Shakespeare’s women never get the attention they deserve, even the more interesting ones. The deranged, damaged and dynamic are often maligned and infrequently on stage. Margaret, Lady Percy, La Pucelle, and so on have moments of brilliance, but are then hushed, relegated in favour of men. Howard Barker rescues Hamlet’s Gertrude from Shakespeare’s sidelining in his 2002 play, Gertrude – The Cry, but his depiction is hardly a favourable one. Though he places Hamlet’s mother at the forefront of his narrative, he paints her as an unfeeling, sex-crazed creature in a fetid nest of similarly awful people. Overt sexual acts and poetic, obscure language are plentiful, but this actually a rather dull and overly long script is hard to digest.

Director Chris Hislop utilises the irregularly-shaped Theatre N16 incredibly well with a small traverse stage, placing the action in the laps of the front row and evocative projections at one end. Felicity Reid’s set is white, with a minimalistic plinth functioning as various pieces of furniture and locations. Clean and stark, it suits the characters’ emotional detachment from everything other than their own ambition.

Liza Keast as Isola, Queen Mother to the dead King Hamlet and his brother Claudius (Alexander Hulme), and servant Cascan (Stephen Oswald) are supporting characters but give leading performances. Oswald in particular finds an honesty and depth not present in the desperation of the others. Isabella Urbanowicz as the titular Gertrude has a magnetic presence, but lacks chemistry with Hulme’s Claudius – though this is due to Barker’s script, not a lack of ability on the actors’ part.

The text is the production’s week point. At least half an hour too long, the dense, awkward language says little. Self-absorbed, maniacally driven characters who lack empathy and dimension rant and fuck, wash, rinse, repeat. Little actually happens, as if Barker didn’t really have a concrete idea on how to go about paralleling Shakespeare’s Hamlet from Gertrude’s perspective. Though Hislop’s choice to withhold an interval is the right one in terms of pace and energy, two hours with little linguistic variation and plot progression is an endurance test for both actors and audience.

Whilst Barker’s attempt to reconfigure Gertrude is admirable, this female-led play is hardly feminist. Her sexuality is her downfall rather than her freedom, and the men in her life entrap as much as they do in Shakespeare’s original story. Ragusa (LJ Reeves), the parallel to Ophelia, is essentially a sex slave purchased for Hamlet who is eventually driven mad by his infantile whinging and the abundance of malfunction in the household. Rather than presenting an alternative, progressive view on female sexuality, it comes across as crass and misunderstood.

This is a good production of a rarely-staged play, but it’s clear why it’s so obscure. Most interesting from an academic perspective, Barker’s Gertrude – The Cry isn’t a particularly good text.

Gertrude – The Cry runs through 30 June.

The Play’s the Thing UK is committed to covering fringe and progressive theatre in London and beyond. It is run entirely voluntarily and needs regular support to ensure its survival. For more information and to help The Play’s the Thing UK provide coverage of the theatre that needs reviews the most, visit its patreon.

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Discovering sex is probably one of the most definitive moments of a young life. Good, bad or indifferent, everyone remembers their sexual awakening. Masturbation, losing your virginity, rape, fantasies, dating, sexual identity and a handful of other topics come up in Propolis Theatre’s Spill, with a cast of eleven young theatre makers from Bristol. This verbatim piece is sweetly naive, but wittily blends music, song and a bit of delightful puppetry into the edited interview text, effectively breaking up the interweaving monologues. Though the material isn’t cutting edge or particularly interesting to more “experienced”, older audience members, Spill is well executed and full of heart.

Verbatim theatre created from the answers to interview questions can be tedious to sit through due to the first-person narratives and lack of dialogue between characters. Even chopped up and interspersed, engagement between performers often feels forced, if it’s there at all. Actors can stand there actively listening to each other as much as they like, but there’s still no getting away from the perceived self-involvement that comes from talking extensively about one’s own experiences. 

Propolis uses this format as the base, but they effectively utilise music, spoken word and song to emphasise particularly poignant moments and counter any potential monotony. Abstract movement sequences give the eye something engaging to take in, particularly when they’re as well executed as they are here. These devices make the piece much more interesting and able to hold audience attention for its duration. This fluid, changing form they have created is by far the most dynamic aspect of the production.

The eleven-strong ensemble never looks crowded; their choreography and staging is pleasingly slick. A simple set is colourful and striking, finding the balance between overly simple and excessive.

There is nothing innovative about the script though, particularly for an audience past their early twenties. Spill feels like it could be a TIE piece for 6th formers or freshers who are more likely to immediately relate to the stories of self-discovery. They otherwise come across as adorably nostalgic, even played by the young cast. There’s a good amount of humour and reflection in the language, and it’s admirably diverse and inclusive. 

Spill is certainly a polished piece of theatre that employs a some great devices, but the form and structure is more exciting than the content. It has clear potential as a touring show, though it will resonate much more with young people.

Spill runs at Edinburgh Fringe through August.

The Play’s the Thing UK is committed to covering fringe and progressive theatre in London and beyond. It is run entirely voluntarily and needs regular support to ensure its survival. For more information and to help The Play’s the Thing UK provide coverage of the theatre that needs reviews the most, visit its patreon.

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I always think life in a British seaside town must be idyllic. Quaint and friendly, with the smell of chips, ice cream and salt in the air, the sun always shines and people share a friendly smile as they pass families playing in the sand and surf.

I know the reality is completely different. Broken economies are driving young people away, there are instances of racism and small mindedness, as there are everywhere else inland. Lucy Catherine’s Sea Life, set near Dover, captures this stark reality with three disfunctional, adult siblings in a town that’s literally and figuratively falling into the sea. Roberta is the agoraphobic fantasist who runs the family’s bar that never has customers. Her inappropriately clingy twin Bob builds coffins to inter the local cemetery’s residents that must be cremated before the cliffside where they rest crumbles into the channel. Their lone wolf brother Eddie, a failed artist, is one of a team tasked with digging up the dead. Their long-dead mother’s looming reappearance, constant rain and an anonymous American company that’s taken over the town’s economy has pushed these three to a breaking point that results in poetic, disturbing tragedy of classical proportions that’s also really rather funny. 

Catherine’s script is full of punchy, ferocious dialogue, constantly pulled taut by Matthew Parker’s direction. The three characters have radically different ways of coping (or not coping) with their dead-end lives, causing a natural undercurrent of tension that regularly erupts. The storyline is wonderfully unpredictable and increasingly macabre, though never implausible. Catherine’s gift here is showing a scenario that both feels like a work of fiction, and something that could totally happen under the perfect combination of circumstances and personalities. A couple of false endings detract from what could otherwise be a brilliant script, but the cathartic ending keeps things from being excessively dark.

The trio of actors have good chemistry, particularly twins Roberta and Bob (Vicky Gaskin and Chris Levens) who are uncomfortably close. Jack Harding as Eddie is an extraordinary pressure cooker who’s explosion is satisfyingly horrific to take in. 

Laura Harling’s set design is a fantastically detailed example of the possibilities able to be achieved in a tiny performance space. There is some slightly cheesy movement work that could otherwise be communicated with sound and lighting, but this is brief and the overall visual effect certainly adds to the play’s truthfulness.

Sea Life is a polished little gem of a play, and an excellent showcase for actors and designers alike. It’s not perfect, but Catherine’s script and Parker’s direction are a near-perfect example of contemporary naturalism.

Sea Life runs through 11 June.

The Play’s the Thing UK is committed to covering fringe and progressive theatre in London and beyond. It is run entirely voluntarily and needs regular support to ensure its survival. For more information and to help The Play’s the Thing UK provide coverage of the theatre that needs reviews the most, visit its patreon.

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What would you do if the country was as war and under attack? Would you join up and fight? Or would you run? If you left, where would you go? 

Protagonist Elizabeth lives in London with her husband Harry, who she met whilst feeding the residents of her local duck pond. Their romance is a proper fairytale, until the war starts. Writer Gabrielle Sheppard goes on to reveal the impact of the war on Elizabeth and Harry, and simultaneously shows Elizabeth’s ideal life that could have unfolded without the looming threat of attack. It’s a clever, Sliding Doors-esque device from Sheppard, though the understandable inclusion of Elizabeth’s mental trauma muddies the narrative – what is real? What are her delusions? These parallel worlds often overlap and blur, adding to the confusion. But maybe that’s the point. The refugee experience is hardly one of calm and clarity, and the disorientation of the narrative and dialogue has potential to foster empathy and understanding. It could also alienate, with the production being written off as unclear and poorly written, but hopefully this is a less likely interpretation. Leftovers is an intuitive, short piece of theatre with the ability to pluck at the heartstrings and present refugees as human beings who feel love, pain and want safety for those they love the most.

Sheppard also plays Elizabeth, showing her journey from a young woman in love to a damaged vessel who has lost everything, with great nuance and pathos. She has lovely chemistry with Christopher Adams (Harry) and Ella Cook, who plays her dog and her grown daughter. 

Director Dimitris Chimonas incorporates movement sequences mainly composed of running on the spot. There’s some nice abstract, gestural work to add variation but the running is the focus. The metaphor is clear, and effectively transitions between the episodic scenes. The set, mountains of clothing, are physically obstructive but a nice representation of everything refugees have to abandon in favour of safety.

At under an hour, Leftovers feels like it has a lot more to say, with the potential of becoming a fully formed, epic love/war story. The concept is a sound one, but further clarity and lengthening wouldn’t go amiss.  The two producing companies, Hounded and Ugly Collective, are certainly worth keeping an eye on. 

Leftovers is now closed at Theatre N16.

The Play’s the Thing UK is committed to covering fringe and progressive theatre in London and beyond. It is run entirely voluntarily and needs regular support to ensure its survival. For more information and to help The Play’s the Thing UK provide coverage of the theatre that needs reviews the most, visit its patreon.

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It can absolutely be said Edward Bond was a revolutionary of 1960s British theatre with his seminal play, Saved, that was a pivotal role in abolishing censorship. It can also not be doubted that he endured unspeakable horror as a child in WWII London. Still yet, it can be said that Bond’s work, that used to shock and appal, is now trite and bland despite his latest play’s copious obscene acts that are tenuously based on Medea. This production, bizarrely premiering at a theatre in Sutton, manages to be extremely violent and epic, whilst simultaneously terribly boring and pedestrian. Dea is also directed by Bond and, clocking in at over three hours with two intervals, is a self-indulgent, laughable affair desperately in need of an outside eye and feels more like three days. Though commendably anti-war and with some solid performances, Dea’s downfall is Bond’s dated aesthetic, self-importance, and lengthy, rambling scenes that are full of sound and fury, but say very little.

Five minutes into the first act, Dea (Helen Bang) commits a senseless act of infanticide that leads to her banishment, dooming her to wander the earth for the rest of the play. Though presumably aimed at her self-absorbed, army officer husband, her actions are entirely unjustified. Bringing destruction wherever she goes, Dea lacks the abilities to empathise or emotionally connect with others. Her husband (Edward Avison-Scott) is of similar ilk, though at least he manages to react to his children’s murder and send Dea away. Otherwise, this first scene is made rather uninteresting by flat, stilted dialogue. Neither character listens to the other, and the babies’ (cheap looking dolls) murder is badly staged. The rest of the act is about 16 years later and crowbars in incest, fellatio, rape and murder. Again, these are without justification, and again, the script lacks life. Bond seems to use his dialogue to frame the violence rather than communicating anything of any depth.

The subsequent acts are in the Middle East at a British army camp with less of a focus on Dea and more on the horrors of war. Bond chucks in necrophilia, more rape, a suicide bombing and cocks-out masturbation to pad Dea’s nonsensical quest to find a lost family member. With what’s on the news and the Internet these days, none of it shocks. Bond’s naivety in thinking it does is rather sweet. 

Bond’s ideas about the state of modern theatre are less sweet though. In fact, they’re blatantly offensive. He yearns for the good old days when people went to the theatre to be enlightened and educated, and theatre had something to say about the world. The programme notes laughably state, “I write of the rape of a corpse with a beer bottle to bring back some dignity to our theatre.” If Bond thinks our theatre lacks dignity and important messages, then he is out of touch with contemporary theatre, especially small scale and fringe work. This detachment from the real world is evident in Dea, what with the length and gratuitous violence that has absolutely no point.

Helen Bang does some great work at sustaining Dea’s fierce coldness, and her gradually loosening grip on reality is meticulously crafted. Despite awkward dialogue and some moments of unnatural delivery, she has a powerful presence and dominates the stage. Avison-Scott pales in comparison, though Joylon Price as her son Oliver isn’t far off measuring up to her. Oliver is the best written and most interesting character in the play, though is disposed of entirely too soon. The soldiers in the second act are mostly generic, though David Clayton as the PTSD-suffering Cliff in the final act does his best to make the character more well-rounded. Bond misses an opportunity to give the soldiers on the front line of modern desert warfare the depth that could move the audience to rage about their treatment and behaviour. 

Basically, Dea is a sad mess that thinks it’s radical and edgy but in trying so hard to shock, it comes across as absurd and pathetically out of touch. Bond thinks theatre lacks dignity? He needs to open his eyes to the vapid, grovelling dreck that he created.

Dea runs through 11 June.

The Play’s the Thing UK is committed to covering fringe and progressive theatre in London and beyond. It is run entirely voluntarily and needs regular support to ensure its survival. For more information and to help The Play’s the Thing UK provide coverage of the theatre that needs reviews the most, visit its patreon.

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George Jacob Holyoake, a pioneer in the British secularism movement, was the last man ever to be tried and sentenced for blasphemy in the UK. After an engagement in Cheltenham in 1842, the travelling lecturer and teacher found himself the subject of a damning newspaper article that caught authorities’ attention. John Osborne fictionalised the fiery young man’s story in a 1960 television drama, now largely forgotten in the wake of his popular plays. Production company Proud Haddock has resurrected the script, an hour-long tirade against religion and the establishment, in an excellently performed and staged production. A Subject of Scandal and Concern lacks finesse, though. It choppily covers a lengthy time period and all of the characters, save for Holyoake, are underwritten and underused. The story is engaging despite Osborne’s plot structure, and Jamie Muscato is a magnetic Holyoake that redeems this historical relic.

After a brief narrative monologue that is largely unnecessary, a moving scene between Holyoake and his wife indicates this is going to be a domestic poverty-drama. The story goes a completely different direction however, instead focusing solely on Holyoake’s subsequent speech, arrest, trial and imprisonment. With moving courtroom scenes and a tenacious spirit, the character is well-written and detailed. The rest of the characters frustratingly lack his depth and stage time, each only appearing a few times, if that. Multi-rolling gives the actors plenty to do, but this would be a far more interesting play if Holyoake had more substantial characters to engage with. There isn’t much in terms of a journey for any of the roles, instead Osborne uses the narrative to make a strong statement against organised religion and its death grip on Western society. This is agit-prop rather than effective storytelling, and a less able cast would make this a boring play indeed.

Jamie Muscato does a fantastic job with Holyoake, particularly in the courtroom scenes, and the rest of the cast are a smooth ensemble of devout resistance against him. Muscato’s flawless embodiment of his character’s tenacity and struggle is a masterclass in detailed characterisation. It’s a shame there isn’t enough opportunity for the other actors to showcase their ability in the same way, though there work is still very good. Their commitment to their characters is the saving grace of this production.

Philip Lindley’s set is a simple collection of slatted boxes of varying sizes and shapes that cleverly evoke a kitchen, a courtroom, a prison, and the club where Holyoake speaks. Their rearrangement is simply choreographed by director Jimmy Walters and choreographer Ste Clough, but there is missed potential for more poetic stylisation evoking Holyoake’s fight against the society that is threatened by his godlessness.

Though the generally unknown A Subject of Scandal and Concern disappointingly reinforced why it isn’t more frequently produced, Walters’ staging and the cast’s performances prevent this production from being flat and dull. It’s quite the opposite, and worth seeing for the excellent, intense performances in an intimate venue.

A Subject of Scandal and Concern runs through 11 June.

The Play’s the Thing UK is committed to covering fringe and progressive theatre in London and beyond. It is run entirely voluntarily and needs regular support to ensure its survival. For more information and to help The Play’s the Thing UK provide coverage of the theatre that needs reviews the most, visit its patreon.

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