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Showing posts with label James Alexandrou. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Alexandrou. Show all posts

Tuesday, 19 March 2024

Theatre review: Casserole

Yes, among the many less-than-highbrow reasons for me choosing what shows to see is when a title is as hilariously banal as James Alexandrou, Kate Kelly Flood and Dom Morgan's Casserole, although the one-acter itself proves to have a lot less to laugh about. On the other hand I'm on the record as being wary when writers direct their own work or actors direct themselves, so how would I get along when Alexandrou does both? He plays Dom while Flood plays Kate, a couple both of whom are music video directors - although while his career is over for reasons that are never revealed, hers is at its peak, and as the play begins she's meant to be collecting an award. But instead she's had a panic attack and come home to find Dom drunk, stoned, and surrounded by rubbish. The two are alternately affectionate and bickering - her panic was caused by thinking she'd lost a token of her dead mother's, and this is the subject that ends up dominating the evening.

Friday, 11 April 2014

Theatre review: Othello (Grassroots Shakespeare London / Leicester Square Theatre)

Last summer, Grassroots Shakespeare London did a two-show rep at the Old Red Lion. The results were decidedly mixed, but there was enough of interest to make me keep an eye on what the company did next. This turns out to be Othello, which they've brought to the small thrust stage of Leicester Square Theatre's basement Lounge space. The moor Othello's (Nari Blair-Mangat) military prowess is such that the authorities of Venice are happy to overlook his origins and make him their most decorated general. He's just married the young Desdemona (Annabel Bates) when a crisis in Cyprus sees him set off to fight the Turks, taking his new bride with him. He's backed up by his new lieutenant Michael Cassio (Boris Mitkov,) but Cassio's appointment hasn't been universally popular: Endlessly told how trusted he is but never rewarded for it, Iago (James Alexandrou) has been passed over for promotion one time too many, and plots revenge.