Theatre review: James Graham's Sketching

Apparently kicked off by his feeling guilty about having three plays in West End theatres in the last year while other writers struggle to get work staged, James Graham's Sketching sees him take that high profile and use it to put a few emerging playwrights in the spotlight. His idea for doing this was an update of Charles Dickens' early hit Sketches by Boz, a collection of character pieces set around Victorian London, with the gimmick that this would be the first "crowdsourced" play, accepting submissions of short plays that would be woven into the overall story. Eight playwrights' submissions were eventually accepted, and Thomas Hescott directs Samuel James, Penny Layden, Nav Sidhu, Sean Michael Verey and Sophie Wu in around fifty roles between them. Graham himself contributes four storylines that try to link all the different threads together over the course of 24 hours.

Re-review: Tonight with Donny Stixx

When I did my annual roundup last year there was a first in my list of favourite shows - two new plays by the same writer made it into my top ten. Regular readers (both of them) will know there's only a couple of likely candidates, and while I wouldn't be surprised if Tom Wells manages it too some year, this time it was of course Philip Ridley whose Radiant Vermin I put at number 1, and Tonight with DonnyStixx at number 8; I also gave the latter's star Sean Michael Verey my award for best solo performance. You can read my original review here, from the first-ever public preview, before it officially opened in Edinburgh. It's taken over a year but the murderous but horribly sympathetic amateur magician Donny Stixx is back, David Mercatali's production finally returning to London but to a new venue: The Bunker is an underground former art studio next to the Menier Chocolate Factory that's been converted into a decent-sized thrust stage; I'm pretty sure the multicoloured benches that form the central seating bank are left over from the Menier's production of Assassins.

Re-review: Radiant Vermin

A quick word about a show that, of course, I had to return to - I saw Philip Ridley's Radiant Vermin twice last year and ended up choosing it as my show of the year, making Ridley the first playwright to get pole position twice (although there's one, possibly two new Tom Wells plays in store this year so he could well have company soon.) You can read my original review of Radiant Vermin here,spoilers and all, and it's about to play off-Broadway so David Mercatali's production has taken the opportunity to warm up back at Soho Theatre - in the smaller Upstairs space this time. Sean Michael Verey returns to the role of Oliver, but Gemma Whelan, who'd originally been due to rejoin him, had to drop out. So Scarlett Alice Johnson now replaces her as Jill, while Debra Baker takes the dual role - or is it? - of Miss Dee and Kay.

Theatre review: Tonight with Donny Stixx

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This was the first public performance of Tonight with Donny Stixx, which is previewing in London and Oxford before officially premiering at the Edinburgh Festival.

Philip Ridley's second new play this year is a monologue described as a companion to 2013's Dark Vanilla Jungle. That starred Gemma Whelan, so there's a nice symmetry to the fact that Tonight with Donny Stixx is performed by Whelan's Radiant Vermin co-star, Sean Michael Verey. Both monologues take the form of a confession of sorts, although whether Verey's character quite realises that's the crux of his story is another matter: Donny Stixx is a teenager who lost his mother when he was a child, and whose father is now also seriously ill; he's also a deluded amateur magician; and a notorious mass-murderer. He's gathered an audience tonight to entertain them with the story of his life, which he's going to tell very much on his own terms, even though people keep annoyingly interrupting him to ask about all those dead people.

Theatre review: Radiant Vermin

Philip Ridley's latest play brings together plenty of people who've worked with the playwright before: Sean Michael Verey starred in Moonfleece, Amanda Daniels was in Shivered, and most recently Gemma Whelan soloed Dark Vanilla Jungle. Director David Mercatali, meanwhile, is one of Ridley's most regular collaborators. They come together for a play that, in its use of language and twisted fairytale, is unmistakeably Ridley's, but stylistically feels like a departure: Radiant Vermin has the stripped-down theatricality of Tender Napalm, but with a frantic vaudeville comedy style. This is why I think the use of actors he'd worked with before was significant - I don't think Ridley could have written the play quite like this if he didn't know he had actors who could handle it, particularly Whelan and Verey who have to carry most of the show like the world's most sinister comedy double act.