Theatre
MY MUM’S A T**T HHHH Royal Court, until January 20. Tickets: 020 7565 5000
THE debut play by the Royal Court’s chief press officer Anoushka Warden is utterly compelling, a confident and articulate depiction of a young woman’s evolving attitudes to the mother who abandoned her to join a cult.
Girl (Patsy Ferran) addresses the audience directly, sashaying and shimmying around the stage like an antsy teenager as she relates her early childhood, growing up with six siblings.
But the mother in question changed from being a “good mum” who would make her daughter poached eggs on toast whenever she asked to a brainwashed alien who ran off with a Canadian referred to as The Moron.
The fact that much of the story is based on Warden’s own mother is desperately affecting, even if she admits that it’s an unreliable version of a true story.
The set is an aqua-coloured teenage girl’s room with fairy lights and cut-out magazine pictures. Her musical soundtrack is influenced by her brothers and sisters, most of whom are half-siblings, and the sequence when she pulls down a wall chart to explain her complicated family tree is hysterical.
Then her mother leaves her in Britain to live in Canada and the effect on her 12-year-old heart is truly moving. The tone of bewilderment and hurt curdles into anger and an enforced self-sufficiency.
Ferran is mercurial in the part, acting tough and cool one moment, slumped in pain and loss the next and sustaining a remarkable intimacy with the audience throughout. And her
epiphany when she eats a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup for the first time is worth the price of admission alone.
BANANAMAN THE MUSICAL ★★★★ Southwark Playhouse, until January 20. Tickets: 020 7407 0234
IS it an orange-utan? Is it a fruit bat? No. It’s Bananaman! Costumed superheroes don’t come much dumber than the alter ego of Eric Wimp, the Adrian Mole-like hero of this rackety musical based on the comic strip character, aimed at kids (and big kids) of all ages.
Bananaman first appeared in the Nutty comic in 1980 before being upgraded to the Beano, then TV, where his ridiculous antics had kids in stitches.
As a cartoon satire on the po-faced superheroes of Marvel and DC comics, Bananaman was a one-joke character. Whenever swotty schoolboy Eric ate a banana he transformed into the eponymous muscle-bound vigilante whose brains were in inverse proportion to his brawn.
Leon Parris’s musical captures the cartoon anarchy of the strip and director Mark Perry drives his willing cast into a kinetic frenzy over two hours plus. The action is set against a backdrop of Roy Lichtenstein-style panels from the Beano, featuring Dennis the Menace and the Bash Street Kids. Eric (Mark Newnham) and Bananaman (Matthew McKenna) attempt to outwit the double threat posed by Dr Gloom (Marc Pickering) and General Blight (Carl Mullaney) who have formed an uneasy alliance against the denizens of Acacia Avenue. Today, Acacia Avenue. Tomorrow, the world!
Funny songs are delivered with tuneful abandon by the cast, especially Emma Ralston’s Fiona (Eric’s putative girlfriend) and Jodie Jacobs as a talking crow.
There are some raucous dance numbers courtesy of choreographer Grant Murphy. The sexy Bad Magic sequence, a glancing reference to Goldfinger and lyrics such as “No more pretending to be friends with vegans just to be polite” hint at an adult-orientated subversiveness that never quite comes to fruition (pun intended).
The plot doesn’t stand up for longer than 10 minutes and the staging, especially a staircase that has to be wheeled on and off at regular intervals, leaves much to be desired. But the fab costumes and sheer silly energy are enough to send you out with a grin on your face.