David Porter » Archive
High Tide Festival 2010
High Tide Festival, Halesworth Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 3 May 2010 Three Plays The annual High Tide Festival arrived in Halesworth, securely establishing itself as a high-quality forum for new, contemporary, cutting-edge theatre by unknown, developing writers, ranking it alongside top regional and national festivals. Three new plays were on offer along with discussions and films. ‘Lidless’ by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig used the tiny Scout Hall as a barracks at Guantanamo Bay, in a mock-site-specific setting for a disturbing tale of a former female interrogator and detainee who tracks her down to ask for a kidney as he is dying, in return for what she and the Americans did to him. In the theatre at The Cut, ‘Moscow Live’ by Serge Cartwright is set in a state-run English-language TV station in Moscow, … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reviews
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 »
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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 »
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84 Charing Cross Road
Open Space Theatre at The Cut, Halesworth Review published in the Eastern Daily Press and East Anglian Daily Times, 8th March 2010 84 CHARING CROSS ROAD Eagerly embracing more challenge, Open Space Theatre take on a play based on a twenty year exchange of letters, between a rising American writer and the staff of a London bookshop. We see how the staff, especially the rather formal, English manager played convincingly by Alan Bolton, relate to the outgoing, louder Jewish American played superbly by Anne McClarnon, from either side of the Atlantic. National events from the late 1940s to the swinging sixties are background, as letters, like personal diaries, and thoughtful gifts are exchanged. Throughout, as friendship grows to a kind of romance – this long before internet communication – the anticipation of her coming to visit, summer … Read entire article »
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Traffic Report 2 – Insurance Scams
We all have to carry car insurance. We know that. Most people obey the law. However, it has become a permit to print money for the insurance business. All this searching websites, making comparisons, getting the best deals. You go with something that looks good, and find you are actually insured by a company you either haven’t heard of or don’t want to be insured with anyway. You pay your fine and take your points, made ever more inevitable by the cancerous growth of speed cameras across our once fair land. You understand that they sit on your licence like a deadweight for 3 years. You have to declare them, you are aware of them. But after 3 years, your licence is cleaned. BUT NOT FOR INSURANCE COMPANIES. No, they want to know … Read entire article »
Filed under: Blogs: My Own
Paul Carrack
Theatre Royal, Norwich Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 15 February 2010 Paul Carrack How Long Has This Been Going On? So sang one of those greats of the last 40 years, a performer in the same league as Van Morrison, Phil Collins and Jools Holland, as a packed house rocked along. From rock-jazz fusion in the early 70s, to hit groups Ace and Roxy Music, through Squeeze in the 80s and with Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, to Mike Rutherford in Mike and the Mechanics, Carrack progressed to a solo career where his total eclectic background was given full rein. Wearing trademark dark glasses and backed by a 6-piece band and female singer who were impeccable, Carrack showed his versatility in singing and playing guitars and keyboards in numbers ranging from Loving You Tonight, … Read entire article »
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Man is Man
Man is Man Theatre Paradisum, at the Norwich Playhouse Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 21st January 2010 ‘Tonight you are going to see a man reassembled like a car; leaving all his individual components just as they are…’ No surprises with Brecht. The message is always spelled out. This is the tale of a simple worker bribed with beer and cigars to take another drunkard’s place in a machine-gun troop and is deliberately turned into a happy killer. It’s also about knowing your identity. Against the backdrop of global conflicts today, it’s relevant and timely. The young all-female cast (another neatly Brechtian angle) tackle it with gusto and obvious relish, demonstrating the characters as Brecht demanded. Theatre Paradisum are building a credible Brechtian expertise and this early but substantial piece from the master’s extensive catalogue … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reviews