Home » Author Archives: Steve Caplin (page 5)

Author Archives: Steve Caplin

Trump the Musical, King’s Head Theatre – Review

It’s the impossibly distant year 2020, and the world is on the brink of nuclear war. King Nigel Farage rules the Disunited Kingdom of England and Northern Ireland, and Trump’s popularity is higher than ever: “He gave us our jobs back,” exclaims one satisfied voter, “I’m now a full-time Muslim hunter.” Trump The Musical plays, as the central character tells us, to “the biggest musical theatre crowd there has ever been”. A riotous evening of song and dance, satire and ...

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Butterfly Power, Rosemary Branch Theatre – Review

“Cigarette, dear?”“No thank you, dear.”“I think I might have a cigarette, dear.”“No you won’t, dear.”“Very well, dear.” And so the scene is set: in two inflatable armchairs, presided over by a goldfish on a gold pedestal, sit Mr and Mrs Fox. She – in a luminous, captivating performance by Alice Marshall – is domineering, supercilious, wilfully mispronouncing words and oblivious to the feelings of those around her; he – a foppish, Wooster-like Jack J Fairley – is an ineffectual, waistcoated ...

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Bed Peace: The Battle of Yohn and Joko, Cockpit Theatre – Review

In 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged a week-long press conference from their bed in a hotel in Montreal. Set in the round, in the intimate space of the Cockpit Theatre, Bed Peace opens with the narrator, an exuberant and likeable Helen Foster, outlining the setting in rhyming couplets. It hurtles through some personal history, from Yoko’s miscarriage, through the couple’s wedding in Gibraltar, to their eventual bed-in in Montreal (although, curiously, ...

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The Cabinet of Madame Fanny du Thé, Pleasance Theatre – Review

As you enter the small 60-seater basement space of the Pleasance Theatre you see a cast of five: three musicians playing Eastern European folk music on a cello, a guitar and an accordion, with two young men unaccountably wearing dresses, swaying in time to the music. Enter Madame Fanny (Kate Stokes), who’s also credited as the lead writer. She explains that it’s some time in the late 18th Century, and that she’s about to relate tales of her travelling exploits. ...

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The Project, White Bear Theatre – Review

It’s 1942 in a transit camp in Holland. Four Jewish detainees make up the camp’s concert party: impresario Victor (Lloyd Morris), dancer Anna (Faye Maghan), her sister Millie (Eloise Jones) and Anna’s lover Peter (Nick Devallé). When Millie discovers that their sick mother, Ette (Cate Morris), has been put on the notorious Tuesday List for transportation to a concentration camp the sisters form a plan of action: to ingratiate themselves with the camp’s commandant, Conrad (Mike Duran), in order to ...

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The Grand Expedition, Secret Location – Review

Following texted directions to the secret location “somewhere on the Victoria Line”, you make your way to a disused warehouse on the outskirts of town. Welcomed by a woman dressed as a 1930s aviator, speaking an imaginary language that hovers somewhere between Japanese and Klingon, you’re handed a beer – never a bad thing in a theatre – and led into the dining room. This turns out to be a vast octagonal space, hosting a dozen round 8-seater tables, mounted ...

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The First Modern Man, Hen & Chickens Theatre – Review

Michel de Montaigne, the 16th century writer and philosopher, was a complex character. He invented the essay form – his ‘essais’ being ‘tryouts’, as he explains – to set down his thoughts on a vast range of topics. He wrote over 100 essays, on subjects as diverse as anger, virtue, vanity, smells, sleep, solitude, pedantry and drunkenness. In this one-man show Jonathan Hansler plays Montaigne to powerful effect, welcoming us as English visitors into his library and regaling us with ...

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An Enemy of the People, Union Theatre – Review

Pros: A couple of strong performances Cons: Wavering American accents, stodgy direction, humourless script In 1882 Henrik Ibsen, reeling from the public outcry over the sexual frankness in Ghosts, wrote An Enemy of the People about one man daring to speak the truth at any cost. In 1950 it was adapted by Arthur Miller, keeping strictly to the same plot and scene structure but removing some of the more unpalatable references to eugenics – and it’s Miller’s version that appears ...

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