Tezza's Theatre Place

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...

Ciarán Hinds (Hugh), Colin Morgan (Owen), Adetomiwa Edun (Lieutenant Yolland). Image by Catherine Ashmore Love it or loathe it, the British Empire is a rich source of material that is ready-made for novels or plays – usually suggesting the English were bad while everyone else good. However, some writers have approached the subject in less obvious ways and one of those is Irish playwright Brian Friel, whose 1980 play  Translations  has recently been revived at the National Theatre. 1833 and in the quiet community of Baile Beag, life continues much as it always has. The inhabitants are an insular lot who speak Irish, Greek and Latin – thanks to a knowledge of the classics and the teachings of the Catholic church – but who don’t speak English, the language of their rulers. In the local ‘hedge’ school, aspiring teacher Manus (Seamus O’Hara) is working with Sarah (Michelle Fox) a local girl with a severe speech impediment. His father, schoolmaster Hugh (Ciarán Hinds) has not ye...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/191539/slavas-snowshow-at-the-royal-festival-hall-review/ Yellow clown in snowstorm – Photo credit V Mishukov I’m really not keen on clowns. Let’s be honest, I’m pretty terrified of them and have been for quite a few years now. I know it’s irrational, but there it is. So when I was asked to go and review a clown show at the Royal Festival Hall, I decided to face my fears and go for it. Apart from clowns, I had no real idea what I was in store for and  Slava’s Snowshow  was a complete surprise on every level. I sort of got the idea something was different when I walked into the auditorium and saw just how messy it was. Normally the RFH is a beautiful wood panelled performance space overlooked by pods that could have come from the set of Star Wars. Today, however, the sides were covered with a black curtain and there were small pieces of paper on every surface. I took my seat among the hundreds of children that had been brought to the sh...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/179829/cirkus-cirkors-limits-southbank-centres-royal-festival-hall/ Cirkus Cirkor – Credit Einar Kling-Odencrants Most shows put on at the theatre tell a story. Straight plays, musicals, ballet, opera, they all have a story to tell that needs to translate from the stage to the waiting audience sitting in the auditorium. Some shows however, are not expected to have much of a narrative to communicate and are there for pure entertainment. So, what happens when a non-story telling piece of theatre decides to do something different and give their audience something to follow as they perform? Well you can find out with a visit to  Cirkus Cirkor: Limits which I caught at the Royal Festival Hall. Limits  is conceived and directed by Tilde Björfors and sets out to imagine a world without borders and mixes music, movement and acrobatics to tell the story of movement both voluntary and especially forced. In with the physical, there are projectio...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/178230/briefs-close-encounters-underbelly-festival-southbank-review/ Briefs Close Encounters: credit Kate Pardey Well the big purple cow may have gone up north for a while but that doesn’t mean the fun is over on the South Bank and taking up residence in the Spiegeltent for the next twelve weeks are a group of talented chaps from Australia who plan to totally blow your mind as they take you to a galaxy far, far away. Welcome to  Briefs: Close Encounters. Sometimes you can gauge the type of show you are about to see by the audience. And the first thing to notice about this group was how excited they were. The queue to get into the tent started about half an hour before the doors opened. Lots of very excited looking people stood laughing together waiting to be let in. Once in, people who had seen the Briefs boys before headed to their favourite seats while everyone milled around – all the seating is unallocated. My companion and I managed to ...