Tezza's Theatre Place

There’s not many things that get me travelling out to West London in the early hours of a rainy Wednesday morning, but sometimes, the reviewer’s life means sacrificing sleep so that you can get to the Lyric Hammersmith in time for a 09:30 performance of  Father Christmas . Based on the 1973 book written and drawn by Raymond Briggs,  Father Christmas  tells the story of the man himself from the moment he is dragged out of his sleep on the morning of the 24th December until he finally gets back into bed on the evening of the 25th. Now, this is not the jolly Santa shown in so many adverts. Oh no,  Father Christmas  is an old man who is, well let’s not beat about the bush, a bit of a curmudgeon. He lives in a fairly ordinary house with his cat, dog and two reindeer and you get the feeling he is less enthusiastic about Christmas Eve than the majority of the world. Still, he is nothing if not a professional, and deep down he does still love his job, and so he dons...

Left to Right: Eleri Jones, Isaura Barbé-Brown The concept of robots has been around for thousands of years. Basically, since humans first learned how to work, they started thinking about ways of getting out of it by having some device do the work for them. Since then, technology has moved on and these days, either directly or indirectly, robots are a part of our lives. Already, there is a hotel in Japan staffed with robots and how long will it be before we get our automated friends to do everything that we would rather not? A question that is examined in Nessah Muthy’s one-act play  Sex With Robots and Other Devices , part of the Sex Season at the King’s Head Theatre. The show – performed by Isaura Barbé-Brown, Deshaye Gale and Eleri Jones – sees a future where ordering a totally realistic sex robot is as easy as getting a takeaway delivered. Each scene shows the interaction of human or humans with their own personal robot, and we get an idea as to why they have decided to go ...

l-r Holly Sumpton, Matt Hunt, Samuel Fogell. Photo credit Robert Workman Between 1950 and 1966 actor-manager Brian Rix ran a series of plays in the West End. Because of their location and the type of play they were, they soon became known as the ‘Whitehall Farces’. Now, since those days, the Whitehall Theatre has changed its name to the Trafalgar Studio and, whilst there are still many farces along the road in Whitehall, there hasn’t really been any play as successful as Brian’s five were. However, as Mark Twain once didn’t say, reports of the death of farce are grossly exaggerated and a stone’s throw from Whitehall, in the Criterion Theatre, farce is alive and extremely well in Mischief Theatre’s  The Comedy About a Bank Robbery . Set in 1958 Minneapolis City,  The Comedy About a Bank Robbery  tells the story of Mitch Ruscitti (Matt Hunt) and his accomplice Neil Cooper (Samson Ajewole) as they set out to rob the crookedest bank in the most crooked town in America of...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/196428/review-the-york-realist-donmar-warehouse/# Lesley Nicol (Mother) and Ben Batt (George) in The York Realist at the Donmar Warehouse, directed by Robert Hastie. Photo by Johan Persson The kitchen is the heart of the home. It is the place where we receive our sustenance and is the only room that everyone in a house is likely to visit and meet other members of the household. This is particularly true in a small property such as a cottage on a farm, the setting for Peter Gill’s 2001 play  The York Realist  which has been revived at the Donmar Warehouse. Yorkshire farm labourer George (Ben Batt) lives in a tied cottage with his elderly Chapel going mother (Lesley Nicol) and his life pretty much revolves around the farming calendar. The two of them roll along nicely together. George’s mother is getting on in years and is not as fit as she once was, but she always ensures he has a hot meal waiting and a clean shirt ironed. There is only...

https://www.lastminutetheatretickets.com/londonwestend/the-importance-of-being-earnest-brockley-jack-studio-theatre/ The Importance of Being Earnest Shakespeare’s plays are very flexible. They can be set in pretty much any time and location and they will still on the whole work. Other writers are not so lucky and are really fixed in time and space. Agatha Christie and Oscar Wilde are two authors that come to mind in this instance. And this theory of mine was borne out with a visit to the Brockley Jack Studio to see  The Importance of Being Earnest . It’s nearly time for tea and butler Lane (Daniel Desiano-Plummer) is setting out the cucumber sandwiches and bread & butter. His master Algernon Moncrieff (Daniel Hall) is expecting guests for tea and wants everything to be perfect. Unfortunately, before they arrive, Algernon gets a visit from his good friend Earnest Worthing (Riley Jones). Normally a welcome distraction in Algernon’s life, Earnest could not have arrived at a...