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The best and worst plays Mickey-Jo saw this week | REVIEWS of Our Town, Marie & Rosetta, The Manningtree Witches & While They Were Waiting
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Oh my God. Hey, my name is Mickey Jo and this week I once again saw objectively too much theatre. Even as a full time theatre critic and content creator here on social media. This week was a lot and I saw so many shows, specifically plays, specifically most of them new writing that I have run out of time to individually review each of them. So once again we are going to have a glorious multi review roundup. This is a quadruple bill of play reviews today. Get ready, buckle up your theatrical seat belts. I hope you're sitting comfortably because I wasn't when I saw most of these famously uncomfortable seating at the theater. Although you know, not each of them. To be fair, that would be the real ranking here. Which of these had the best seats? I'm procrastinating. Let me tell you what we're going to be discussing today. First up was while they were waiting, a brand new play by the actor Gary Wilmot playing upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate, London. Next I traveled to the Mercury Theatre in Colchester. Why yes, that is a very long way to go and see the Manning Tre Witches, a brand new play by the rising star playwright Ava Pickett based on the novel by A.K. blakemore. Next up I headed to the Rose Theatre in Kingston to see the Welsh National Theatre production of Thornton Wilder's American classic Our Town, starring the actor Michael Sheen. And finally, last night I was at at Soho Place for the Press night performance of Marie and Rosetta, a play with music written by George Brandt, which already played a handful of venues last year, but has now finally arrived for a limited run in the West End. So I'm going to devote a little bit of time to talking about each of these plays. We're going to talk about the the performances, the creative choices, as we always do. If this is your first introduction to me, hello to you, hello of course to everyone listening as well on podcast platforms. As always, if you've had the chance to see any of these pieces of theatre for yourself, I would love to know what you thought in the comments section down below as well. And if you want to make sure that you stay up to date with all of my theatre reviews, then you can subscribe here on YouTube or follow on podcast platforms. Or to find out everything that I have shared every single week, you can sign up to my free substack newsletter at the link in the description of this video for now, though, let us waste no more time because we have four different productions to review. Let's do this in chronological order, starting with While They Were Waiting. Now, this is, as the title may suggest, a play about waiting. There is a nice little speech in there about the amount of waiting that we do in life. Waiting is sort of a proud and cherished part of British culture. Specifically, we do, in my experience, bring order and structure to the waiting process better than just about anyone else in the world with the concept of the British queue. And yes, before anyone corrects me, I know that they also queue in other parts of the world. But having traveled, do they? Do they really? Anyway, waiting, as the play suggests, is something of a connecting, universal human experience, and that is what is depicted in this play by Gary Wilmot. We are introduced to a character by the name of Bix, played by Steve first, who is waiting aside a yellow door as pictured here. He is joined by a secondary character named Mulberry, played by the playwright Gary Wilmot, who waits along him, who, it transpires, is waiting for him. All the while, the audience is collectively waiting to find out exactly what it is that they are looking at to try and discern what is going on here. And I personally am waiting to see if this is going to amount to more than the Waiting for Godot fanfiction that I had initially perceived that it might be. And to its credit, it isn't quite that, but it does feel suspiciously adjacent. It's interesting then that Gary Wilmot, who is making his London playwriting debut with this piece of writing. He has written a couple of plays before that have been performed locally, but this is his first London outing as a writer, should be able to put together a piece of writing that feels so proximal to this pre existing, acclaimed, often revived piece of theatre, which he said in an interview with the Guardian that he had seen but didn't particularly enjoy or understand. No. Instead, the actor turned playwright, who has achieved considerable stage success in his lifetime, says that the idea for this play came to him while sat backstage during technical rehearsals alongside co star Steve First, I think, at the National Theater as he tells the story and they were waiting to be called upon and he was struck by the action of waiting and the meaning of that, and therefore wrote a play about it. It does sound like it's very much in response to Godot, but it isn't. That being said, they also have their similarities. They also have their differences. The dialogue of this play is exchanged entirely between only these two characters. They do have some familiarity of Godot's protagonists, but they also feel, as does the writing itself, a degree more reasonable. It feels in many ways like something similarly absurd, but more accessible, presenting ideas which are, like I said, universal and also relatable and nostalgic and building to a much more meaningful conclusion. We can try and infer meaning from Beckett's work, but here it amounts to something much more specific with an awful lot more clarity. We, by the end of the play very clearly understand why it is that they have been waiting, what it is that the door represents and the meaning of the entire. There are also many more pockets of joy and warmth. You would struggle, I think, to rationalize a production of Waiting for Godot with so much yellow and so much light. There's much more of a sort of a relaxed kindness in terms of the overview of this play and its perspective on life. You can feel and really hear the voice of Gary Wilmot in this material. And you can value. I mean, so often we celebrate the work of young, emerging early career playwrights, but with such profound musings and reflections on life, I think it's really rewarding to hear from an actor in their 70s who has worked extensively in theater. I'm so curious. I was so curious. That's why I wanted to go see this. About what somebody in that position would want to say. What is it that you hope to articulate after so many years of being on stage? I also have an Enormous amount of respect for the particular stage that they have chosen for this to be doing this play upstairs at the Gatehouse with the star power that they each have to be supporting off West End London fringe venues. This is an intimate space above a pub in Highgate. And, you know, Gary Wilmot has done plays, has done musicals, has done the London Palladium pantomime on more than one occasion. It's no secret that a lot of London's fringe spaces are navigating increasingly uncertain waters within the industry. So to be able to support those with work like this, I think is fantastic. Steve first, similarly, has recently taken over a theater in Hampstead, the renamed Circle and Star Theatre. I haven't had the chance to visit yet, but I plan to. And the two of them make for a fantastic double act here because they each contain multitudes. As performers, we associate Gary Wilmot with this sort of broad music hall style of comedy, but there is such a thoughtfulness to his delivery beneath that. Steve Furst likewise has done an awful lot of comedy, but has also done a lot of striking intellectual work. The last time I saw him on stage, it was in a production of the Caucasian Chalk Circle. And so I think they are able to perform this sort of theatrical tug of war, each of them carrying in one hand a capacity for broad comedy and in the other a really sophisticated theatrical depth. In this play, particularly, Steve Furst sort of falls on one side of that spectrum. The more intellectual, the more thoughtful. While Gary Wilmot is his usual sunny self. And as you may have learned about me previously, I am not a great fan of Theatre of the Absurd. Likewise, there are many types of seafood that I don't particularly enjoy. It doesn't mean it's not well made, well prepared, often very expensive seafood. But it isn't going to be to my taste personally, and I think that is a little bit of what I was dealing here with. This. I didn't find it wholly engaging or particularly satisfying. And I do think ultimately it, even if by this extraordinary accident too closely resembled Waiting for Godot. At the same time, I don't want to let my personal taste dictate the verdict of whether or not this is an objectively good piece of theatre. This is a very subjective response based on the fact that, you know, it's not my particular sub genre. That being said, I do think the goddo of it all is going to hang over this production indefinitely. Even just there in the title, I initially thought, is this some kind of a. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead spin off of Waiting for Godot in the same way that that is an exploration of two characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet. And when it comes to that particular Beckett play, the title of which I've already said far too many times, I think so much of it, its success and so much of its acclaim comes from its utter uniqueness and originality. And you know, it's not like Beckett thereafter wrote a bunch of different Waiting for plays with different characters and it's been parodied, which is a separate thing. But if you're going to do something that feels so much like a companion piece to it, I praise artistic accessibility being an aspect of that, that this is sort of a version where it feels as though it's more in conversation with the audience and there's more that you from it and it's life affirming and it reflects on different parts of the human experience. But I also think that, like when Pygmalion was turned into My Fair lady, the songs are the value add. And I just don't know if it felt like there was enough of that here or if it feels like we're walking a little too closely to a path that has already been thoroughly trodden. That being said, it is a warm production from director Sydney Stevenson. It is a thoughtful production, one that invites audiences to slow down and reflect for the duration of its uninterrupted one act runtime. And there is joy in simply watching a ball getting tossed back and forth proverbially by these two masters of their craft. You can check out while they were waiting upstairs at the gatehouse until 22 March. In the meantime, let's move on. Next I headed to Colchester in Essex. So now it's time for us to talk about the Manning Tree witches. And something quite extraordinary has happened already with this play because it isn't star led, it tells a local story. Manning Tree is just sort of up the road from Colchester where it is being produced, and it's based on a novel, but it's not exactly an adaptation of Hollywood ip. It's quite surprising and more than a little encouraging then that this production has sold out its entire world premiere run. Before press night, as we were heading in to this very exciting evening of theatre, they announced that it was already sold out for the duration of its time at the venue, which I think is extraordinary. That is such a regional theatre success story. And the success can be put down to both. A lot of excitement about the writer Ava Pickett, who will talk about in just a moment but also the value in telling local stories that are going to mean something to that community. And I think that is what regional theatre is best predisposed to do. Meanwhile, we have to talk about Eva Pickett. This was my first time seeing any of her work, but it came highly anticipated because she is having something of an extraordinary year. She just won the Stage Debut award last year for her play 1536, which had an acclaimed run at the Almeida Theatre and is transferring later this year to the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End. It was also not nominated for an Olivier Award for Best New play. So Ava Pickett became a first time Olivier Award nominee the Morning After I Saw the Manning Tree Witches. Further to that, she has another play, one which I think she may actually have written prior to these other two, which is called Bloodsport, which is playing at Stratford east later this year. I am hugely excited about that one. I think she's just this really compelling, thrilling new voice. There seems to be this connection of historic women's stories running through all of her work. This is about the witch hunts that took place in Essex, true events which took place in the mid 17th century, about 50 years before the Salem witch trials would take place, documented of course, in Arthur Miller's play the Crucible. We'll talk about that in just a moment as well, though, interestingly, and I did not know this, with a far more significant death toll. And this play works to unpick much of the hysteria which drove this religious cultural community to that conclusion. This is taking place in Oliver Cromwell era Britain during a time of war which brings national poverty as well as a focus on the gender divide in society. This is described in the play as a village on its knees in a country on its back. And not to compare every single piece of new writing that I saw in the last week to older, established pieces of writing. But this opens with a testimonial very much in the style of I Saw Goody Proctor with the Devil. You have a young woman who we come to find is our protagonist, a teenager named Rebecca west, played by Lucy Mangan. She lives with her mother, who is a widow. And puzzlingly, in these opening moments, she is accusing other women, including her mother, of these satanic acts of witchcraft and attempting to indoctrinate her into these practices. Rather than I Saw Goody Proctor with the Devil, it's I Saw Liz Godwin Open a Little Red Book. And obviously both plays tell very similar stories. One of the biggest differences between the two is that this is told entirely from the perspective of a young woman who becomes embroiled in the witch hunt and who is accused alongside her mother. We also expand on the moment of the trial itself as we see the days leading up to it, as well as what Rebecca's life would go on to be afterwards. And without the John Proctor and the Abigail of it all. This play feels a lot more like a indictment of this historic, an extraordinary act of what became systemic violence against these women committed by men. Crucially, within this play, it is a group of women who are all widows who live without a man, it having been believed at the time that women in conversation with each other would simply create space for the evil whisperings of the devil. Likewise, the emergence of the devil and evil was also closely linked to perceptions of female sexual pleasure. And our protagonist here is a burgeoning young woman coming to terms with her own sexual desire in a time of puritanical repression, but being preyed on nonetheless by men in positions of religious power. Where this finds its closest connection to the Crucible, however, is in the subtext of the whole thing. And the Crucible, of course, was written in the mid 20th century as an allegory for everything else that was happening at the time in US society with McCarthyism and with a very different kind of witch hunt amidst the Red Scare. It was intended as something of a warning about believing the relentless pace of all of these sudden unfounded allegations, as well as, I suppose, the injustice of individuals having no way in which to defend themselves. There is a very impactful moment in the second act of this play as Rebecca is discussing the case that is being built against her with Mr. Matthew Hopkins, the man who became named the Witch Hunter General, I believe. And even though she is able to offer a plausible alibi detailing her whereabouts at a time when witchcraft to have occurred, it is put to her that as a witch, she would have had the ability to be in two places at once. She eventually responds that her word in this case therefore means nothing. However, if she were to confess and admit to witchcraft, her word would suddenly be trusted anyway. If Arthur Miller with the Crucible was really talking about McCarthyism and communism, then what AK Blakemore and Eva Pickett seem to really be talking about here, here is this systemic violence against women in society, but also kind of just like the national consciousness and where we are in society right now, there is this acute sense that we aren't really talking about atrocities and miscarriages of justice that took place half a millennium ago. When they deliver lines like it's as if the world has been turned Upside down, frozen over and rots from within. You can't help but escape from this feeling that I think we are experiencing now of the country and society having gone a little wrong in years of emergence from national grief. And make no mistake, the story being told here about these witch hunts and women becoming the scapegoat for society's ills and the weaknesses of men feels just as much like. It could be a story about poverty within the neglected working class. It could be a story about immigrants. It could be a story about incel culture and unchecked, rampant, festering misogyny in institutions like the Metropolitan Police. And it's a blazing piece of writing from Ava Pickett. Do yourself a favor and see absolutely all of her work that you can. The narration is truly poetic in its turn of phrase, but I think one of the best aspects of the storytelling is the way in which this feels like a very familiar community. You know, this is. Is 17th century. It's an entirely different time. And yet the way in which they gossip, the way in which they laugh with each other, the way in which they bicker over the scraps of food that they have to eat, the familiarity of this kind of a community feels utterly transplanted from modern times. We also have to talk about the direction from Natasha Rickman. I wasn't entirely convinced by every single scenic choice. There is sort of wheat descending from the ceiling and there is this backdrop that seems to move up and down of its own accord. But there are a whole handful of moments where the rear part of the stage is used to juxtapose or to expose what is happening alongside the action that's being played at the front. There is a moment of execution which is just harrowing. There's also terrific movement design directed by Scott Graham, with Michelle Edwards as an associate for Frantic Assembly. In their particular style, a lot of which sees women lifted and placed on different parts of the stage as the storyteller is switches between moments, often by men, instilling very early on this kind of a subconscious story about agency. And there are some firecracker performances, particularly Lucy Mangan as Rebecca West. She is just extraordinary in the way that she is forced to mature and evolve over the couple of years that the play is set between. She plays this really extraordinary sense of passionate frustration, while her mother, played by Gina Isaac, who is just sensational, has a very different response to everything, everything that takes place. She is a little more resigned to it. Which isn't to say that she will simply roll over and submit. She is this notorious local character known for being outspoken and stubborn and for getting into fist fights. She's a very sharp presence on stage that just cuts through every single scene that she's in. Like I said, this entire run is currently sold out. Hopefully there will be a further life for the Manning Tree Witches, whether it will transfer elsewhere or return subsequently to the Mercury Theatre in Colchester. If you have the chance, get yourself a ticket and go and see this play. Meanwhile, the very next day, themes of Community continued as I went for the very first time, I might add, to see a production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town.
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Now. The thing you need to know about Thornton Wilder's Our Town in the UK is it is not done particularly often. There was last, I think, a major revival of the play around a decade ago, if not a little beyond that, at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, which I nearly saw in the I didn't the play premiered on Broadway in the 1930s. Structurally, the narrative unfolds over three acts. For this particular production that was split into two, with the first two being the first act followed by an interval and then the shorter final act, which, if you're familiar with the content of the play, I do think was a mistake. In any case, this was my very first exposure to Our Town. I knew its significance and I had wanted to see it for a long time. I deliberately avoided the recent Broadway revival revival because that was a condensed adaptation. I wanted to experience its full impact. Ironically, this is not a particularly traditional production of the play because even though it is still set in the same place, the fictional New Hampshire town of Grover's Corners, it is performed as though it is taking place in Wales. This is a co production, I believe, between the Rose Theatre in Kingston in London and the Welsh National Theatre, and prior to its run in London, when I saw it, it was running at Theatre Clwyd. And all this really amounts to is that performers on stage, while still dressed appropriately for the time period and geographical setting, use their own native Welsh accents instead, led by the well known Welsh actor Michael Sheen. And this, I suppose, is a sort of a half recontextualisation, because licensing and rights holders permitting, you could work to really interrogate and rewrite aspects of the text, to explore what it might be able to say about a Welsh town during that time. But they sort of achieve the same thing here by affording it that kind of a sensibility. So even though there is the occasional very American feeling, turn of phrase, and occasionally we talk about, like, the distance to Boston, the sound of the delivery, the musicality of that Welsh accent and the unanimity of hearing it performed on stage implicitly ushers us into a conversation about, you know, how similar these two communities are, one small town being not unlike another, and the major events experienced over one person's lifetime. Birth and love and marriage and childbirth and death being a universal experience that transcends borders and countries. And so there's nothing about it that really jars in that way. The everyday conversations, the neighbourly gossip, the church, community choir, it all feels appropriate now. The play begins, we're told, at the moment before dawn in the very early 20th century, in May 1901. And there is much said by our principal narrator, character named in the play as the stage manager, about the historic ways and behaviors of the village and how obviously a certain amount has shifted over time. But also, in communities such as these, you would be surprised how little changes over the years. And in a narrative that reminded me passingly of James Joyce's Ulysses, we see everyday activities. We focus on a handful of different families and characters within the community. The first act depicts daily life within the town. The second transitions us into a young love story and portrays marriage. While the third is foreshadowed before its arrival as an act that focuses on the profound experience of death, as well as the meaning of the human experience and being alive when regarded in hindsight. And I have to say, our town is not what I would describe as life affirming or uplifting. And it's the way that it ends that surprises me, considering it is performed by so many Americans, American schools, and I think its perspective on the possibility of afterlife is almost quite a morose one. Certainly that is the way that it feels. In this production, with director Francesca Goodridge, Staging the departed characters, as it were, sat atop stepladders, gazing forwards with sort of vacant, hollow expressions, but some recollection of the lives that they led, even though they are detached from them for reasons we come to find out of emotional necessity. There is some unexpected tragedy that the third act of Our Town beckons. Not unexpected tonally, if you've been paying attention to the sort of creepingly sinister quality of many of the moments of narration, but more so because it brings us to a point of tragic, unanticipated grief, especially on the heels of the second act, which is absolutely my favourite part of the play, especially the way that it was performed in this production. And that is the courtship between an adolescent, George Gibbs, played by Peter Devlin, and his neighbor and sweetheart, Emily Webb, played by Yasmin Ozdomir. And it's a beautiful coming together of these two nerds. Nervous, adolescent. It's just lovely. It's beautifully played. And it's probably the moment that is most allowed to escape the momentum put on by the stage manager, who occasionally moves things forwards in order to frame the story of this town that he is telling us. Michael Sheen does a wonderful job in this role. He's very well placed for it because you need to have this sense of warmth and a fondness for the people, people whose lives you are bringing to life on stage, but also not unlike the dead at the end of the show, this sense of detachment, this sort of weary quality as he allows these stories to be portrayed. And even as we see these scenes of joy and young love, it's important that we can tell, both through the words that he is saying, but also through the sadness that lingers behind behind his eyes, that there is heartbreak to come, which I suppose is a vital enough part of the human experience. But, God, it's depressing. The production itself is stylishly staged with design by Hayley Grindle. It's sort of this juxtaposition to begin with, of contemporary scenic elements and lighting and ladders with period clothing and these sort of croppings up of grass and weeds and foliage, which are all entirely absent by the end of the play, as we just have have this series of ladders staring back at us. Prior to that, though, they do some very exciting work with planks. These become buildings that are referenced in the moments of exposition. These become a giant crucifix. These become the benches on which characters sit together and chat. They become obstacles, they become paths to be walked. It's a lovely visual motif throughout the production, creating this theatrical sense of community very often. Often players will sit at the back of the stage and regard the action that is being played at the forefront. And there's something very charming almost It's a Wonderful Life esque of this early 20th century story of community and ordinary lives intersecting with each other. And there's much to be appreciated about its revival here. At the same time, I think in the years since, these kind of stories would tend now to be motivated by a more robust narrative, by a more eventful one, and they would likely be empowered in the process to talk about more affecting themes and to leave us with something a little more substantial. So perhaps controversially, I liked this production, but I don't know if I like Our Town all that much. Finally then, having besmirched an American classic, let's talk about a play exploring a piece of American music. Marie and Rosette
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Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone Paying Big Wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month, of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
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So let me tell you a little bit about the play Marie and Rosetta written by by George Brandt. It's finally arrived in the West End proper. I saw the opening night performance last night at at Soho Place, which if you haven't been before, is a wonderful theatre to experience. It is newly staged in the Round there directed by Monique Tuco, and previously it had played the Rose Theatre, Kingston that we were just talking about, as well as Chichester Festival Theatre and the Wolverhampton Grand Beverly Knight, being something of a local hero to that community. She is starring as Sister Rosetta Tharp, a figure whose historical impact is perhaps not as appreciated as much as it ought to be, but who is Reg as the godmother of rock and roll. She was the first really celebrated gospel recording artist. She also played guitar and she influenced other musicians including Elvis Presley and Jimi Hendrix and Tina Turner she found popularity in the 1930s and 40s, and the play, which takes place over a single evening, a rehearsal ahead of a performance, seems to be occurring around the height of her success and upon her then newfound partnership with Marie N. Another singer who toured with Rosetta for a number of years. Rosetta is widely believed to have been a queer woman. And some regard the relationship between Marie and Rosetta as having been a romantic one. That is a possibility that the play certainly leans in the direction of. I actually saw a little 10 minute rehearsal preview of this almost a year ago and it was just the first 10 minutes of the play and I left that going. I'm getting Sapphic vibes from this which weren't what I was anticipating. And having now seen the entire thing, thing can confirm Sapphic vibes in abundance. This is Marie and Rosetta having only really commenced their professional partnership. There is also still a sense that Marie is being auditioned via this rehearsal. And we come to find out in this introductory dialogue, if you hadn't already noticed it within the set design, that they are alone after hours in a funeral parlor. This because they are touring the American south during times of segregation and they are relying on the kindness of the proprietor there for a place to stay as well as a place to rehearse. They don't have the option of going to a hotel nor to a restaurant, which is this very hard hitting and fascinating juxtaposition of, you know, the success that they are finding with black audiences and the space that they continue to occupy in a then deeply racist and dangerous society. And that's also a lot of what they talk about. They discuss dignity in times of segregation as well as their relationship, relationship to faith, their relationships with men and their independence and emancipation as women and providers and musicians. We also get to explore each of their relationship to a higher power through music specifically. And there is something of a cultural clash between the two. Marie being a little younger, a little naive, but also significantly more conservative than the more bold and unapologetic energetic Rosetta, who has already been doing this for some time. But there is this really interesting clash at play between traditional spirituality and conservative Christianity. With the dawn of rock and roll, and that's something else they discuss. They have this hilarious debate about the proper way in which gospel music ought to be performed. And it reveals a lot about the character of each woman. But also when they're talking about, you know, what is appropriate and respectful when singing that kind of music and performing it and feeling it moving through your uninhibited body. They're not really just talking about making music. And it's at this point that the Sapphic vibes come back into the conversation. We come to notice that there is something distinctly vulnerable, tender and intimate about the sheer act of collaborating musically and singing these songs together. And the way in which they're staged really lands that comparison as well. This is a moment of interpretive movement devised, I assume, in collaboration between director Monique Tuchel co and movement director Chloe Dean. And because we have live musicians at either corner of the in the round playing space, the two actresses on stage need neither to play the electric guitar nor the upright piano, which is two of the instruments that they are rehearsing with. So what they do instead is imply their existence. Bev. As Rosetta opens an empty guitar case, there is a sort of a stool that suggests at a piano, piano. But rather than miming the action of playing them and giving it, like fingers on the keys and electric guitar and all of that stuff, they instead commence the performance and then move as if interpreting the music. And the style in which they do is indicative of the way that they are playing. Towards the beginning, Maria's playing the piano and Rosetta is trying to coax a more soulful, free and rock and roll, ultimately performance out of her. And we can see in the way in which her shoulders begin to shimmy that she is eventually giving herself over to the music. This is very much a play with music rather than a musical. The songs are diegetic, but that doesn't mean that they don't feel and articulate a little something emotional in the lyrics. We also come to anticipate the performances hugely, especially the culmination of the whole thing with. With all of the instrumentation involved and the two of them performing together. Now let's have that conversation about casting that I wanted to tell you about. So, Beverly Knight, Olivier Award winner, is best known for her music career as well as her performances in stage musicals. And this is such a confident arrival for her as a dramatic actress, as a legitimate, brilliant dramatic actress, she gives a fantastic performance in this play. And I was reminded, perhaps because of the power behind balance and the conversation, as a means of investigating and talking about her past and because of the role that she is playing in the status that she has at this point in her career, I was reminded of the Terrence McNally play masterclass. One of the big differences there is that Maria Callas, in the waning years of her own operatic career, scarcely sings. And when she does, it doesn't need to be impressive. In fact, it sort of isn't meant to to be with this. However, when Marie and Rosetta both take turns in performing, they have to really deliver the goods. And you know that Beverly Knight can. That's one of the great things about this casting. And it's not just vocal ability, it's soul. She is the queen of soul, after all. And it's the spirit of the whole thing. When she sings these songs, you believe the artistry of them, but you also believe the conviction on her lips. And she's already won us over with Rosetta's personality at its best, when she is ultimately sort of flirtatious and then maternal towards Marie, kind of gently chastising and poking fun at her. But she sells us on the legacy of Sister Rosetta Tharp via her skill and the sheer spirit of the whole thing. Meanwhile, the smart casting parallel actually goes a little further because. Because Beverly Knight is very much the established, acclaimed veteran. And the role of Marie opposite her is played by this discovery of a relative newcomer, Ntomba Zodwa Ndlovu, who is utterly her opposite. We regard this connection between the way in which they initially make music and their personalities. And she has this beautiful spiritual acapella performance delivered directly to a cross in one corner of the playing seat space that feels as if it constitutes her focused but delicate emergence from her preconceptions and her nervousness. But she also has this real youth to her and this charming school girl giddy quality where she can't quite believe who she is singing with and the opportunity that is being presented to her. And even more charmingly, by the end of the play, she really delights in the rock and roll of it all and the abandonment London that she is now able to feel. I think the treasure of the whole thing is the gradual melting and mixing together of these two different characters. But undeniably the most crowd pleasing moments are the latter moments of musical performance. Some of these songs are so fantastic and they're both tremendous, astonishing vocalists who put so much soul, so much spirit, so much belief into this material. It is a genuine privilege to get to hear it and to get to see this play. It's a wonderful piece of theatre. Go and check it out for yourselves. Finally then, I have reached the end of this four play roundup that hopefully took less than about 45 minutes for you. I've been here for almost two hours telling you about all of these different pieces of theatre. And hilariously, next week I'm gonna see a bunch of more. Stay tuned for more reviews coming very soon. Like I said, if you saw any of these plays for yourself, or if you go on to subsequently come right back here and let me know what you thought of them in the comments section down below, especially if you disagreed with any of my thoughts. Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed listening to these reviews. Stay tuned for many more coming very soon. Make sure you're subscribed or following me on podcast platforms. Or don't forget that you can sign up to my free weekly substack newsletter to stay abreast of everything that I have been seeing every single week. In the meantime, whether you see a piece of theatre every night of the week or just experience them vicariously through my descriptions, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe
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