Death, Books, and Tea

Theatre review: Emilia by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm

2020-11-16T17:00:00.008+00:00

It's been a long year for everyone, but, in among lots of job applications, part time work, and stressing about both university and life, I have been able to see and read some things that I really want to share with you! First of all, here's my review of Emilia !

Title: Emilia
Writer: Morgan Lloyd Malcolm
Director: Nicole Charles
Featured Performers: Saffron Coombs, Adelle Leonce, Clare Perkins
Performed at: The Vaudeville Theatre, London

Seen: as a pay-what-you-want stream; available until 2nd December

Review: The early 1600s may be one of the primary flourishing periods of English Literature - William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson, John Fletcher- but do we remember any of the women? I certainly hadn't heard of Emilia Bassano, a writer living at the same time as Shakespeare. But writer Morgan Lloyd Malcolm had, and she used the story to write a play that places women at the forefront of the story, and encourages women on-stage and off-stage to take up space.

I missed this when it was on live, but thanks to lockdown, archive footage is available to stream until 24 November. I was looking forward to seeing this, as I enjoy seeing history on stage, particularly when elevating unheard stories.

The play skilfully mixes the Renaissance with the modern (music includes haunting choral arrangements and rap music, with choreography to match) and comedy (bawdiness and one-liners) and seriousness (men trying to tell Emilia where she should be, an older Lord Chamberlain offering a path to patronage if she comes to his chambers). This mix even comes simultaneously - for example, Emilia rejects some of William's suggested lines, crying out 'That's racist!' and Emilia's husband tells her 'Well done for not dying!' in childbirth.

The writing also mixes in lines from William's plays, and positions both that Emilia inspired and directly wrote some of the more famous parts. This lets us consider the themes of intellectual ownership, seduction and hidden meanings behind words, and who gets credit for what is said.

The play also considers class inequality - Emilia's anguish as her reputation is tarnished - 'Will this be how I am remembered?' - can be contrasted with the other ways the women of lower classes are violated, but female solidarity is the centrepiece of the play, as she teaches the other women to think for themselves, and the play is designed for all-female companies.

The triptych of actresses playing Emilia allow us to see her inner thoughts as well as her external expressions. The oldest Emilia, played by Clare Perkins, narrates the actions of her younger counterparts' actions (Saffron Coomber and Adelle Leonce), and the incarnation at the centre of the action is supported by the other two.

The costumes are beautifully detailed and colour-coded. Men wear the reds of violence and power; women wear the green of the court, the black of relative independence, and neutrals of anonymity. Another choice I liked was when Alfonso, Emilia's husband, played by Amanda Wilkin, removed his long smooth wig and revealed his natural hair underneath - another example of needing to suppress oneself to fit in to society.

The play is full of passionate calls for equality and determination to get there - early on in the play, we have the line 'I demand my poems be published, and I will see that they are,' and the end of the play is an impassioned monologue calling on all women to burn harder and brighter than anything that tries to destroy them. In the time of coronavirus, as the arts industry is abandoned by the government, and protests for equality taking place throughout summer and beyond, this call for resilience sounds very loud indeed.

Warnings for a suicide attempt , miscarriage child death, sexual harassment, and domestic abuse

Theatre Review- Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story

2017-08-14T16:57:00.000+01:00

Title: Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story

Writer: Stephen Dolginoff

Director: Guy Retallack

Performers: Ellis Dackombe, Harry Downes, and Kris Rawlinson

Seen at: C Too Edinburgh

Review: Nathan Leopold stands before a parole board for the fifth time, having been in prison for 33 years for murdering a fourteen year old boy. The parole board wants to know: why? Flashbacks detail the story of how Leopold and his lover Richard Loeb, progress from petty crime to murder, and where they went from there.

The musical is based upon the true story, with some changes to details. It is very effectively the story of Leopold and Loeb; nobody else appears on stage, not even their victim, Bobby Franklin. The parole board are disembodied voices. The characterisation is more simple than what I have inferred from a little research after watching the play; rather than both men participating in the crime equally, this Loeb is the ringmaster, continually manipulating Leopold and suggesting a victim and method, and Leopold is a lovestruck accomplice, who will do anything to keep Loeb in in his life. Sometimes the writing is odd - Leopold comes out with simple statements that seem out of place considering the more elevated language in other parts, and the high intelligence of his real-life counterpart- but overall it creates characters that are interesting, and compelling to watch.

The writing of the book and lyrics is nothing compared to the writing of the music, which is incredibly rich and complex, and reminds me of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. Kris Rawlinson on the piano creates the perfect atmosphere, heavy and intense, in both the songs and scene transitions.

The two other performers, Ellis Dackombe playing Loeb and Harry Downes playing Leopold, both make an incredibly strong professional debut. If I had to choose, I’d say Dackombe was stronger, just because I still have the chills remembering his performance of “Roadster”, already creepy considering it sounds like a seduction and we know what is going to follow it, and made even more disturbing by Dacombe's delivery. However, Downes'

performance is also captivating, especially his pleading in “Thrill Me” and the way he performs Leopold’s revelation at the end. Together, they have great chemistry, both physically and vocally, and they clearly reflect dynamics of the relationship.

Just as the music and the focus on the characters is stripped back, the staging is equally minimalist. All black furniture, a few props on shelves, and very effective lighting work to create a variety of scenes, such as a burning warehouse, a police interrogation, and a car sitting in the dark on night of the murder. The venue is relatively small; the five rows means everyone is close, heightening the intimacy.

This show is definitely one to see if you want to see a show about manipulation and motivation, with three brilliant performers and an atmosphere that is thrilling and intense.

Links: Website | Twitter

Theatre review - I Know You by Sam Moore

2017-05-20T22:16:00.002+01:00

Title: I Know You

Writer: Sam Moore

Directors: Rosie Richards, Georgia Reddington

Performed by: Magpie Productions

Seen at: the Burton Taylor Studio

Cast: Sammy Breen, Benjamin Ashton, Joshua Cathcart

Review: Two men stand on a street corner. One remarks that the other looks nice. The other replies that that’s not what he’s looking for. They return home and sleep together. Afterwards, they discuss other men and how similar they actually are and how well one knows the other.

This new writing by Sam Moore is described by directors Rosie Richards and Georgia Reddington as Pinter-esque, postmodern, and about “stigma, repression, mental health, and intimacy.” We see characters who have sex with and share lives with each other, but in other ways are detached. As an audience, we may watch characters having sex and panic attacks and we listen to them tell some of the most private stories about their lives, but we don’t ever learn their real names.

There were apprehensions from the cast about taking on roles so different to what they are used to, with backgrounds in musical theatre, and a lack of experience playing older characters. However, Sammy Breen (Kid), Benjamin Ashton (John), and Joshua Cathcart (Pumpkin) all embody the characters – the youngish sex worker who’s seen it all, the reserved, shy older man, the ex who comes back and tries to care as best as he can – really well. Learning about the characters is intriguing, and information is A week of characterisation workshops, the freedom to adapt and develop the script on their own and with Moore, the ability to put in as much of their own personality as they wished, and the challenge to not put too much of themselves into the play, have worked well to bring these characters to life. And how they did that in the full performance. Especially Breen in the breakdown scenes, and in the scenes when both John and Pumpkin are absent. It’s also in the smaller parts, like the transition scenes, as the way the characters look at each other tells you a lot about the relationship between them at the time.

The writing is clever. In the scenes I saw for the preview, the words "I know you" were said, questioned, and disbelieved many times, with different contexts and meanings each time, and tracks the ways the characters reflect on themselves and each other. But will we ever really know them? Non-verbal language and implications, even from the first few seconds of the play, are also vital to the communication of and between characters. There’s a fair bit of humour, sometimes dirty, sometimes based on jokes, sometimes physical, always feeling appropriate to the situation. It’s an open-ended play, which isn’t really to my taste, but it does as the directors intended in showing how life goes on no matter what, and also shows again, how little we might know someone. The different experiences of depression were frank, nuanced, and hard hitting in places.

Cathcart calls the play “voyeuristic”; I would totally agree. It sometimes felt too intimate to watch, especially when it was just me in the audience. This is not because of the sexual content, but because we see the characters in their everyday lives, including at their most vulnerable. The set represents both the street corner and the bedroom, emphasising both the public and private in the play, and transitions are very well executed. The lighting is mostly realistic, apart from some marine club lighting in some parts, which worked well, especially when it just faded to the naturalistic white light at the end, as real life just carries on. The depiction of mental illness, both the characters experiencing it but even more so the reaction from outsiders, is realistic. Overall, the cast and crew have developed a piece of theatre that feels incredibly close and genuine.

Another version of this review might appear in the Cherwell,