East End Review

Tag: Stage

  • Eldorado – review

    Eva Feiler as Manuela, Michael Colgan as Anton and Amanda Hale as Thekla in Eldorado at the Arcola Theatre
    Eva Feiler as Manuela, Michael Colgan as Anton and Amanda Hale as Thekla in Eldorado at the Arcola Theatre

    Eldorado’s cryptic depiction of emotional breakdown amongst the bourgeoisie, played against the backdrop of war, scoops us into a world of undefined destruction and well-delineated interior turmoil in Dalston’s spacious but intimate Arcola theatre.

    German playwright Marius von Mayenburg’s play – which premiered ten years ago at Berlin’s experimental Schaubühne theatre – alludes to the european myth of El Dorado, a lost city of gold waiting for discovery by an adventurous conquerer, or as so many an exploitative European conquistador supposed.

    Director Simon Dormandy’s adaption of the play, translated by Maja Zade, rids us of context and does not allow the audience the satisfaction of knowing exactly what is going on.

    The war could be Iraq, or perhaps Afghanistan. Fear and claustrophobia haunt the stage, and sometimes the distant thunder of war seems only to embody the characters’ inner disturbance. Aschenbrenner (literally: Ash Burner) opens with a foreboding monologue on a darkened stage.

    As helicopters whir threateningly overhead, he paints a scene of futile destruction – animals escaped from the zoo and “refugees’ voices ringing out from the oval concrete,” before ending on a property sales pitch for his company, a narrative that will thread the showcase of broken relationships to which we are party.

    Those relationships are the mainstay of the production. The tortured love between Aschenbrenner (Mark Tandy plays a wicked, vivid and intensely humorous harbinger of destruction) and his naive, puppet-like employee Anton (Michael Colgan); that of Anton and his newly wed, neurotic pianist Thekla (Amanda Hale), and the one with her ebullient, infuriating mother (Sian Thomas) and toy-boy husband are sharply, unforgivingly drawn.

    Like characters in an Ibsen play, we observe, enjoy (or are distressed by) their interactions, but ultimately are held at arm’s length.

    Eldorado is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, Dalston E8 3DL until 3 May.

  • The Nine O’Clock Slot – review

    Poster for The Nine o’clock slot. Courtesy of Ice&Fire
    Poster for The Nine o’clock slot. Courtesy of Ice&Fire

    “Welcome to the low-budget slot, the low frills, low grade, high shame, 9 o’clock slot,” intones the hospice chaplain John, having beckoned us from the edgy and industrial Red Gallery bar, through an ante-chamber of trees, soil mounds and angels, and on to the theatre, walled by versatile, but non-descript looking cardboard boxes.

    The Nine O’Clock Slot is impressively conceived: the audience begin as an (unusually large) crowd of mourners, gathered unwittingly for a paupers’ burial. In a Brechtian move we are forced to confront the play’s themes head on, not allowed to hide behind the veil of disengagement that often typifies theatre.

    Hannah Davies and Annecy Lax’s production with human rights theatre company ice&fire weaves through the lives of four individuals, all very different from one another, but who end their lives in the same way – an anonymous paupers’ burial.

    Margaret, an articulate old lady mourns her husband Clive: talks, dances, drinks, plays cards with her beloved husband who is no longer there. This is a particularly strong performance from Anna Barry, who lights up the stage with her quick wit and jaunty liveliness. Whilst Margaret carries her own story compellingly, you can’t help but feel that it doesn’t fit in with the other interlocking narratives, though perhaps this is the point: loneliness, and isolation is all pervasive, and what typifies these individuals’ very different backgrounds and experiences.

    Not all the acting is as sharp however, and the post mortem analysis by the mortuary assistants is not only gruesome but also does not ring true. They are talking to the audience partly, sharing insights: “Black pepper lungs tells me he lives in the city…Office monkey? Disaffected data hacker.” “This man was 278204 – the body of an unidentified male,” one mortuary assistant adds, as he peels back the skin of the imaginary body before him. The cruel anonymity of death in London’s underbelly is drawn to our attention, but the acting here is crude, though the lines well drawn.

    Chu Omambala shows great versatility, playing chaplain John, the laddish Marcus, and finally a didactic auctioneer, peddling graves to the sombered audience. The number of parts played by a few of the actors also emphasises the anonymity of those passing under the city’s radar.

    A highlight of the performance was a heated argument between John and carer Kay (Thusitha Jayasundera) about how to treat someone towards the end of their lives. This debate achieved that fine balance of narrative and didacticism – informative without being preachy, which some of the other scenes on occasion veered into.

    Connor (Gary Cargill) is a charismatic, ebullient drunk who held up a persona that was angry, witty and lonely.

    “None of this wanky, good practice, tick box bollocks”, he says to his carer Kay when discussing the end of his life. This relationship between carer and patient is raw and touching, highlighting the struggles not only of those whose lives are ending, but those who are tending to those ending lives

    The play makes for uncomfortable viewing. Melding video, dance, music and acting, sometimes you feel a simpler set-up would be more effective. Scene changes and some performances could be sharper, but its message resonates loud and clear: thousands of people are dying on our streets, left for uncared for and untended in life and in death, and we prefer to turn the other way. The Nine O’Clock Slot urges us to do otherwise.

    The Nine O’Clock Slot is at The Red Gallery, 3 Rivington Street, EC2A 3DT until 19 April.

  • Play tackles subject of ‘paupers’ funerals’

    Dying light: rehearsals for The Nine O'Clock Slot. Photograph: Phoebe Cooke
    Dying light: rehearsals for The Nine O’Clock Slot. Photograph: Phoebe Cooke

    A new play exploring the rise of modern-day ‘paupers’ funerals’ is to explore the taboo subject of death using poetry, humour as well as audiovisual and physical comedy.

    The Nine O’Clock Slot, by East End-based theatre company ice&fire and directed by Lisa Spirling, retraces the lives of four individuals buried in communal graves and will be the first play staged in Shoreditch’s Red Gallery.

    Annecy Lax, who co-wrote the play with Hannah Davies, says they were started writing it after developing a fascination with the death industry and the Dickensian concept of ‘paupers’ funerals’.

    “We became really interested that in a city where there is so much and so many people, that people can die alone with absolutely nothing, so that the state has to take care and look after their arrangements,” she says.

    Lax and Davies interviewed local hospital chaplains, mortuary assistants, soup kitchen helpers and hospice carers for the play.

    They also spoke to women in their 70s, 80s and 90s at a community centre in Tower Hamlets who spoke with humour and levity about dying and inspired the play’s title.

    “The 9 o’clock slot is the one nobody wants. It’s a real mark of shame if you have to have an early morning funeral,” Lax explains.

    The Nine O’Clock Slot is at Red Gallery, 1-3 Rivington Street EC2A 3DT from 26 March until 19 April. For tickets see www.iceandfire.co.uk.