Critics on their most awkward experiences, theatremaker Nora Wardell, and three shows to see...
I once performed karaoke to an entirely empty auditorium at the Edinburgh Fringe. Plus: the creator of an acclaimed adaptation of Edouard Louis' Who Killed My Father, three shows to see, and more.
Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a weekly newsletter about theatre written by me, Fergus Morgan.
Below, you will find several theatre critics, including myself, relating their worst experiences on the job. Below that, there is an interview with writer and director Nora Wardell, whose acclaimed adaptation of Edouard Louis’ Who Killed My Father is at Camden People’s Theatre next week, and your regular three show recommendations.
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Okay. More from me at the bottom. Here comes the newsletter.
I have found myself in some weird and awkward situations as a theatre critic.
Sometimes, I have simply been asked to review a weird show: I vividly remember being trapped in a rapidly reversing dodgem and chased by creepy, murderous clowns alongside the critic Alice Saville in Dutch performance artist Dries Verhoeven's experience Phobiarama. Sometimes, something intentionally awful has happened to me during a show: I was hauled up before the audience and subjected to various humiliating punishments by comedian Adam Riches in his show The Beakington Town Hall Murders. Sometimes, a show has simply gone wrong: at the 2019 press night of Michael Frayn’s Noises Off at the Lyric Hammersmith, the stage lights failed in what anyone familiar with the play will realise is a brilliantly metatheatrical hiccup.
These are the stories I tell people when they ask me what my job is like. I thought it would be fun for this issue of The Crush Bar to ask some of my friends and fellow critics for their stories, too. Here, after one anecdote from me, is what they sent.
Me, Fergus Morgan: a car-crash karaoke
It was the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe, and I had been asked by Fest Magazine to review a show called Karaoke Saved My Life. It was one of those late-night party shows that start at 11pm. The concept was simple: host Scott Swinton tells the story of his life in showbiz, stopping every few minutes to crowbar in well-known songs, which he invites audience members on stage to sing. You only get one free ticket during the Fringe, so my plan was to go along, lurk at the back and not get involved.
I began to twig things were not going to go to plan when I arrived and there were only three others in the queue, all blokes. The four of us filed into the 100-seat room, and the show started. Swinton reached the first song and asked us if anyone wanted to join him in singing it. No-one volunteered. He reached the second song. No-one volunteered. And so on. It was so excruciatingly awkward.
One guy left after 20 minutes. The three of us that remained struggled on for another ten, before deciding unanimously to join Swinton on stage together for the next song. The show disintegrated, with the final thirty minutes consisting of Swinton, two strangers and myself dancing and singing karaoke to an auditorium that was entirely empty, save for the woman doing sound at the back.
Tim Bano: a mishap at The Mousetrap
One afternoon in 2019, my friend and I decided we would finally see The Mousetrap. The tickets were cheap, last-minute, end-of-row ones towards the front of the stalls. It was a weekday matinee so the theatre was barely a third full: a few pensioners, some bright-eyed tourists and a couple of school groups.
St Martin's Theatre is not very comfortable at all. The seats are hard and narrow, and not designed for bottoms beyond modest girth, so I was pretty well wedged in, and spent the minutes before the lights went down squirming to find an angle that wouldn't leave me with permanently bruised hips.
Soon, my friend tapped me on the leg. Should we move to those free seats in the middle? The lights went down and the curtain up. My friend grabbed her bag and shuffled across. I pulled myself up from the seat to follow. All that squirming had had an unfortunate knock-on effect, though, and left my trousers further down my backside than is entirely appropriate.
As I half-stood to move along the row inconspicuously, my trousers caught on the arms of the seat and stayed where they were. For a brief, agonising moment I presented a full moon to rows C through N. I heard a schoolteacher gasp and some children laugh. One of them started to cry.
Arifa Akbar: a literal hiccup
It was just after the theatres had re-opened following the big lockdown interregnum and I was at the Bush Theatre, in London, along with all the other critics, to review Phoebe Eclair-Powell’s play Harm. It was just before the show had started and it was so exciting to be sitting in an auditorium again that the audience was unusually friendly. I had talked to my neighbours and as the lights dimmed I felt a great sense of elation. Finally, we could congregate again in this way. What joy!
Then, from about three or four rows behind me, a man started hiccupping. And hiccupping. Loudly. Rather like those horrible, performative sneezes you hear in a library. We all giggled good-naturedly at first but he carried on until the closing moments of the play, and probably beyond. Jean Paul Sartre’s words briefly floated across my mind (“Hell is other people”) before I corrected myself. It really was good to be back among a theatre crowd, for good and for bad.
Rosemary Waugh: a multi-storey misadventure
There are some shows a person is just not destined to see. Such was the case with Dan Canham’s much-hyped Of Riders and Running Horses. An unlucky configuration of over-running festival shows and illness meant I’d already failed to review the piece twice, so by the time I attempted to see it a third time I was committed.
It was one of those site-specific, immersive shows performed in an unusual setting: in this case, a multistorey carpark in Bristol. I arrived super early, totally ready to experience contemporary dance and brutalist concrete. It was impressively immersive. And impressively hidden. I made my way to the top of the car park. I made my way back down again. I made my way through every single floor of that car park, on foot, in the ever-growing darkness, searching for site-specific immersive dance. And there was none.
What’s most embarrassing about this anecdote is not that I went to the wrong carpark, as you may have twigged, but that I spent such a long, long time scouring this desolate urban hellhole genuinely believing I might find a troupe of Bristolian dancers behind the next pillar. Live art can do that to a person.
Kate Wyver: an unhappy customer
As someone who dishes out criticism regularly, I should be able to take it, too – but I was a bit taken aback when I learnt that Trixie Mattel had called me an ugly c**t in her book.
I reviewed the drag queen's show in Newcastle and didn't like it. I found the comedy belittling and cruel, particularly towards some members of the audience. I gave it two stars and said something about how her comedy “exudes ugliness.” Fans sent her the review in droves and she tweeted "oh my god Kate Wyver hates me." There were, for the first and I am willing to bet last time in my writing career, memes.
She didn't forget about it. A year later, a stranger on the internet told me that I should be aware of a section in Trixie's new book, in which she wrote about a critic, "let's call her Kate,” who reviewed her show in Newcastle. "Kate is, as my eye beholds," Trixie wrote, "an ugly fucking c**t." It remains the most wonderfully extreme reaction I've had from a review. Plus, the stranger who told me about it said they liked my fringe.
Andrzej Lukowski: an apologetic usher
I am always haunted by the time I went to see a production of Patrick Marber’s After Miss Julie at the Young Vic. It was in its now little-used studio theatre The Maria, which doesn’t have numbered seating, but they had put signs down indicating which seats were reserved for press. I usually feel a bit awkward about sitting in these – it feels a bit “look at me I’m a journalist” – but on this occasion I did, whereupon I was promptly asked by an usher to move as the seat was reserved for press.
For whatever reason I just did as she asked, but unfortunately I was dobbed in by former Independent critic Paul Taylor (who I don’t think I have ever actually spoken to) and the usher apologetically tried to get me to return. But I really couldn’t be bothered and had got talking to the person next to me so I just smiled and said, “Oh don’t worry it’s fine,” and she was like, “No really, I’m sorry, please go back to your seat.” And that carried on for about a minute until she just rolled her eyes and left me to my inferior seat. I don’t think there is any moral to that story, and I’d probably do the same again, except I’m old now and probably look more like a theatre critic.
Natasha Tripney: a shocking show
This was around a decade or so ago at the Edinburgh Fringe. It took place in the basement of what may have been the French Institute, or some other venue long lost to time. It’s certainly not a place to which I’ve returned. A Romanian company were doing a show about circus sideshows. Designed for a limited number of audience members, it was chaotically charming to begin with, albeit a little more participatory than I usually like. Our small group were led from room to room by our hosts. There was a bit of magic, linked by a very loose narrative.
For one portion of the show, we were seated on a bench as they told us a spooky story. When they reached the end, I felt a jolt go through me. A proper shock. Everyone else yelled and jumped up. The fuckers had electrified the bench!
I have no idea how or if this cleared a risk assessment. Then they just shooed us off into the Edinburgh afternoon, presumably to prepare for their next victims, as our small group stood there on the street looking a bit dazed and confused by what had just happened. (This is still not quite as weird as the time I got roped to a wall during an immersive horror show, but I only tell that story after a couple of wines.)
Natasha has recently started her own Substack on European theatre, by the way. It is called Café Europa and you can - and should! - subscribe to it below.
Recent years have seen several theatrical adaptations of the works of French writer Edouard Louis.
His sensational 2014 debut En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule – or The End Of Eddy – has been seen twice at the Edinburgh International Festival, once in Pamela Carter’s bubbly 2018 version for the Unicorn Theatre and once in Eline Arbo’s stunning version for Toneelschuur Haarlem. His 2016 follow-up Histoire de la violence – or History Of Violence – has been staged by Thomas Ostermeier. And his third book, 2018’s Qui a tué mon père – or Who Killed My Father – has been adapted for theatre by both superstar director Ivo Van Hove and Edinburgh-based theatremaker Nora Wardell.
“I saw the first production of The End Of Eddy in 2018 and I was aware of the other theatrical versions of his work, so I knew how well it translated to the stage,” Wardell says. “The biggest draw for me, though, was reading the novella and being so compelled by it. I’m interested in exploring politics through a very personal, direct lens, and Edouard Louis articulates that so clearly.”
The End Of Eddy saw Louis look back on the homophobia he faced throughout his childhood in post-industrial Picardy and explore the psychological and political causes behind it. Who Killed My Father takes a somewhat similar approach, but focuses instead on Louis’ dad, their difficult relationship, and the series of choices made by subsequent French politicians that made his life unliveable. Wardell’s adaptation, written and directed by her through her company Surrogate Productions, debuted at Glasgow’s Tron Theatre in May 2022, toured Scotland earlier this year, did a week-long run at the Edinburgh Fringe, and now arrives in London for five shows at Camden People’s Theatre.
“Wardell’s production is simple and straightforward, with a playful set from co-designers Hazel Low and Blythe Brett and an honest, engaging solo performance from Michael Marcus,” I wrote in my four-star review for The Stage last May. “Marcus is Louis and, over the course of an hour, he recounts his memories of his father to the audience, jumping through time to create a composite portrait of a complicated man.” The show is, I concluded, both a “love letter” from Louis to his father, via Wardell, and “an accusation of murder levelled at France’s ruling elite.”
“Louis’ work interests me because I’m particularly interested in what it means to be alive today, in contemporary power structures, and in the social and economic divides that exist in Western countries,” Wardell says. “Making international connections is important to me, too. A lot of what Louis explores in Who Killed My Father resonates with communities across Scotland, for example.”
“I want to create a dialogue about our lives that crosses borders. That is very appealing to me…”
Wardell grew up between Edinburgh and the Moray Firth coast, studied at Warwick University, trained as an actor at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, then spent several years working in various roles with various companies in London and Wales before moving back to Scotland and founding Surrogate Productions in 2019. The company currently consists of Wardell as artistic director, plus producer Anna Hainsworth, assistant producer Eilidh Northridge, and their freelance collaborators.
Surrogate Productions had made two shows prior to Who Killed My Father – a revival of Caryl Churchill’s Drunk Enough To Say I Love You? in 2017 and a touring production of Norwegian Nobel Prize-winner Jon Fosse’s The Guitar Man in 2019 – but it is its Edouard Louis adaptation that has established the company as an exciting new presence in Scottish theatre.
“I still have to do other work as well to survive, like a lot of theatremakers do, but Surrogate Productions is definitely my main focus is,” says Wardell. “I like to find something to work on, bring a team together and collaborate, and the company allows me to do that. I really admire theatres like Berlin’s Schaubuhne, and companies that have an international outlook like Complicité. I want to create a dialogue about our lives that crosses borders. That is very appealing to me.”
Three shows to see next week
The Fair Maid Of The West - RSC, until January 20
Isobel McArthur is the brilliant and irreverent actor, writer and director that created the Olivier Award-winning comedy Pride And Prejudice* (*Sort Of) and the National Theatre of Scotland’s superbly funny adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. Now, she is working with the Royal Shakespeare Company for the first time on an adaptation of Thomas Heywood’s The Fair Maid Of The West. It runs in the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon until late January and it will be great. You can read my interview with McArthur for The Stage here, and you can get tickets below.
Cold War - Almeida Theatre, until January 27
This seems like a truly special show. Adapted by legendary Irish playwright Conor Macpherson - who, among other things, wrote the book for the Bob Dylan play-with-songs Girl From The North Country - and featuring songs by Elvis Costello, this new musical is adapted from Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski’s Oscar-nominated 2018 film Cold War, which I would also really recommend watching. Rupert Goold’s production stars Anya Chalotra and Luke Thallon as two musicians, whose love story stretches across a divided Europe over decades. You can read my interview with Chalotra in The Stage soon, and you can get tickets via the button below.
Dick Whittington And His Cat - New Wolsey Theatre, until January 20
I am not a big pantomime fan, but if I had to recommend one to you, it would be this. I grew up in Suffolk and seeing the Ipswich New Wolsey Theatre’s annual panto is one of the main reasons I fell in love with theatre. What makes it special is that it is a “rock’n’roll” panto, featuring a cast of actor-musicians playing a selection of classic songs live on stage, rather than celebrities singing along to backing tracks. As a result, it is always thrillingly alive. You can get tickets via the button below.
Thanks for reading
That is it for this week. If you want to get in touch about anything raised in this issue - or anything at all, really - just reply to this newsletter or email me at fergusmorgan@hotmail.co.uk. Or you can find me on Twitter/X, where I am @FergusMorgan.
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See you next Friday.
Fergus