Stage-to-screen review:Memoirs of an Asian Football Casual

More online theatre is being announced all the time to fill in the gap left by the buildings being shut, with the majority of what's coming up being shows I've already seen in person and reviewed. But that mainly applies to London and Stratford-upon-Avon, and the regional theatres I don't generally get to have been releasing material as well. In return for a donation, Leicester Curve are offering a recording of their 2018 show Memoirs of an Asian Football Casual for a week - this is an archive recording that was never intended for public release, but I guess even those have moved on in quality over the years, and instead of a static shot this is a perfectly watchable recording done with multiple moving cameras. Riaz Khan's original book was a response to the resurgence of racism on the football terraces in the noughties, through the lens of him finding an identity in the eighties in the unlikely family of the much-derided gangs of violent football hooligans known as casuals.

Theatre review: The Buskers [sic] Opera

John Gay's 18th-century Beggar's Opera has been called a precursor to the modern musical as well as directly influencing various adaptations - most famously The Threepenny Opera. Brecht and Weill's version is about to get revived at the National, so whether that's good or bad timing for a new rewrite remains to be seen. Dougal Irvine's The Buskers OperaSHOULD THERE BE AN APOSTROPHE IN THERE SOMEWHERE OR ARE YOU TRYING TO USE "OPERA" AS A VERB?* references its predecessors in its opening number, in a self-referential style that will become typical of the rest of the evening: Macheath (George Maguire) is a former X Factor contestant kicked out at Boot Camp because of his temper, and now films himself singing anti-establishment songs and posts them on a fairly successful YouTube channel.

Theatre review: Teddy

Another new British musical, although playwright Tristan Bernays and composer Dougal Irvine have gone for the more accurate description "play with songs" for Teddy, set in the 1950s but right in the middle of where Southwark Playhouse is today, at the Elephant and Castle. It was then an area full of Teddy boys and girls, the first post-war teenage rebels who'd grown up with rationing and defined themselves as Edwardian dandies to indicate that there was more to them than their poverty. But the places they hang out are bomb sites that haven't been cleared yet, and Max Dorey's set design reflects the grubby environment that the likes of Teddy (Joseph Prowen) and Josie (Jennifer Kirby) bring their own brand of glamour to (costumes by Holly Rose Henshaw.) The pair meet in a makeshift nightclub in a bombed-out church, when Teddy helps Josie escape the attentions of a thuggish admirer.