Tezza's Theatre Place

Tosca – credit Ali Wright. “ People’s reaction to opera the first time they see it is very dramatic. They either love it or hate it. If they love it, they will always love it. If they don’t, they may learn to appreciate it, but it will never become part of their soul. ” This is probably the most profound sentence uttered in the movie ‘Pretty Woman’. I remember my first opera, ‘Carmen’ at the ENO. I will not say it changed my life, but I was totally hooked on opera as an art form afterwards. Everyone should have a way into the wonderful world of opera, and one of the best I can recommend is at the Trafalgar Studios where they are currently staging  Opera Undone: Tosca & La bohème  sung in English, the two operas have been reviewed and re-written, bringing them firmly up to date, as individual one-hour productions. The night begins with  Tosca . In his studio, the painter Mario Cavaradossi (Roger Paterson) is working on a portrait of a lady. The lady is beautiful a...

PBGSTUDIOS: Ashley Byam, Keeran Blessie, Declan Spaine. People go to university for many reasons. For the majority, the main one is to get a degree and, following that, a good job. However, along with the educational aspects, university is also a place to make life-long friendships and maybe even meet your one true love. But what happens afterwards? A question that is addressed in Jake Brunger’s  Four Play  at the Above the Stag Theatre. Seven and a half years after having met, and fallen in love, at university, Pete (Keeran Blessie) and Rafe (Ashley Byam) are still together and still in love. They have a lovely apartment and live the perfect DINK life – wearing designer clothes, shopping at Sainsbury’s, drinking Chablis and enjoying snacks containing sun dried tomatoes. Life couldn’t be any better for these two. But there is a niggling doubt that has wormed its way into their relationship. After over seven years together, Rafe and Peter couldn’t have a firmer relationshi...

My first show of 2020 sees me, once again Islington bound, to the fabled King’s Head for Unleash the Llama’s production   JEW…ish . This is the story of TJ (Edie Newman) and Max (Saul Boyer) two millennials that met at university, were members of the polyamory society and shared many experiences together. Now they have left Uni and are in the real world – Max is a not very successful stand-up comic (and part time barista) whilst TJ is a performer who expresses herself through the world of creative interpretive dance. They are still together – sort of – and probably have as many differences with each other as they do things in common. For example, Max is Jewish, and has the stereotypically large overbearing family to go with it, whilst TJ is definitely a Gentile and firmly believes that Max’s family hates her. Given their history can, and indeed should, these two try and make a go of things, or should, and indeed can, they let each other go their separate ways? What a great sta...

For reasons associated with the “Day Job”, I was only able to get to 69 shows this year for London Theatre 1 and the Offies .  However, it has still been a pretty good year for me theatrically, with 24 productions receiving 5 stars. This either means I am getting softer in my old age, or there are some pretty impressive shows out there.  Let’s delve into the top 10 of these and see what we think. No 10 - Operation Black Antler at the Southbank Centre This is the first of two immersive theatre shows in the top 10, and was a real surprise.  To quote the blurb I received - “In Operation Black Antler you are given a new identity as part of a small team; you are briefed and then sent into an undercover operation. You must meet, build empathy with and ultimately try to win the trust of someone whose political and moral views may be the polar opposite of our own. What will you do when the power is in your hands?” - and they weren’t kidding.  Like most immersive th...

A scene from My Brilliant Friend Part 1 centre Catherine McCormack – image by Marc Brenner. Some stories cannot be told in a single sitting. Think Harry Potter. The last book was made into two films and the ‘The Cursed Child’ is two plays. The reason I’m mentioning this is because after seeing  My Brilliant Friend Parts 1 and 2 , at the National Theatre, it struck me that making one book into two plays is hard enough but April De Angelis must have really had their work cut out in converting the four books in Elena Ferrante’s ‘Neapolitan Novels’ into two individual shows. My Brilliant Friend  concerns the friendship of two ladies. When we first meet them Lenù Greco (Niamh Cusack) and Lila Cerullo (Catherine McCormack) are 8-years-old and living in a run-down area of Naples where poverty and small-time crime families are the name of the game. They bond over an incident where they swap dolls and then toss them through a grille into a cellar belonging to the local loan shark. S...

Ghost Stories – Caretaker As the nights draw in, thoughts turn to the autumn and winter celebrations. Right now, that means Halloween and for those of you that like a bit of a fright in your life, I can offer you no better play that  Ghost Stories  at the Ambassadors Theatre. This is a show where, rather like  The Mousetrap  next door, they ask the audience to keep the secrets and I can fully understand why. As plays go, whilst not being truly immersive,  Ghost Stories  is a production that needs to be experienced. Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman have written a fascinating set of stories. The tales are linked together by parapsychologist Professor Phillip Goodman (Simon Lipkin) who has recorded each event and provides his own, more down to earth, ideas of what happened to elderly night watchman Tony (Garry Cooper), wayward teenager Simon (Preston Nyman) and city financier Mike (Richard Sutton). And there is nothing to fault in this production. I both love ...

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...