Five fringe theatre shows to see in December
A new play from Margaret Perry, an Ivo van Hove livestream, a Hebridean mystery and more...
Hello, and welcome to another issue of The Crush Bar, a weekly newsletter about theatre written by me, Fergus Morgan.
This issue features five shows to see in December: Paradise Now! at the Bush Theatre, Age Of Rage via an online stream, Wickies at the Park Theatre, The Art of Illusion at the Hampstead Theatre, and… your local pantomime/Christmas show, wherever it is!
You can find out more about The Crush Bar here, and if you want to subscribe – or, better still, become a paid subscriber to help keep this newsletter going for the price of a coffee-and-a-half a month – then you can do so via the button below.
More from me at the bottom. First, though: five fringe theatre shows to see in December...
Paradise Now! - Bush Theatre, until January 21st
Cork-born Irish writer Margaret Perry’s 2019 play Collapsible debuted at VAULT Festival, ran at Edinburgh Fringe and Dublin Fringe, then transferred to the Bush Theatre in early 2020, and was showered with awards and acclaim along the way. Kate Wyver, reviewing it for The Guardian, called it a “corrosive play about a woman’s disintegration” and “a modern, Beckettian cry for help.”
Now, Perry is back at the Bush Theatre with Paradise Now!, a “funny and raging” new play about “ambition, exploitation and kinship in a world that wants to keep us strangers”, which focuses on one woman’s journey through the ranks of a multi-level marketing company selling essential oils.
Thrillingly, it is directed by Jaz Woodcock-Stewart, co-artistic director of Antler, who has previously staged Lulu Rackza’s Gulliver’s Travels, Tim Foley’s Electric Rosary, and Morgann Runacre-Temple’s Civilisation, as well as assisting Ivo Van Hove, Joe Hill-Gibbins and Simon McBurney. Paradise Now! opens on December 2 and runs until January 21.
Age Of Rage - online, December 11th
Uber-productive Belgian super-director Ivo van Hove and his designer-partner Jan Versweyveld have done a lot in recent years, from directing the David Bowie musical Lazarus, to staging Hedda Gabler at the National Theatre, to directing a radical revival of West Side Story on Broadway.
He is at his best, though, when he is mashing up classics of European drama with his company Internationaal Theater Amsterdam. It was his six-hour Roman Tragedies – Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra in one – that first introduced him to British audiences back in 2009, and his epic Kings of War – Henry V, Henry VI and Richard III, back to back – that confirmed his status as an auteur extraordinaire.
Age Of Rage is another in a similar vein. Over four hours, it sees van Hove splice Iphigenia in Aulis, The Trojan Women, Hecuba, Agamemnon, Orestes and Electra into what Natasha Tripney called “a condensed relentless fusion” of Greek tragedy, featuring the “incomparable” Hans Kesting as Agamemnon. She reviewed it at the Barbican earlier this year: now it is streaming live online – in Dutch with English subtitles – for one night only on December 11.
Wickies - Park Theatre, until December 31st
Have you heard of The Flannan Isles? They are a small group of islands in the Outer Hebrides, about 20 miles west of Lewis and Harris. A long, long way from anywhere, in other words. They are also home to the Eilean Mor lighthouse, site of one of the most enduring Scottish mysteries.
In December 1900, a steamer sailing from Philadelphia to Leith noted that the lighthouse was not operating. The Northern Lighthouse board sent a team to investigate. When they arrived, they discovered the lighthouse unlocked, meals half-eaten, chairs overturned, and the three-strong crew – James Ducat, Thomas Marshall and Donald MacArthur – nowhere to be found.
Paul Morrissey’s three-hander Wickies: The Vanishing Men of Eilean Mor, which is staged by rising star Scottish director Shilpa T-Hyland and runs at Finsbury Park’s Park Theatre until New Year’s Eve, imagines what might have happened to them. It is a spooky, supernatural show, based on real events, from the team that previously produced acclaimed thriller When Darkness Falls.
The Art Of Illusion - Hampstead Theatre, until January 31st
Waleed Akhtar was the writer and performer behind the two-handed gay, Muslim romance The P Word, which ran to huge acclaim at the Bush Theatre earlier this Autumn. The Guardian’s Arifa Akhbar called the play an “irresistible” love-story that “bewitches with hope, romance and heart.”
Now, Akhtar is back. He has provided the translation for French writer Alexis Michalik’s The Art of Illusion, which is directed by Tom Jackson Greaves and which runs at the Hampstead Theatre from December 17 until the end of January. Michalik is famous in France, but less well known in the UK – although recent productions of his plays Intra Muros and Edmond.
The Art Of Illusion – Le Cercle des Illusionistes in French – opened in Paris in 2014, and is still running there today, having picked up two Moliere Awards along the way. Hampstead Theatre production is the play’s UK premiere. Look out for an interview with Akhtar in this newsletter next week.
Your Local Pantomime/Christmas Show!
It probably has not escaped your notice that theatre in the UK is not in a happy place right now. The combined effects of rising inflation, soaring energy bills, static or shrinking public funding and slow audiences means that theatres and other performing arts institutions across the country are in serious financial jeopardy.
Just last week, several theatremakers and producers spoke to me about their concerns for this bleak long-read in The Stage. They need support – from funders and from government, of course, but most of all from us, the theatre-going public. And the best way of doing that is buying a ticket. So, I am going to ask you to do something.
Head along to your local theatre this Christmas and buy a ticket to see its pantomime, or its Christmas show if it isn’t putting on a panto. Commercial pantos produced by Crossroads, Evolution and the like are fine, but if you can make it your local subsidised theatre, that would be even better. They are the ones that need the most help right now. Take your family, too. Take your friends. Take your work colleagues. Buy a programme and a drink, or several. Support live theatre.
That’s it for this month’s issue. Thanks for reading. There will be two more issues before Christmas. Next week’s will - as promised above - feature writer and actor Waleed Akhtar. The following week will have a chat with Luke Hallgarten, artistic director and chief juggler of The Revel Puck Circus. After that, you’ll just have to wait and see…
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I think that is everything. If you want to get in touch with me to ask about anything, or to suggest someone who deserves a shout-out in this newsletter, you can reach me on Twitter - I’m @FergusMorgan - or by simply replying to this email. See you next week.
Fergus