David Porter » Archive
T’is Pity She’s A Whore
RoughCast Theatre at the Fisher Theatre, Bungay Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 26 April 2010 T’is Pity She’s A Whore Forbidden love (incest), obsessive jealousy, teenage desire and problems endured by parents wrapped in gruesome revenge are the ingredients of the latest from RoughCast Theatre given two interesting innovations. Written about 1630, this is a post-Elizabethan/Jacobean classic, drawing heavily on Romeo and Juliet, Othello and other revenge tales. What RoughCast do is to make it relevant to a modern audience. The first big experiment is to to combine young actors from regional company The Keeper’s Daughters, with regular and older performers from RoughCast. The result is a realistic generational conflict. Directed and produced by Mark Finbow and Emma Martin, they take convincing parts themselves. Young players Ryan Hill and Alice Mottram bring style to … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reviews
Grumpy Old Shopper 5 – Centres
Centres of excellence, of learning, of entertainment, of towns and villages, of people’s hearts and well-being. Centres are good. Shopping Centres are not. I understand the need for retail (see all previous blogs on shopping). I understand that most people seem to need retail therapy more or less constantly on tap and can’t resist any retail opportunity, virtual or real. Good luck to them and all the jobs that go with that. Building fine shopping malls in our cities, no problem. Centralise them so they stay in urban areas to ensure the survival of vibrant town and city life. That’s great. However, why do they all have to be indenti-kit, only minor variations on geography, heights, size and number of attached car parks? The shop outlets inside are ALL THE SAME IN … Read entire article »
Filed under: Blogs: My Own
Traffic Report 3 – Motorway "Services"
Why doesn’t the Trade Descriptions Act apply to motorway service areas? When they say tiredness can kill and you pull in off the excessively queueing, repairing, accidenting motorway to refresh yourself, how can what you find there be described as services? Queues to get in, if a coachload or six of football supporters or geriatric clubs (and I admit I’m not exactly young) have just arrived. Queues to get beyond the cramped, oppressive foyer. Queues to get into the toilets, and queues to get out. For many, it’s queues within as there are not enough workable, decent cubicles. Queues for overpriced, plastic food and drink, much of it laid out on slabs of past-the-best display in the most unappetising way imaginable. And then of course, queues to get out of the building, … Read entire article »
Filed under: Blogs: My Own
Frankenstein
Seagull Club at The Seagull Theatre, Lowestoft Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 3 April 2010 Frankenstein A woman, Mary Shelley, wrote it first. A creature put together from the body parts of others and brought to a life of its own, lonely, unloved and feared, is the macabre Gothic horror that has always thrilled. Local actor Richard Boakes makes his writing and directorial debut in the Seagull Theatre Club’s latest production. A good job he makes of it, too. He brings Frankenstein’s grisly old corpse alive, charting in a series of narrative scenes the sickening obsession of the young man (Reece Ayers, in horror-struck form) as his monster (a wonderfully rough Ryan Hammond) wreaks vengeance on innocent people for being created. That the original experiment was intended to find a way from disease and … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reviews