Play a little laboured
BIRTHDAY
Royal Court’s Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, London SW1 (Tickets: 020 7565 5000, £10-£28)
A WALK ON PART
Arts Theatre, London WC2 (Tickets: 020 7836 8463, £15-£29.50)
THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
Threesixty Theatre, Kensington Gardens, London W8 (Tickets: 0844 871 7693, £25-£65)
CANTINA
Spiegeltent, Southbank Centre, London SE1 (Tickets: 0844 545 8282, £10-£50)
PENNY ARCADE
Arcola Tent, London E8 (Tickets: 020 7503 1646, £15-£20)
WHAT IF men could share the pain of childbirth? In Joe Penhall’s Stephen Mangan plays Ed, a heavily pregnant man who is about to give birth at a hopelessly understaffed London maternity hospital.
It’s the good basis for a comedy sketch but as a play it soon starts to feel laboured in every sense.
It imagines this bold new future in which fathers can take an even bigger role in the responsibilities of childbearing by gestating their children on behalf of their busy career partners. However, acted with alternately tense desperation and
Birthday,
lovely exhilaration by Mangan and Lisa Dillon as his concerned wife, it has a surprising pay-off that revealingly puts the twin crises of modern masculinity and the state of the NHS under the microsope.
Political careers can also be a bit like childbirth: a lot of pushing and straining, only to become a support mechanism in a bigger picture. Chris Mullin, one former Labour backbencher turned junior government minister, was always a bit-part player in the Blair years but he has put himself centre stage with the publication of revealing diaries of his years in office that have now been brilliantly adapted for the stage.
is an absolutely riveting, extremely observant account going behind the scenes of an idealistic Labour underdog, finally getting his moment to shine after his time in office, even if he now admits how little difference he made while in it. John Hodgkinson plays him with wit and warmth and he is joined by four other actors who expertly play everyone else from Blair, Brown and Major to John Prescott and Glenda
A Walk On Part
Jackson. By contrast, the stage version of another, much more beloved, book,
flounders, failing to capture the work’s imaginative and narrative sweep despite a lavish production that includes a wraparound video screen for projections and a parade of animal puppets that is too reminiscent of The Lion King and War Horse.
It is staged in a purpose-built tent in Kensington Gardens. Meanwhile, at the beautiful, mirrored Spiegeltent that has been set up on the South Bank, is a small-scale, but big impact, circus show of just seven performers who fling themselves sweatily at and over each other in a series of gladiatorially violent confrontations. Some of their set pieces, like the handstands performed on broken glass, are morbidly gripping; you do not want to watch but you cannot take eyes off it either.
A third show in a tent this week sees New York performance artist
bring her exhilarating show back to London nearly 20 years after I first saw her in Edinburgh. With London this year not only hosting the Olympics but yesterday offering World Pride, a global celebration of gay life, Arcade’s show is more resonant and relevant than ever, offering stunning character monologues, personal address and even a group dance for the entire audience.
This is the most powerful, passionate, political, provocative, personal and pertinent show in town; Arcade is like Ruby Wax, Bette Midler, Pamela Anderson and Danny DeVito all rolled into one.
Cantina
Penny Arcade