Tezza's Theatre Place

Occasionally in the theatre, a show is just a show. The audience, and especially the reviewer, can sit back, relax and enjoy the production solely for its own sake without having to think too deeply about plot-lines, sub-text, or any of those other things. In fact, sometimes you just have to give yourself over to absolute pleasure. And this was definitely the case last night at the King’s Head Theatre where I experienced the awesome  Schlong Song . Woody Shticks burst onto the stage in a blaze of light, sound and really skimpy ‘Daisy Dukes’ and delivers an amazing talk on gay life in general and his in particular. From his first stirrings of knowing he was different from the other boys at his ultra-conservative Christian school, through to an amazing and very emotional encounter with a closeted man in Eastern Europe – an area not renowned for its tolerance of man on man action. Woody does not hold back, both physically and descriptively in connecting with the audience and wh...

Fiona Marr as Grace Lancaster in SOUTHERN BELLES. Credit Scott Rylander. Tennessee Williams was an outstanding playwright whose shows have become hits the world over. However, there is one of his plays ( And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens ) which is not only rarely performed but, due to its subject matter was never performed during Williams’ own lifetime. Luckily, the King’s Head Theatre has decided to bring the play out of the theatrical closet as part of its Queer Season in a production of two of Williams’ one-act plays joined together under the title  Southern Belles . First up was  Something Unspoken . Miss Cornelia Scott (Annabel Leventon) is an ageing spinster and daughter of the south who lives in a wonderful house that she shares with her servants and her secretary/companion of 15 years Grace (Fiona Marr). The two ladies have cohabited for so long that you would think there are no secrets between them but, today, there is tension in the air. Not only is C...

Crystal Clear – CREDIT Lidia Crisafulli. Every so often there will be a quiz or a dinner party topic around the subject of which of our senses we would be OK with losing. Safe in the knowledge it’s unlikely to happen, we will plummet for a sense we think is superfluous, such as smell. The reality is that should we lose a sense we will not get a choice as to which one goes. We are so used to having all five that the loss of any one of them would have a devastating effect on our lives. This is the fate that awaits one of the characters in Phil Young’s play  Crystal Clear  which is making a long-awaited return to Islington’s Red Lion Theatre. Picture dealer Richard (Gareth Kennerley) has recently moved into a small flat. It’s not much but it’s his and although there is not really room to swing a cat, there is space for his futon, his favourite chair and his bookshelf filled to overflowing with knick-knacks and objets d’art that he has picked up. Tonight is a special night fo...

Games For Lovers – Photo by Geraint Lewis Back in the mists of time, relationships and love were two separate things. A match between and a boy and a girl would be arranged and terms agreed between the respective families and that was that. If the couple were lucky, they might, over the course of their life together, fall in love with each other but, if not, as long as the relationship was stable, everything was good. Nowadays, things are much more complicated. Singles bars, speed dating, apps and the various rules around dating, make finding the ‘right one’ more like work than fun. That’s the theory at the heart of Ryan Craig’s play  Games for Lovers , receiving its world premiere at The Vaults Theatre. In contemporary London, four millennials are searching for love, each using their own method to find what they seek. Radiologist Martha (Evanna Lynch) spends much of her time either pining over co-worker Dr Robert, or her best friend Logan (Calum Callaghan). For his part, PE t...

Of all the things members of the LGBT+ community go through in their lives, probably the hardest is the first time they decide to ‘come out’. Everyone has their own story to tell, and they are all unique in some respect. My own involved the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question, a famous male singer, and a very perceptive elderly lady. Actor, magician, theatre and opera director Freddie Brook has spent the past few years collecting some of these stories and turning them into a one-man verbatim show called  Just Don’t Shout it from the Rooftops  which he has recently been performing at the King’s Head in Islington. Over the course of the roughly 45-minute run, Freddie brings to life a range of individual coming out stories and demonstrates the many different approaches both the outee and the recipients of the information take to the news. There is the young lad who, in the words of his less than sympathetic parents, ‘ruined the family holiday’, the soldier who took on a re...

Matt Cardle as Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar at the Barbican Theatre.   Back in 1970, two young men released a rock opera concept album about a historical figure using a story freely adapted from the Bible. Little did they know that in the next 49 years, their album would have taken the world by storm, spawning award-winning Broadway and West End shows and a couple of movies. The young men were Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice, and the album was, of course,  Jesus Christ Superstar  which, following an amazing run at the Regents Park Open Air Theatre, has just opened for a strictly limited run at the Barbican. In ancient Israel, Jesus (Robert Tripolino) has caused quite a stir as he travels the country. To some, such as Simon Zealotes (Tim Newman), Jesus is going to be the catalyst that makes the nation rise up and overthrow their hated Roman oppressors, led by the Governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate (Matt Cardle). To the priests, Caiaphas (Gavin Cornwall) and Anna...

June is world-wide Pride Month and here in London, we end the month with the start of London Pride week, which culminates in the annual Pride in London parade. This year, my London Pride week started with a visit to the Southwark Playhouse where  Full Disclosure Theatre  were putting on a new writing night of eight short plays revealing the naked and entertaining truths about LGBT+ life. The evening started off with  Converting The Preached To  by Niall Urquhart, directed by Louis Catliff. As we took our seats we were welcomed by our Preacher (Linus Karp) who shook hands and said hello to as many as possible. He then proceeded to introduce us to Robert (Ikky Elyas), a new member of our gay conversion therapy group who started to explain his reasons for joining much to the consternation of the Preacher and apparent delight of Dennis (Pedro de Senna) a normally quiet member of the group who blossoms under Robert’s influence. Converting The Preached To  was ...