Soho Theatre
Veronica Lee
Mat Ewins comes on stage with a bullet belt slung across his chest. Indiana Jones he ain't, but what follows is a spoof on that film genre, a convoluted narrative that makes little sense but has a large degree of bombast as the show's title, Mat Ewins: Presents Adventureman 7 – the Return of Adventureman, suggests.It's an hour of multimedia storytelling, visual jokes and a lot of audience engagement (plus a brilliant long-form gag), in which Ewins trots out a daft tale involving a cursed amulet from Tutankhamen’s tomb that has gone missing from the British History Museum where he works, and Read more ...
Veronica Lee
There were a lot of shocked and disappointed people after the EU referendum last year and several comics have used the result to fashion some good comedy, delivering state-of-the-nation material in their shows. For Ahir Shah, though, the more he thought about the result, the more he took it personally.He starts Control at Soho Theatre by giving us a mnemonic for his first name – Alpha, Hero, Indian, Romeo. It's a deft way into revealing his comic self – bombastic, teasing, self-deprecating, playful – and it's a persona he falls back into several times in the show (which I saw at the Edinburgh Read more ...
Aleks Sierz
It’s hot. Real hot. And you’re dancing, just lost in music. You’re at the legendary Shrine nightclub in Lagos, where Afrobeat star Fela Kuti is king. It’s 1994. And it’s hot. Sweat is just pouring off you, no longer in little trickles but soaking through your clothes. And still you dance. As the beat pounds along, you can hear Fela intone: “Men are born; kings are made”, then something about “one nation, indivisible”, before he says, “War has never been the answer — long live Nigeria! Viva Africa!” It sounds like glory. Surely this is heaven on earth.The next day, in Adura Onashile’s 65- Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Suzi Ruffell tells it straight: she's working-class and proud, but some people might think she's "common", which is the show's title. She has devised a quick quiz for us to check if we're working-class ourselves, and among the amusing tell-tale signs is: did your mum use to freeze milk? A new one on me, but the show is off to a good start.Ruffell comes from a large family in Portsmouth and, for some reason the comic can't fathom, they ignored birthdays and made little of Christmas, but made a big deal of Bonfire Night – and when talking about her relatives she paints a vivid picture of Read more ...
Aleks Sierz
It’s television, not theatre, that has real power. Real cultural force. Cultural muscle. Take the case of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s one-woman show, Fleabag. First staged in 2013 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, it has appeared twice at the Soho since then, garnering a shelf-load of theatre nominations and awards along the way.That’s great, but nobody outside the narrow world of the London theatre scene knew much about it. Then, earlier this year, this hour-long monologue was shown on BBC Three as a six-part series – and bang! Suddenly everyone was talking about it. What had started as a piece Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tom Allen may have started life in Bromley, a non-descript south London suburb, but there was always a touch of Oscar Wilde about him – whether in his dress sense or his way with words, as we have learned from previous shows. It was obvious to him – and to school bullies – that he was not like them, a gay, bookish, clever boy with a very distinct way of expressing himself.It's his suburban background that Allen mines for his latest show, Indeed, which debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe. At first sight, it may appear to be his most biographical hour, featuring as it does a lengthy anecdote about Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Susan Calman's latest show has a delightfully silly title – Calman Before the Storm – which neatly doesn't pin her down to any particular theme but instead allows her to riff on a wide range of subjects. It makes for a pleasing hour of feelgood comedy.This show started life at the Edinburgh Fringe earlier this year, while the Rio Olympics were taking place; but Calman wasn't worried that she might lose potential audiences. She knows her demographic: “Oh, I’d love to go see Susan, but no… the taekwondo is on!”Calman infuses the hour with some terrifically sharp political comedyPeople Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Paul, Jan and Louis, three young men living in a gritty part of south London, are bored and broke and, for them, there are two kinds of Britain – one with money and power, and the one they live in, with no money and little to look forward to. No, it's not a play set in 2015, but Barrie Keeffe's Barbarians, set in the mid-1970s when youth unemployment was at an all-time high and the pound was at an all-time low.The parallels to today, with a burgeoning underclass and a widening gulf between the haves and have-nots in the UK, are obvious – which perhaps explains why this co-production Read more ...
Aleks Sierz
How do you explore extremes of feeling on stage? In cult pen-master Philip Ridley’s new play, a 75-minute monologue that won plaudits in Edinburgh last year, he takes us by the hand and throws us into a universe of pain. His mouthpiece is comedian and actor Gemma Whelan — who plays Yara Greyjoy of the television series Game of Thrones — and is now Andrea, a 15-year-old from the East End of London who is groomed for sex by an older man.Andrea and her friend Emma are a couple of teenagers whose upbringing has not encouraged them to bask in the warming sunlight of good self-esteem. On the Read more ...
carole.woddis
"Half-caste" and "mixed race" are terms that excite strong emotions. Are you black, are you white? Where do you belong? To whom do you owe your loyalties when the chips are down?Arinze Kene’s God’s Property will hardly be welcomed with open arms by the multicultural lobby. Kene, a hot new Nigerian-born actor turned writer, already widely admired for his debut play Estate Walls and follow-up, Little Baby Jesus, doesn’t mince his words. "Stick to your own" is the clear message coming from this Talawa-Albany-Soho Theatre co-production - your own in this case being black. Mixed marriage offspring Read more ...