REVIEW: Henry V, Southwark Cathedral ✭✭✭✭✭
I think Shakespeare would certainly have approved and I couldn’t help agreeing that – as a student of mine (who also happened to be there) gushed – “it was brilliant.”
Helena Payne
REVIEW: Gazing At A Distant Star, Greenwich Theatre ✭✭✭✭
In a world where all our whims and activities are trackable on social media, the need to disappear has never been stronger. Missing people is an increasingly topical issue, and this piece does well to highlight that.
REVIEW: All Male HMS Pinafore, Richmond Theatre ✭✭✭✭
This HMS Pinafore asks us to reflect on a society that has changed considerably, but must keep evolving and continuing to examine itself. Gilbert’s jeering satire of a Victorian society obsessed with class and hierarchy doesn’t seem a million miles away from the problems young people still face in modern Britain.
REVIEW: Twist Of Lemon, St James Theatre Studio ✭✭✭✭
It is a heart-warming night, Chris bluffs and stutters, clearly enjoying impersonating his father through his famous lines, but personally I preferred it when he spoke plainly as himself.
Starting A Theatre Company From Scratch – Episode 2
Helena Payne is starting out on an awfully big adventure to start a theatre company. We asked her to document her journey. Episode 2: Computer says No! Well who knew the internet would catch on? After dropping out of ICT GCSE (because I was completely inept and convinced all electrical machinery hated me as much as I hate it) I have had to make my peace. It turns out the internet is your friend and if you want to start any sort of company you better get well acquainted. There is a lot of, for want of a better word, kerfuffling about on a computer. So before you get to any of the fun creative stuff you’ve to make a new email address, register with companies house, open a business bank account, make a website, make a twitter, a facebook page, buy a domain name, each task fraught with unexpected … Read more
Starting A Theatre Company From Scratch – Episode 1
Helena Payne is starting out on an awfully big adventure to start a theatre company. We asked her to document her journey. Episode 1: I have a cunning plan, m’lord! How do you know when you’re ready to start your own theatre company? The answer I suppose is that it’s different for everybody, but now is as good a time as any. As a performer I have been working pretty steadily since leaving Drama School but, at the ripe old age of 27, there comes a time when you’re tired of facilitating other people’s dreams and ambitions and want to start realising your own. Saying that, I’m incredibly proud of and have learnt a huge amount from working with a variety of brilliant directors, producers, lighting and costume designers, stage managers and, of course, an army of spectacularly talented actors. Although I have been incubating certain artistic dreams of my … Read more
REVIEW: Deathwatch, Print Room At The Coronet ✭✭✭
Deathwatch Print Room At The Coronet 14 April 2016 3 Stars About as French as a pasty, and just as heavy. Jean Genet is running amok on our London stages at the moment. After scandalising us in The Maids at the Trafalgar Studios he’s back to finish the job with David Rudkin’s translation of Deathwatch at The Print Room, Coronet, directed by Geraldine Alexander. Three convicts trapped in the same small cell struggle to maintain social order as they compete for the favour of condemned murderer Green Eyes. To a modern audience this play’s claustrophobia facilitates a deconstruction of masculinity, and Genet enjoys provoking his audience by inverting societal codes of morality as the men glamourise and sexualise their brutality. Unfortunately, these noble aspirations are suffocated under laboured and repetitive text that never feels as dangerous or as visceral as it should. Having never been to The Print Room at … Read more
REVIEW: Right Now, Bush Theatre ✭✭✭✭
A Freudian wet dream, the characters drink, dance and dare each other on further with party games and peculiar eroticism.
