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Reviews,
Theatre
A Window (a triptych) playing at the Oval House until 14 November, is the latest theatrical piece by controversial playwright,
Edward Bond. As with several others of Bond’s, it is in association with the Big Brum Theatre company which works extensively with young people, taking their plays on tour around the UK’s schools, seeking to engage the youth.
A Window tells the traumatic story of a nameless couple and their son. Seventeen odd years before he’s born, his mother (played by Liz Brown) reads in a newspaper the gruesome tale of a woman who deliberately blinds her son so that he might be more dependent on her. Brown’s character is so distressed that her already fragile emotional state plunges to a new low. Having recently learned that she is pregnant the story resonates with her all the more. She seeks isolation from all around her, including her unsympathetic boyfriend played by Richard Holmes. He insists that she terminates the pregnancy and when she refuses he walks out.
Seize The Day is the brand new play written and directed by renowned actor and playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah, now showing at the Tricycle Theatre as part of their ‘Not Black And White’ season – three pieces reflecting on the state of contemporary Britain.
Jeremy Charles, played by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, is upwardly-mobile young London personified. With his respectable, English wife and plush house, he’s enjoying newfound success as a Reality TV star, off the back of a The Apprentice-style show. He is in demand for everything from autographs to presenting work. One day, whilst filming a report he intervenes in a scuffle involving some young Afro-Caribbean men; when one of them, Lavelle (Aml Ameen), threatens to stab Jeremy he knocks him unconscious. The whole incident is caught on camera and thanks to YouTube Jeremy’s popularity gets a further boost.