Month: February 2019

WYNGARDE! A CELEBRATION and QUEEN BETTE are two one act monologues, Devised by Director Peter Mountford and the two actors, Garth Holcombe and Jeanette Cronin, staged as part of the Mardi Gras Festival. QUEEN BETTE has been presented earlier in 2015. WYNGARDE! A CELEBRATION, premiered as part of the Sydney Fringe last September. It is so interesting to see these two works together and observe the gifted ‘sleight-of-hand’ that Mr Mountford brings to both the works, as a Writer and a Director. Seen individually, the skill of the artist might not be really noticed, seen as a pair, his skill…

Ah, THE MOORS. The Moors. THE MOORS. THE MOORS! I saw this production of THE MOORS, a play written by young New Yorkian, Jen Silverman, several weeks ago. It is a production from Siren Theatre Company, Directed by Kate Gaul. THE MOORS, what to write? Ponder, ponder, ponder. What was my response? I have found myself in turmoil. Not in any negative manner but in a turmoil of a whirl buffeted by this contemporary take on THE MOORS. I have a history with the Moors – though I have never been there myself. I came to this production understanding that…

MY NIGHT WITH REG, by Kevin Elyot, in 1982, is a prize winning play that has often, still is, revived around the world. It is made up of three scenes in the apartment of Guy (John-Paul Santucci), a single gay man, and a group of friends who intermittently, but loyally meet up. Time wise it covers several years. Reg never appears in the play but has had an impressive set of relationships with nearly everybody else in the play. It is set in the times of the rise of the HIV epidemic, though no-one ever names that devastation. We gather…

This is the first play of Irish writer, John O’Donovan (2016). IF WE GOT SOME MORE COCAINE I COULD SHOW YOU HOW I LOVE YOU, is a two character play, of one 90 minute act. Set in a country environment, Mikey (Eddie Orton) a young twenty-something, of a spikey and belligerent disposition (his fists have won his status), along with teenager, Casey (Elijah Williams), are introduced to us crashing onto the roof top with a cacophony of rock and roll, police sirens and hectic drowned conversation, of a local terrace house, after botching a robbery of the local petrol station.…

The Set has a large bed. On it gathers a group of five friends, five lesbians. We are at a Bed party in a shared house. Jasmine (Brigitta Brown) arrives with her latest date, Finn (Alex Moulis). They are interrupted by long time school friend of Jasmine’s, Tara (Suz Mawer), who lives in the house, having declared herself bi-sexual, and is in a kind of permanent crisis of identity. An excited woman in the throws of a new last night romantic meeting, George (Mathilde Anglade), bursts into the room with an irrepressible fire-cracker energy, and in contrast, Bri (Julia Billington)…

THE RISE AND FALL OF LITTLE VOICE, at the Eternity playhouse, is a revival production of a play written in 1992. The writer, Jim Cartwright, specialises in bringing to life the travails of the British working class and drew attention with his play ROAD (1986), set in Lancashire during the impingement of the Margaret Thatcher government and policies on the people of that Island nation. ROAD’s anger and ruthless observation has turned it into a classic, often revived. THE RISE AND FALL OF LITTLE VOICE, when first presented, carried some cache in the slipstream of that earlier work. However, watching…