Posts with the label hoxton hall
Showing posts with label hoxton hall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hoxton hall. Show all posts
Friday, 16 March 2018
Female Parts: Shorts, Hoxton Hall | Review
Female Parts: Shorts
Hoxton Hall
Reviewed on Thursday 15th March 2018 by Nicola Louise
★★★★
Female Parts: Shorts tells the story of three very different women through their three very different monologues. A Woman Alone, An Immigrant and A Mother, each one battling their own series of events and demons.
The show opens in a living room, clothes hanging on the wall and baby things over tables and floor; the Women Alone busts into the living room singing and dancing her heart out, it’s not until she notices that a new neighbour has moved in that she starts talking. The Women Alone, played by Gehane Strehler, starts to describe her life as this happy fairy tale, it isn’t until we get further into the story that we realise appearances are not all they’re cracked up to be.
Strehler delivers a fantastic performance as a hard done by woman having to live her life according to her husband. The emotions she displays in this hour monologue pull you into the story wondering what her next move is.
The next monologue is from The Mother played by Rebecca Saire, a woman who just found out her son’s a terrorist. She asks the audience, ‘what would you do?’ You could see the pain in her eyes, as she asked herself: ‘why me?’ ‘what did I do?’. Saire takes you on a journey of love, hatred, and disgust in this 40-minute monologue and I wager a bet that you don’t come out of there questioning the way you look at terrorists and their families.
Saire talks us through a dream she had, being the mother of a terrorist and takes us through her experience. She’s able to add in other characters, completely different to herself and give them lives of their own.
The last performance was The Immigrant portrayed by Clare Perkins, a west indies woman whose dream was always something bigger than what her family had for her back home. She came to London, got an engineering degree, came home and got a job at the UWI (University of West Indies), got married and had a child.
The conversation was aimed towards the Imperial College London graduating class of 2018 where her daughter sat. Perkins spoke about the injustice of her going up into space, how, if she were a man, no paper would ever dare question her role as a parent, papers up and down the country were labelling her as the mother who abandoned her child. Perkins delivers an emotional speech of truth and realisation when she starts to address her daughter and it was refreshing to see that she knew she was more than just a mother … she was an astronaut.
Female Parts: Shorts is a moving and outstanding look at the highs and lows women go through and deserves to be seen.
Female Parts: Shorts is playing at Hoxton Hall until the 31st March 2018.
photo credit: Sharron Wallace
Friday, 26 January 2018
Oranges and Elephants, Hoxton Hall | Review
Oranges and Elephants
Hoxton Hall
Reviewed on Thursday 25th January 2017 by Nicola Louise
★★
Originally conceived in 2013 by Lil Warren, Oranges and Elephants tells the story of two female gangs in London in the Victorian Era. The 'Oranges', a girl gang in Brixton led by their boss, Flo played by Kate Adams, and the ‘Elephants’, an Irish girl gang bonded by the family code, based in Elephant and Castle’s Woolworth road.
Being shown in Hoxton Hall, London, the place brings some authenticity to the musical. The old music hall creates a great backdrop for the narrator, the Chair played by Susannah van den Berg and her piano player Doreen, played by one of the co-founders of the inclusive theatre pioneers of Chickenshed, Jo Collins.
Van den Berg had great energy and as soon as the show started she had the crowd laughing with her large personality, she had great chemistry with Collins and their witty banter was none stop.
The girls in the gang all played instruments and they were used throughout the show, the girls were either in the wings or on stage playing the violin, cello … there was even a flute involved, they used this very well and allowed the cast to be a part of the orchestra as well as the show.
As the show went on I thought Ada, second in command of the Oranges played by Rebecca Bainbridge tried a little to hard to bring her character to life. Ada is a psychopath and although that came across very well in Bainbridge’s performance, it became a bit uneasy to watch her bring manly ways to her character. Ada is still female, but every move Bainbridge took, I couldn’t figure out if Ada was meant to be in a girl gang or wanted to be apart of the male gangs that ran Soho and Piccadilly.
My other issue with the Oranges was their leader, Flo. Now Flo was mentioned in the show as the ‘worst female in London’, she was scary, people were frightened of her, unfortunately, Adams was neither. I wasn’t convinced of her leadership within the gang, she looked too soft and the delivery of her lines didn’t make me feel anything towards her.
The Elephants, led by Annie (Liz Kitchen) with second in command, Nellie (Christina Tedders) were great. Tedders was full of energy and made the role her own and diverse; playing the thief but also the lost little girl who just wanted to sing.
When Nellie meets Mary, a young girl from the black country played by Sinead Long who had been captured by the Oranges, you start to feel sorry for both girls, they want to sing in music halls but have somehow been caught up in a life of crime.
Both girls performances were very strong, Long, was very convincing as a scared girl, on her own for the first time in London.
This musical isn’t to everyone’s taste, but I can see why people enjoy it, there also an extra added bonus of the sing along, everyone got song sheets and Van der Berg got the audience singing with no hesitation.
Oranges and Elephants runs at Hoxton Hall until February 10th 2018
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Hello!
