Tezza's Theatre Place

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...

2018 Bleach – Paris Fringe The Vault Festival continues to amaze and entertain with a whole range of shows and productions that cover every taste and interest. Virtually everything I have seen in the years I have been covering the Vault Festival has been somewhere between good and awesome – in fact, only one show comes to mind that I really didn’t like. However, occasionally there is a production that totally takes your breath away and leaves you with a profound sense of seeing – and maybe participating in – something exceptionally special. A case in point is Dan Ireland-Reeves’  Bleach  which runs at the festival until the 10th February. Tyler Everett is a lad who has a degree under his belt and has, like so many others, come to London to make his fortune. Unfortunately for Tyler, his life is not like Dick Whittington’s and he is currently living in a small – or compact and bijou in estate agent speak – bedsit. His initial entry into the employment world sees him startin...

Liberty Rides Forth! As I sit at my desk, a blank screen with a flashing cursor in front of me, I sometimes say a silent prayer asking for some form of divine intervention to give me an idea of what to write. This is the same problem facing the hero of David Kent’s new musical  Liberty Rides Forth!  Which has just started its run at the Waterloo East Theatre. In a suburban flat, things are not going well for Trevor (William Hazell). He has a simple life plan, write a hugely successful novel, make millions and get the girl – someone from his office called Susie who he has loved from afar for a long, long time. Unfortunately for Trevor, his plan has one major problem – he can’t write. Trevor is keen, he has done his research on how to write and has started lots of books in various styles but, to date, he hasn’t actually finished one and been able to add those magical words ‘the end’ to his magnum opus. Fortunately, Trevor is about to get some assistance in the shape of three...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/197788/review-redbellyblack-theatres-ok-bye-vault-festival/ RedBellyBlack Theatre’s OK, Bye – VAULT Festival 2018 (courtesy of Robert Boulton) There is a saying about opera that ‘it ain’t really over till the fat lady sings’. This is probably because lots of operas end when a well-proportioned lady sings her final aria then dies, bringing the curtain down with her. This expression has made its way into normal language, a fact exploited by the RedBellyBlack Theatre Company in their production  OK, Bye which I saw at the Vault Festival. This is the story of three siblings – April (Kate Goodfellow) the eldest, Peter (Sam Cornforth) an advertising executive and baby of the family Oliver (Oscar Scott-White) a successful freelance nature photographer – who have come together for the funeral of their mother. It’s the first time the three have been together for a while as the boys are very busy with their professional lives and only got home to vis...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/197662/review-bismillah-an-isis-tragicomedy-vault-festival/ Bismillah! An Isis Tragicomedy The media likes things to be easy. Everything is black or white. You’re a Brexiteer or a Remainer. Jeremy Corbyn is an inspired leader or a closet Trot, etc. Obviously, this approach ignores the shades of grey that are between the two extremes and sometimes leads to very skewed reporting. Still, there are some absolutes in the world and in the war against the Caliphate, it’s really easy. ISIS is bad and everyone that fights them – especially our brave troops – is good, simples! Let that be your starting point as you head into the Vault Festival for Wound Up Theatre’s one-act play  Bismillah! An Isis Tragicomedy . The show started when we entered the performance space. There, in the centre of the room surrounded by the audience – was a man in army uniform tied to a stake as the music of Queen blasted out. This is Dean (Matthew Greenhough) a soldier who...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/197560/review-and-the-winner-is-vault-festival-2018/ They do say ‘be careful what you wish for’ and I think most of us can agree with that at various points in our lives as the thing we thought we wanted turns out to be a mistake. And down at the Vault Festival, Paul Westwood explores this idea in his one-act play  And the Winner is… This short show, running time around twenty minutes, is a difficult one to describe. But let’s start with the easy bits. The production started with the small audience, nine all together including yours truly, meeting at the entrance to the Vault and then being taken for a short walk to a caravan parked around the corner. We entered and sat down, the door was closed and for a few moments, we all sat there unaware of what to do now. There was a little small talk and then the caravan door opened and the performance began. The story basically revolves around Julie (Julie Yammanee) a young attractive actress in her...

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/196133/a-serious-play-about-world-war-ii-vault-festival/ When you have won every comedy award possible, what else is a production company to do? Well, in the case of Willis & Vere, who did so well last year at the Vault Festival with their show  The Starship Osiris , the next challenge was to move from comedy to drama. So this year, they have brought their new show  A Serious Play About World War II  to the Vault and I was lucky enough to get to see it. This is no ordinary production. It begins with Ian Fleming (no relation I think) playing some mournful music on a violin. The music sounds like it is Jewish in origin and the reason for that becomes clear when George Vere and Adam Willis come on to the stage to talk about this project. George and Adam have carried out a lot of research before writing their show which tells the story of holocaust survivor Hirshel Günzberg. A Jewish boy was taken to Auschwitz when he was ju...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/194550/madonna-or-whore-the-vault-festival-review/ When you think about it in the great scheme of things, sixty minutes is not a long time. Two episodes of a standard sitcom or the average lunch break. Let’s be honest, I can put off writing a review for longer than an hour and not notice the time pass. However, Holly Morgan’s production  Madonna or Whore? , down at the Vault Festival, managed in just sixty short minutes to affect me so much, it may even have changed my life in some small way. The show itself is based on the “Madonna–whore complex” first identified by Sigmund Freud. Under the rubric of psychic impotence, this psychological complex is said to develop in men who see women as either saintly Madonnas or debased whores. I’m guessing right now you’re thinking “that sounds like it’s not for me”. I can understand that, as my first reaction was also along those lines. But stick with it as Holly has not only written a fantastic one a...

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/190333/review-christmas-farce-waterloo-east-theatre/ A theatre show is often like a swan. Out on stage, all is serene and beautiful whilst backstage there is a hive of activity going on. There have been various shows written about life backstage at a theatre –  Noises Off  springs to mind, though I’ve still not got around to seeing it. However, if you would like to see life backstage during a Christmas show, then you can do no better than toodle off to the Waterloo East Theatre to see Shaun Kitchener’s play  Christmas Farce . Thirty minutes – or in theatrical parlance, The Half – before curtain up and Alice (Natalie Lester) is the only person in the Green Room of a regional theatre. The fact it is Christmas is demonstrated not only by Alice’s OTT festive jumper but also with the gaudy decorations festooning the place. These are the handiwork of back-stage worker Makenzie (Marc-Gee Finch) and, while they are a tad tacky, they do...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/187131/review-three-mothers-waterloo-east-theatre-london/ Europe is awash with migrants. War, genocide, economic conditions and deportation have caused a mass of dispossessed people to be wandering around seeking everything from a new life away from fear to just somewhere warm to rest their head. The funny thing is, anyone reading this opening will believe they already know about the migrant issue. It’s on the news all the time and has become a bit of political hot potato. But, the current situation is not the first time Europe has suffered a migrant crisis. You only need to go back seventy years to find another time when migration was a major problem for the countries of Europe. Today and the past are at the heart of Matilda Velevitch’s play  Three Mothers  at the Waterloo East Theatre. Told as three intertwining monologues,  Three Mothers  tells the story of three women separated by time and space. First, there is Khady (C...

https://www.lastminutetheatretickets.com/londonwestend/king-kong-is-a-superb-and-highly-entertaining-production/ King Kong A Comedy – Benjamin Chamberlain and Rob Crouch The great ape has fascinated the world for years. From his first appearance on film in 1933 – complete with Fay Wray’s screaming – through to the Dino De Laurentiis version which substituted the World Trade Centre for the Empire State Building, and the subsequent versions, the primate resident of Skull Island has held a special place in the cinema going public’s heart. So, I was very excited to be asked to go along and see a theatrical version of King Kong at the Waterloo Vaults Theatre. Notorious director Carl Denham (Bob Crouch) is heading off on an adventure. He has heard of a mysterious island where the locals worship a 100ft ape called Kong. Carl has found a boat, a captain (Sam Donnelly), a dashing – well sort of – first mate Jack Driscoll (Ben Chamberlain) and a crew, which includes Token Guy (Brendan Murp...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/171373/review-miss-nightingale-the-musical-the-vaults/ Nurse Brown – Tamar Broadbent ‘Miss Nightingale’, Miss Nightingale the musical 2017 Before 1933, Berlin was the place to be. There were bars, clubs and parties to satisfy every taste. Unlike most of Europe at the time, it was possible in this pre-WW2 city to be openly homosexual and enjoy a relatively normal – whatever that is – life. However, things changed in 1933 when the Nazi party under Adolph Hitler, took control. Bars, clubs, cabarets were shut down in droves and hedonism was discouraged by extreme measures. If you happened to be a poor Jewish homosexual man, then your options were very limited and the best move was to get out of Germany and seek more friendly skies. Welcome to the world of  Miss Nightingale  which is currently enjoying a successful run at The Vaults, Waterloo. London 1942 and the war is at its height. The Americans have finally turned up to join in and Lond...

http://www.carnstheatrepassion.com/south-afreakins/ In most patriarchal societies, it is taken as fact that the men rule the proverbial roost. Of course, the truth is totally different. The reality is that in most heterosexual couples, whilst the main believes he holds the power, the woman knows that she does. For example, when a chap retires, he may think he is going to potter about, a bit of gardening, some golf, a few jars with his mates. But many a wife will have made plans for his retirement well in advance of the day it actually happens. If you don’t believe me, then go check out Robyn Paterson’s one woman show  The South Afreakins  at the Vault Festival. Gordon and Helene are having a problem. All the lights in their house seem to have gone off at once. Helene is agitated whilst Gordon seems quite calm and in control. Eventually, they manage to get some illumination working and the two of them settle down. Gordon to read his paper and enjoy his first day of retirem...

https://www.londontheatre1.com/news/166447/what-shall-we-do-with-the-cello-review-vault-festival/ The Vault Festival is renowned for the diversity of its productions. Over the course of the festival, there will be a show or two that are pure ‘marmite’, loved by some and disliked by others. An example of this can be found in Atelier Theatre Studio’s UK premiere of Matei Visniec’s  What Shall We Do With the Cello? . The action is set in a waiting room where there are four chairs, a cello and a bow. Suddenly, in rushes, a man (Nick Allen) obviously getting away from the storm outside. He picks up the cello and starts to play. The music is very contemporary, with hard, discordant notes that jar the ears rather than a flowing melody. Soon after the man starts to play, the Lady with the Veil (Simona Armstrong) enters. She is young and pretty but and has a rather prim and proper appearance. The two of them are not alone for long and are soon joined by The Man with the Stick (Mihai A...