East End Review

Tag: Arcola Theatre

Sarai: stage review – Old Testament drama proves power of the scriptures

Karlina Grace-Paseda in Sarai at the Arcola Theatre. Photograph: Sarah Hickson

Scriptural tale Sarai begins with the audience being plunged into literal and figurative darkness, as Abraham’s companion Sarai laments her childless state in an unforgiving ancient land.

It’s a thunderous opening to a story of migration, family and fulfilment, with Karlina Grace-Paseda as Sarai announcing herself as the play’s titular character and central force using the full force of her body and voice.

The production uses a minimal set, with music the only accompaniment to the performance. Sarai manipulates her on-stage environment to show the camp she has left, while costume changes accompany different circumstances.

Mood lighting reflects Sarai’s state-of-mind and invites the audience into her physical and symbolic journey. The live musical accompaniment is a fusion of cultures and could easily find a home at experimental jazz venue Cafe Oto next door.

Musical director Byron Wallen has assembled a quartet from the African, Middle Eastern and Japanese traditions, which provides a wholly original backdrop to events. Dynamic range is conveyed with the diverse array of instruments including cellos, trumpets, flutes, harps, percussion and drums. This pan-continental approach voices Sarai’s tribulations and is played with verve and precision, converging with her movements in moments of epiphany.

The production tells a religious story, all the while endowing it with wider significance. Grace-Paseda’s performance is full of classical intensity and poise, as she dominates the material in a multi-faceted, towering performance. Sarai is an enveloping theatrical experience that brings to life its source material and a reminder of the power and quality of Old Testament narratives.

Sarai is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL until 7 November.
arcolatheatre.com

November 2, 2015
Octagon – stage review: poetry that ‘shivers your timbers…and sizzles your spine’

Octagon (L-R Asan N’Jie, Solomon Israel, Harry Jardine) Photograph: Anna Söderblom

It didn’t take long for Nadia Latif, director of Homegrown, the controversially-cancelled play about young converts to radical Islam, to get back in the directing saddle.
At the Arcola this month Latif has directed Octagon, a new play by US spoken word artist Kristiana Rae Colón.

Referencing a huge range of contemporary issues from the nature of creativity, feminism and sexuality to personal legacy, Octagon depicts a group of would-be slam poets on the road to the national finals at the titular nightclub.

What resonates so strongly in the piece is the fact that it is written by an insider. The lyrics of a seasoned poet lend the text an authenticity that cannot be manufactured.

And the extremely strong cast of eight is up to the challenge. Each poem is delivered with such urgency and relish that it sounds as if the performers had penned the words themselves.

Estella Daniels as the host of the knockout rounds commands the room with an ethereal grace, striking fear into those who dare to cross her whilst gently teasing the audience into whoops and claps when a rhyme deserves it.

As she states at the top of the show, the judges are looking for poetry that “shivers your timbers, halogens your heart and sizzles your spine”, and we are not disappointed.

At its explosive best, Crystal Condie as Jericho delivers ‘Malala writes to Miley Cyrus’ with danger and urgency.

To the Taliban gunmen she says: “I spat I am Malala like acid back in his face” reminding Miley that her “right to gyrate didn’t come free”.

Latif’s direction is clean and specific, echoing the sharp clarity of the text. In one of the final moments, the poets reflect on whether they will go ahead with the national slam final given all that has happened.

What emerges is a scene, written in verse, which feels so fresh and present that it might be entirely improvised. Like great verse writers before her, Colón’s rhymes please the ears, but it is her complex and thoughtful provocations which follow you home.

Just beneath the surface, there are densely riddled arguments around sexuality, race and religion that go fathoms deep, the intricacy of their phrasing inviting you to mouth the words whilst you chew over the ideas a little longer.

For all its verbal dexterity however, the play does lack structural rigour. The narrative thread on which the poetry hangs is weak and the scenes a hotch-potch of different forms from monologue to drama to more abstract scenes.

But for the authenticity of the live experience, Octagon certainly hits the mark.

Octagon is at Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL until 17 October.

www.arcolatheatre.com

October 8, 2015
Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage – stage review: between a ruck and a hard place

Tackling discrimination: Crouch, Touch, Pause Engage. Photograph: Robert Workman

In 2007 the Welsh rugby legend Gareth Thomas published the first of his two autobiographies. In the introduction he writes “As soon as I was made captain of Wales, I pledged to be honest to myself and honest with everyone around me.”

Two years later he came out as gay and has since called the book “one big lie from beginning to end”.

Thomas’s journey is re-told in Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage, a new play by Robin Soans created by Out of Joint Theatre Company and the National Theatre of Wales. Using text from real-life interviews, the play sees six actors play Thomas, who is known by his childhood nickname ‘Alfie’, with each taking their turn to sport the Welsh jersey and catch the rugby ball, which indicates a change of actor.

Thomas says he wasn’t scared that people would reject him because of his sexuality, but because “suddenly you turn around and tell them you’ve been lying to them for twenty years”.

As is so often the case, his best friend Compo had known all along. But his wife and parents hadn’t – and nor had his fans.

But it’s not just a play about Thomas. As he suffers the taunts and jeers of the crowd, and his secret gradually becomes public knowledge, we also hear the testimony of a young girl whose own taunts and jeers drove her to edge of the void.

Darcy, played with tenderness and humour by Lauren Roberts, is a character created from interviews with two suicide attempt survivors from Bridgend, South Wales.

Both parties live to fight another day and even meet to share their experiences, Alfie confessing: “There’s so much of me I see in you.”

The show comes to a close with a demonstration of the scrum – the inspiration for the title – the forwards huddling together before crouching to engage their opponents.

The pressure and excitement of various big match encounters punctuate the story as it unfolds and we are frequently presented with a huge gladiator of a man – strong and brave, and totally unequipped for the labours that face him.

Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL until 20 June.
arcolatheatre.co.uk

June 8, 2015
Rugby drama tells the story of a pioneer for sexual equality

Tackling discrimination: cast members of Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage. Photograph: Robert Workman

Following a tip off, I arrive to meet the playwright Robin Soans, holding a packet of Jaffa Cakes. In Soans’ new play Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage, opening at the Arcola this month, the main character’s mother says she always knows her son’s mood based on his eating habits – when things got bad, she says, he stopped eating Jaffa Cakes: “He can usually eat them by the packet.”

The son in question is Welsh rugby legend Gareth Thomas, who in 2009 came out, bringing a lifetime of denial to an end and beginning the long journey towards acceptance among his fellow professionals.

Accepting a Jaffa Cake and dunking it into a cup of lemon tea, Soans tells me it is domestic detail like this that is so essential in a documentary play: “If you want people to believe the big stuff and go on the big journeys, you’ve got to woo them with the detail,” he says.

The play is about a pioneer. “It’s about someone who did something that had never been done before,” says Soans. During research for the play Thomas admitted that whilst it was a groundbreaking act, it also came with the knowledge that “you have to be prepared to take the shit for it”.

And Thomas did, being ritually insulted on rugby fields around the country in his late career. Six years on, it is his resilience and self-awareness through those dark times that have made him a hero to more than just sport fans, Soans says.

Thomas is very keen for his story to be told – hence persistent rumours of a forthcoming Mickey Rourke film portrayal – but when Soans initially approached him, he was sceptical.

“I think he distrusted the theatre as being exploitative and pretentious, but the first time he saw a run-through in the theatre he was gasping, he was sitting up, it was this absolute recognition.”

On stage Thomas’ personal story is interwoven with that of his hometown of Bridgend, which, around the same time, saw 25 teenage suicides in just two years.

“The two things I never, never try to be are either worthy or grim,” says Soans, “even if it’s a very serious subject.” Instead, with humour and humanity his express intention is, he says, to “reveal a piece of human nature that hasn’t been revealed in that way before.”

Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL from 20 May – 20 June
arcolatheatre.com

May 13, 2015
Clarion – stage review: ‘filthy, dark, hilarious and utterly human’

Greg Hicks as Morris Honeyspoon in Clarion. Photograph: Simon Annand

As Clarion – a deeply satirical look at Britain’s press from former tabloid journalist Mark Jagasia – opens at Dalston’s Arcola Theatre, one can’t help but compare it to the successful run of Great Britain in the West End. Where the former was a showy, colourful, big-budget production, Clarion is filthy, dark, hilarious and utterly human.

The play is set in the offices of the Clarion, Britain’s worst newspaper. As the paper comes under fire for its questionable content, leaked to a rival from the inside, the barebones staff descend into hysteria. Some of theatre’s A-list take a turn on the stage here, delivering some devilishly crafted performances as typical tabloid journos.

The first half of the opening act features jarring scene changes as the fade outs slice the action. It lacks subtly – though one feels that’s more about the direction than the script. It improves massively about an hour in, however; what starts out as over-exaggerated stereotyping morphs into a scathing, witty diatribe as the first act picks up tempo and charge.

It’s probing, laden with expletives and with some cracking one-liners. Clare Higgins as long-standing columnist Verity Stokes carries the whole thing, her fading power driving her betrayal, while her editor Morris Honeyspoon, played with shocking acrimony by a remarkable Greg Hicks, is an old-school tyrant. He relentlessly picks on junior staff and vastly overestimates his own opinions, ignorance welded to self-belief.

The staging is remarkably evocative of the exact environment the dialogue musters, despite the limited space, and there’s a palpable sense of unease that only intensifies as the story breaks. It seems as though the ‘traitor in our midst’ trope is very revealing of Jagasia’s role as whistle-blower through the very staging of this production. The severity of the attack is mitigated with raucous humour; the state of Britain scene is one of the funniest in the production, rousing rowdy applause from the audience.

Clarion isn’t dislikeable because it’s a poor production, but because it’s unpleasant to watch – the characters are utterly morally and socially reprehensible, throwing out the question of how deeply we’re manipulated by our own press. Jagasia and Ergen have done a magnificent job in bringing this issue to light; it’s not just satire, it’s a damning reflection of the state of British press and politics. With such an accurate rendering of our reality, it feels wrong to laugh, but as witness to a play of this quality, you won’t be able to help it.

Clarion is at Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL until 16 May.
arcolatheatre.com

April 30, 2015
Media satire endorsed by Mark Rylance opens at the Arcola

Greg Hicks and Clare Higgins in Clarion. Photograph: Robert Davenport

Playwright Mark Jagasia is used to seeing his work in print, although his new play Clarion, which opens this month at the Arcola, is his first.

That is because Jagasia was for years a tabloid journalist, working as a reporter for the Evening Standard, and later becoming Showbiz Editor of the Daily Express.

So what better subject for his debut play than the state of the British media, set in the office of Britain’s worst newspaper, the Daily Clarion?

“It’s about the ideologies behind the headlines and about the way newspapers are used to further political agendas that readers may not be aware of,” Jagasia explains.

As well as the press, Clarion takes aim at the rise of nationalism globally, UKIP, and the “general ominous sense that’s in the air at the moment”. It’s main weapon in doing so, however, is humour. “I was trying to write a ferocious comedy about quite a serious subject, says Jagasia. “I think the best way to tackle that is through comedy – sugaring the pill.”

For a debut play, Clarion boasts some big name actors. The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Greg Hicks is monomaniacal editor Morris Honeyspoon, who rules the newsroom with an iron fist, while Olivier Award- winning actor and Dr Who star Clare Higgins plays “washed up foreign correspondent” Verity Stokes.

“It’s not based on a particular newspaper,” insists Jagasia, “but anecdotes I heard do inform the background. There are some extraordinary characters in newsrooms. And the editor is not based on one specific person but on a specific type of monster.”

Clarion took its first steps towards being staged when it was spotted by the Arcola’s Playwrought new writing festival, where new plays are premiered as rehearsed readings. For it to be picked up, then staged, is itself no mean feat, but the story of how Jagasia managed to snag two such experienced actors for his first play has even more of a fairytale ring to it.

Around 13 years ago at the Globe, Jagasia met Mark Rylance at an afterparty. Rylance advised Jagasia to leave tabloid journalism and get a job in theatre. When that finally happened, and Jagasia was struggling to find a home for Clarion, he decided to send the play to Mark Rylance.

“I didn’t know anyone in the theatre at all, so I sent it to his dressing room on spec and he really loved the play and opened a lot of doors for it,” Jagasia says.

Jagasia gave up working as a newspaper hack more than five years ago. What does he miss most, I ask.

“Probably the wild parties. I was the showbiz editor so I moved in the showbiz world,” he says, before adding: “Probably the humour actually. The gallows humour in newsrooms would be hair-raising if it was put down in black and white, but if you lived through it there was quite a camaraderie about the tabloid press that’s largely disappeared now.”

Not that Jagasia has any time to mope about the decline of Fleet Street. Although Clarion is yet to open, a follow up is already on the cards. “I’m sat with a towel around my head trying to write the next one,” he tells me, as our phone conversation draws to a close. “The moment you have any degree of success you think you’re going to bask in it but you’re not. Suddenly it’s all about the next play. So back to work basically.”

Clarion is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL
15 April – 16 May
arcolatheatre.com

April 14, 2015
Happy Ending at the Arcola – stage review

Cast of Happy Ending

First things first, Happy Ending isn’t, strictly speaking, a musical. Yes, the characters express themselves through song, but arguably not consistently enough to warrant that definition. With the first half containing only two numbers, in this case what the term ‘musical’ refers to is the tone – light, funny and easy going.

Carrie Evans, a revered theatre actor has cancer. On her first day of chemotherapy she is introduced to three fellow female patients, each with their own quirky ways of dealing with the unmentionable disease. For all her grace and elegance however, Carrie seems to be the one suffering the most, not willing or able to accept her fate like the others. The fate she denies is not death, but the gradual degradation that years of treatment will undoubtedly bring about.

Clean, white, and impersonal, the set looks excellent in the space, and the supporting cast fizz with all the necessary vigour. The dialogue is clear and fast-paced throughout, skimming merrily across the surface of a rather more complex debate than can be explored in this form, but the show is nevertheless diverting and light-hearted.

The second half gets into the meat of the argument, which is largely defined by a conversation over who should decide whether Carrie sticks with the treatment or not as Carrie appeals to the doctor’s humanity and the doctor refers her to the law and the Hippocratic oath.

Execution and sentimentality take precedence over depth and moral complexity here but Happy Ending succeeds in fulfilling the author’s promises in the programme notes about it being a “musical-comical fantasy about a subject that people don’t talk about”.

Happy Ending is at Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL until 7 March
arcolatheatre.com

February 11, 2015
The Singing Stones – stage review: ‘reflecting a familiar feeling of impotence’

Looking back at the Arab Spring: the cast of The Singing Stones

The Singing Stones is a jigsaw puzzle of perspectives on what the play’s creators see as potentially “the greatest missed opportunity of the 21st century”. In 2010, the Arab Spring swept through North Africa and the Middle East where despite countries such as Egypt booming financially the voice of the people was entirely absent.

Freedom of expression is a vivid theme in Kay Adshead’s latest piece of political theatre. Graphic images of lips being fused shut by fire and singing voices silenced by brutality recur. The play opens with an argument that making art, or reflecting creatively on war contributes nothing of any value, and it closes with the response – but what else can we do?

The reaction of the woman sat next to me at the theatre seemed to epitomise how many of us have responded to the barbarous acts carried out by the various regimes before, during and indeed after the revolution.

When the actors spoke of so-called ‘virginity tests’ performed on the roadside she tutted. It wasn’t long before, head in hands, she let out an exasperated and audible sigh at the story of a young woman’s body being mutilated. She gasped in disgust when more bodies were burned, and by the curtain she was crying silently, desperately to herself.

This journey from quiet disapproval, through vocal objection to helplessness seems to reflect a common feeling about the atrocities occurring in Iraq and Syria today. The Singing Stones’ press night even coincided with a debate in the House of Commons as to whether the British government is doing enough to help.

Although Adshead’s play occasionally feels like grandstanding, and some of its points are trite, it does reflect a familiar feeling of impotence. The piece falls down in places thanks to a lack of structure, but its message is a good one. It is an invitation to listen, to witness, and to speak up.

The Singing Stones is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL.
www.arcolatheatre.com

February 9, 2015
Sex Workers Opera: raising marginalised voices and challenging sterotypes

Accusing: the cast of the Sex Workers Opera

Sex work and opera may seem unlikely bedfellows, but one thing both have in common is strong public preconceptions.

The desire to challenge stereotypical thinking and stigma has brought the two together in the Sex Workers Opera, which comes to Dalston’s Arcola Theatre this month.

The show lets prostitutes, escorts, webcam performers, strippers and other sex workers tell their stories on stage through performance and music, foregrounding personal experiences good and bad.

“Everyone has an opinion on sex work,” explains Siobhan Knox, co-director of the show and co-founder of Experimental Experience theatre company. ”But when it comes down to it, the only people who really have the right to talk about it are sex workers themselves.”

“Very rarely is sex work represented in art through the words of the people actually doing it,” adds Alex Etchart, also co-director and co-founder.

“We put a call out for stories we could use in the opera, and received them from all over the world. We want to represent the diversity of sex workers on their own terms.”

As such, the less obvious aspects of selling sex are highlighted in the show, such as the close ties some forge with their clients and the personal empowerment – and disempowerment – experienced through the profession.

The term opera is used in the loosest sense, with the show incorporating other musical styles like hip-hop, jazz and spoken word. It was in part inspired by Bertold Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera of 1928, following the tradition of using a supposedly highbrow artform to explore gritty, earthbound themes. Nonetheless, the concept has been embraced by the opera establishment, with the Royal Opera House providing financial backing and guidance.

“Opera is one of the most established music and art forms, while sex work is one of the most marginalised professions,” says Etchart. “People often stop and stare when they see the poster for the show!”

The sensitivity of the opera’s subject matter is brought home by the Experimental Experience’s choice to cast a mix of sex workers and their allies in the production. As no-one reveals who is who, anonymity is ensured.

Contributing to the opera has been an intensely personal experience for many of the performers. The directors insist the intention is not to glorify sex work, rather to present a spectrum of viewpoints, unvarnished and straight from the horse’s mouth.

“Our main message isn’t ‘sex work is really great!’ or ‘sex work is really bad!’” says Siobhan. “It’s just literally: listen to sex workers.

“Whether you think it’s good or bad, objectification or empowerment, come and listen to a sex worker tell you about their life. Then you can open up a new dialogue.”

The Sex Workers Opera is at Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL from 26–29 January 2015

January 22, 2015
The Rivals at the Arcola – review

Iain Batchelor as Captain Jack Absolute in The Rivals. Photograph: Simon Annand

Mushy and predictable, with loosely held together plot lines, a slew of stereotypes and Jennifer Aniston with plenty of ‘issues’ – the romantic comedy is an oft-derided genre.

Struggling rom-com scriptwriters could do worse than head to the Arcola Theatre for Selina Cadell’s revival of Richard Sheridan’s 1775 play The Rivals, for a master class in frolicsome repartee.

The Rivals, set in the fashionable Bath, has all the genre’s regular features – the staid best friend in the sub-plot romance, furious fathers and mooning lovers.

But Sheridan’s characters are so artfully drawn, so full of eccentricity and eloquence, that Dalston’s packed out playhouse sits in thrall throughout this (admittedly rather long) comedy of manners.

Lydia Languish (Jennifer Rainsford) has read too many of the newly popular trashy novels. She has bad-boy syndrome and in a big way. From her frilly boudoir she dreams of a starry- lit elopement with her pauper ensign Beverley and thrills of penniless passion.

Despite the efforts of her aunt Mrs Malaprop (Gemma Jones) – whose muddled meanings coined the word ‘malapropism’ – and her orders to “illiterate him” from her memory, Lydia wants to live like common people.

But the discovery that Beverley is no churchmouse but in fact the extremely eligible, or as her aunt has it ‘illegible’, Jack Absolute (Iain Batchelor) renders Lydia inconsolable. The banality of the words ‘consent’ and ‘vicar’ send her crashing to her chaise-longue with distress.

Two others rivals, the country buffoon Bob Acres and Irish gent Sir Lucius O’ Trigger (Adrian McLoughlin), also compete for Miss Languish’s affections.

Matters are complicated further when the unfortunate O’Trigger is tricked by the not-so-simple Lucy (Hannah Stokely) into courting the antique Mrs Malaprop instead of her niece.

The burgeoning romance between the neurotic Faulkland, played to perfection by a long-faced Adam Jackson-Smith, and his long-suffering Julia (Justine Mitchell) has the audience in stitches.

West End heavyweight Nicholas Le Provost also gives a barnstorming performance as the apoplectic Captain Absolute.

Cadell’s masterstroke is in ramping up the camp. Each gesture is slightly overdone until the characters gently mock their own pretensions.

But rather than this serving to send up the early comedy, the tongue-in-cheek exaggerations improve the joke – in tune with the eighteenth-century predilection for lampoon and satire.

Unlike the characters, Emma Bailey’s modest set commands minimal attention but nevertheless its subtlety – as hand-drawn clouds are winched comically across the stage – is no less refined.

The Rivals at the Arcola is the pineapple of wit – book now to avoid despisement!

The Rivals is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL until 15 November
www.arcolatheatre.com

November 4, 2014