Hart) and his husband Alex (Danny Mahoney) are enjoying life. They live in a nice apartment in New York, have jobs they both, on the whole, enjoy and are having a baby together. Sexually, they have an open relationship with only one rule – no overnighters – and are happy to play together or separately. When we first meet them, they are having a passionate threesome with twenty-something masseur Darius (Jessie Fox), an event that all three of them really enjoy. In fact, Josh enjo...

One of the distinctive features of a short play is that the writer has to introduce their characters fast and the audience have to make their mind up about them at once. On the whole, this works. A short play doesn’t have the time for huge character development so you are probably going to feel the same about the characters at the end as you did at the start. But this is not a hard and fast rule as Simon Stephens demonstrates in his one-act play  Country Music  which has recently opened at Clapham’s Omnibus Theatre. Starting in a car sitting in a lay-by,  Country Music  is the story of Jamie (Cary Crankson) a troubled teenager who has done something bad. He has stolen a car – along with various snacks for the journey – and picked up his schoolgirl girlfriend, Lynsey (Rebecca Stone) to run away to Southend. Whilst the plan sounds good in theory, Jamie has a volatile personality that varies between extreme excitement and violent lows, and is pretty unsuited to thi...