Theatre review: Radioman

Written and performed by Felix Trench, Radioman is a sort of pastoral idyll that turns into a dark fantasy - along the lines of a Roald Dahl short story where no good deed goes unpunished. The narrator, Walker, tells of walking along a canal on a summer Sunday when he comes across The Gadfly, a seemingly abandoned narrowboat, dirty and overgrown but with a speaker through which the faint sounds of music and a voice occasionally come out. Curious, Walker lets himself into the narrowboat where he finds a disheveled old man with a huge supply of music, acting as DJ for a radio station only he can hear, and keeping the music running constantly. Concerned, he returns every week with food, but as the Radioman seems to get stronger, the Gadfly proves harder to get away from than he first thought.

Theatre review: The Rover, or, The Banish'd Cavaliers

Helping to fill a relatively quiet August is a list of firsts: My first trip to the New Diorama, and my first time seeing a play by Aphra Behn - herself England's first-ever professional female playwright. Sadly although there's unmistakable signs that the play itself is an interesting example of a rather dark Restoration comedy, Pell Mell theatre company didn't make anywhere near as good a first impression. In The Rover three (or possibly four - the identity of some of the supporting characters are among the many things that are a bit vague here) English cavaliers arrive in Naples during a carnival and proceed to pursue the local women: Whether, like Belville (Leo Marcus Wan) this means trying to secure the hand in marriage of his true love or, like Willmore (Felix Trench) it means trying to get into the pants of the city's many prostitutes, preferably for free.