Riddle MagazineGreen Room Gossip
Decisions……decisions….. so much to see……
Preview by Geoffrey Leadwell
At the Royal Court it is beginning to feel like the still relatively new Artistic Director Vicki Featherstone is starting to find her feet. The newly announced season of work is particularly exciting, with female writers, including Carol Churchill, Penelope Skinner and Mia Chung featuring prominently. Featherstone’s tenure is particularly interesting in the way it has offered space to non-traditional theatre makers, helping close the divide between writer-led work and work developed within a company — a case in point being the current show downstairs, RoosevElvis, by critically acclaimed Brooklyn based ensemble The TEAM. They have developed and produced a string of brilliantly theatrical, inventive and unusual hits and this play, in which ‘the spirits of Elvis Presley and Theodore Roosevelt battle over the soul of Ann, a painfully shy meat-processing plant worker’ has garnered a whole host of great reviews.
Also this month, the brilliant Simon Armitage brings his critically acclaimed modern update of The Odyssey: Missing Presumed Dead to the stage in the magical, candlelit Sam Wanamaker playhouse. Running for just under two weeks and produced by the English Touring Theatre, this play is the second collaboration between Armitage and director Nick Bagnall, following their successful retelling of The Last Days of Troy. Expect accessible, quick witted verse with political resonance and real substance.
If you prefer the original Greek story, you can find it this month at the Almedia, Islington. On Thursday 12 November, for 12 solid hours, an array of artists will perform the epic poem in its entirety ‘from unusual and iconic locations across London’. The event will be free and live streamed on the Almedia website (http://www.almeida.co.uk/the-odyssey)
At the Hampstead Theatre, David Hare, famous for seamlessly melding the personal and political, brings a new drama to the stage. The Moderate Soprano traces the origins of the Glyndebourne Opera festival and stars the excellent Roger Allam as John Christie. A great chance to see a theatrical telling of the way this formidably English institution was shaped by the global forces of war. Limited tickets remain at time of writing, so if this interests be sure to book soon.
Finally, the formidable theatre company Clean Break return to the Soho Theatre with their critically acclaimed new show Joanne. Written by five female writers, including Deborah Bruce, whose recent show The Distance, wowed audiences at the Orange Tree theatre earlier this year, and is currently being revived at Sheffield Theatres. The whole is being performed by Tanya Moodie and explores ‘the pressures on our public services as one young woman buckles under pressures of her own.’