Tezza's Theatre Place

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/197527/review-father-of-lies-vault-festival/ Sasha Roberts and Tom Worsley in Father of Lies One of the amazing things about the Vault Festival – currently in full swing under Waterloo Station – is the sheer variety of productions that can be seen. I’ve watched a feminist show using the magic of Madonna’s music to get the point across, a farce based around the Holocaust, not to mention a dodgy one-act play about a bus stop and a cello. However, my latest venture to the festival was my first horror show as I went into the Cavern to see Bête Noire Productions’  Father of Lies . Father of Lies  is written and performed by Sasha Roberts and Tom Worsley, two very amiable young men with a taste for the macabre. Their production is based on a true story of a murder, or maybe a double murder, that took place in Würzburg, in what was then West Germany in 1973. It is part presentation and part reenactment as the two guys take the audience t...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/192760/review-this-story-of-yours-white-bear-theatre/ David Sayers as Baxter and Brian Merry as Johnson in ‘This Story of Yours’ – © Lesley Cook Headshots Often, when I go and see a show, part of the fun is trying to work out the ending as the story progresses. Sometimes though, the audience knows exactly what is going to happen at the end. For example in John Hopkins’  This Story of Yours  currently at the White Bear Theatre. The end is directly referred to throughout. In a dark sitting room, Detective Sergeant Johnson (Brian Merry) is sitting alone knocking back the whisky. In fact, he is drowning in it and is not so much three sheets to the wind as totally hammered. He attempts to put a record on the record player but fails to coordinate and ends up making so much noise that he wakes his wife, Maureen (Emma Reade-Davies) who tentatively comes in to find out what has upset her husband. Johnson explains that earlier that evening he ...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/186923/review-antigone-greenwich-theatre-london/ You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family the saying goes. Given the number of dysfunctional families that seem to inhabit the plays of the ancient Greek writers, I can really empathise with this. To give an example, take the tale of  Antigone  which is currently on a UK tour and which I saw recently at the Greenwich Theatre. The battle for Thebes is over and, as the dust settles the cost is counted. As well as the loss of lives in general, the leaders of the two opposing forces – Eteocles and Polyneices – are also among the dead, having fought and killed each other. This would be a tragedy in normal circumstances but, what makes it worse is that these two were brothers – cursed sons of Oedipus and Jocasta – and with their death, it is now up to their uncle Creon (Nicholas Cass-Beggs) to take up the mantle of ruler of Thebes. One of his first moves is to declare Polyne...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/172655/review-my-world-has-exploded-a-little-bit-bella-heesom/ I’m going to start this review with two facts. You may not like them and may resent me saying them but remember, they are facts. First, everyone you know is going to die and second, everyone you have ever met is going to die. Unless there are some huge leaps forward in medical skill, death is inevitable. And yet, somehow, people are often caught unawares when death occurs. Well, not any more thanks to Bella Heesom’s semi-auto autobiographical play  My World Has Exploded a Little Bit  which is having a run at the Ovalhouse. As well as writing the show, Bella, along with the totally mad Eva Alexander, also performs the play. Bella is a really lovely and affable person who warmly greets each member of her audience as they arrive to take their seats. In a real effort to avoid spoilers,  My World Has Exploded a Little Bit  is part performance and part lecture on Bella...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/171657/review-romeo-juliet-union-theatre/ Karl Marx famously said ‘religion is the opium of the people’ however, he was wrong. For many people, there is one thing more important that religion and that is football. The beautiful game can divide families, communities and even countries. In extreme cases, supporters of one team in a town may never speak to or even acknowledge supporters of the local rival team. This sporting tension is the backdrop used for Victor Harvey Productions new version of  Romeo & Juliet  at the Union Theatre. In fair Verona, there are two football teams, Montague and Capulet and in each, there is a young player working his way into the world of football. In Montague, there is Romeo Abram Rooney), while in Capulet, young Juliet (Sam Perry) is the rising star. The two of them meet when Benvolio (Celeste De Veazey), Mercutio (Jack J Fairley) and Romeo sneak into a pub where the Montagues are watching a match. A...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/165886/the-hiv-monologues-ace-hotel/ The HIV Monologues (c) Eliza Goroya According to the National AIDS Trust, in 2015 nearly 90,000 in the UK received HIV specialist care. That’s quite a figure. HIV is no respecter of gender, age, sexual orientation or religion and between 2006 and 2015, there has been a 73% increase in the number of people accessing HIV care. It’s a difficult subject to talk about, and one probably avoided at most dinner parties. But Patrick Cash’s new play  The HIV Monologues  which I saw at the Ace Hotel, Shoreditch, is a wonderful way to get the conversation started. ‘Resting’ actor Alex (Denholm Spurr) has a lot going on at the moment. Not only is he about to go on a first date with Tinder match Nick (Kane Surry) but tomorrow, he is going to a hospital to audition for a role in a play by writer Barney (Jonathan Blake). Alex and Nick’s date is going well – after Nick’s horrendous opening flirting and dreaming up ...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/164967/review-death-takes-a-holiday-charing-cross-theatre/ According to Earthwatch website ecologogy.com, 151,600 people die each day. Now, that’s quite a statistic and only goes to emphasise the fact that on the day you are born you start to die. Okay, not the most cheery way to start a review but just imagine if it was your job to go and collect more than 151,000 people every day and take them to the next stage, whatever that may be. Now, it’s 1922 and you have collected all those that died during The Great War and the Spanish flu epidemic that followed. Wouldn’t you be wanting a bit of downtime at some point? To see how that turns out, you need to pop along to the Charing Cross Theatre where they are presenting the European premiere of  Death Takes a Holiday  (Thom Southerland directs, music and lyrics by Maury Yeston and book by Peter Stone and Thomas Meehan). Duke Vittorio Lamberti (Mark Inscoe) and his family are driving home to t...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/162872/bu21-trafalgar-studio-two-review/ BU21: Theatre503, Clive Kene, Graham O’Mara and Florence Roberts. Image courtesy of David Monteith-Hodge You may remember a few years ago on Emmerdale they dropped a plane on the village. As you would expect in a soap opera, the effect was devastating for a good month or so but then people and stories moved on and it never gets mentioned anymore. Real life is of course, different to television and it takes a long time for individuals to recover from a devastating event, a theme which is examined in Steven Slade’s BU21 at the Trafalgar Studios. There has been a terrorist incident in the UK. Using a scarily easily obtained hand-held surface to air launcher, a terrorist cell has shot down a commercial airline which has crashed to the ground wiping out part of Fulham. Six people connected to the events of that day come together to tell their story and explain the effects of the terrorist action. Graham (Graha...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/162673/the-kite-runner-wyndhams-theatre-review/ You have to love the wide variety of shows currently in London’s West End. Musicals may dominate but there are some fantastic straight plays on as well. And 2017 has started well with  The Kite Runner  opening its doors at Wyndham’s Theatre. Based on Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 novel of the same name,  The Kite Runner  takes the audience on a roughly thirty-year journey through the life of Amir (Ben Turner). Amir is a middle-class Afghan boy living with his merchant father (Emilio Doorgasingh). The two live together but are not very close. Amir believes it is because his father blames him for the fact his mother died in childbirth. Amir is not really interested in business and wishes to pursue a career in writing. His father doesn’t understand this and often chides the boy for his perceived weakness and lack of courage. Luckily, Amir can talk to his father’s closest friend Rahim Khan...