Monday 29 June 2009

Deceptions - Brighton

Deceptions is at Brighton's Theatre Royal from Monday the 29th June to Saturday the 4th of July.

Evening performances Monday to Saturday at 7.45pm
Matinee performances Thursday and Saturday at 2.30pm

Theatre Royal,
New Road,
Brighton,
East Sussex,
BN1 1SD

Box Office: 0870 060 6650
http://www.theatreroyal.org.uk/

Wednesday 24 June 2009

Teeth

Inspired by this scene from Phil Reed's Afterbirth, I thought I'd have a go with the xtranormal software.

To be honest it's little more than an experiment with a bit of a sketch I wrote that never quite found a beginning, or apparently an ending.

I have developed a newfound respect for animators.

Monday 22 June 2009

Deceptions - Guildford

Deceptions moves to the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford from Monday the 22nd to Saturday the 27th of June.

Evening performances Monday to Saturday at 7.45pm, Friday & Saturday at 8.00pm
Matinee performances 25th and 27th at 2.30pm

Yvonne Arnaud Theatre,
Millbrook,
Guildford,
Surrey,
GU1 3UX

Box Office: 01483 440000
http://www.yvonne-arnaud.co.uk/

Wednesday 17 June 2009

The Night I Missed Jarvis



They say you should suffer for your art.

They don't specifically say you should miss out on seeing Jarvis Cocker in concert to move furniture about on stage during a play in Colchester.

Saturday 13 June 2009

Deceptions - Receptions 1

WHATS ON STAGE.COM
Reviewer: Anne Morley-Priestman
12 June 2009

****
Paul Wheeler's play Deceptions has a plot to keep you guessing continuously but not characters to keep you involved the whole time they are onstage. As we only meet two of them in the flesh – and they have a great deal to say to each other over the two hours – this is a problem.

Julia Smythe is a psychiatrist with a trrendy (sic) consulting room in what looks (in Simon Scullion's set) like a warehouse conversion, all exposed brick walls and circular floodlit atrium. Very fashionable. Michelle Collins makes her a credible, well-dressed, well-heeled expert approaching middle life with a personal as well as professional background.

It would have been easier to sympathise as she entangles herself with the younger man who is her patient if all Collins' speeches – and there are a great many of them – had come over clearly and without the occasional fluffs which can destroy the theatrical illusion for a theatre audience. That apart, you can believe in Julia as she makes her choices and is prepared to stand by them.

It is likely that the majority of people in Britain have had no direct contact with the psychiatric profession, so there's always an element of being on unfamiliar ground with a play set partly in a consulting room. Joe Harmston's production takes us from there, via a short street scene, to the bedsitter where Adrian Wainwright lives. He's Julia's latest patient, a thoroughly perky young man in Rupert Hill's interpretation when we meet him, stretched out on the couch and metaphorically twiddling his toes at the same time as he spins his stories.

Adrian indeed has a range of very complicated hang-ups that require a whole series of solutions which, in their turn, create further problems. Hill suggests the plausibility of his character very well and produces a controlled anger for the dénouement in the shabby little flat which not even feminine domestic touches can make into anything more than a mere staging-post.

A staging-post and not a resting-place is the impression which remains at the end. In the second act the question is posed"Where do you go from 'no'?" Perhaps there is no answer. Perhaps there is one, but it lies outside the scope of this play. There's more than one way to deceive.

Wednesday 10 June 2009

Tuesday 9 June 2009

Deceptions - Tech

Today is the technical rehearsal for Deceptions.

Well in truth it started yesterday and will probably go on into tomorrow. Lighting cues, sound cues, music cues, fly rigs, set changes, this show has them all.

"This is going to take longer than I thought"

In addition, the A team are due to appear on Heart FM.

Monday 8 June 2009

Deceptions - Colchester

And so it begins...

The first performances of Deceptions are at the Mercury Theatre in Colchester from Wednesday the 10th to Saturday the 20th of June.

Evening performances at 7.30pm
Matinee performances 13th, 18th and 20th at 2.30pm

Mercury Theatre,
Balkerne Gate,
Colchester,
Essex,
CO1 1PT

Box Office: 01206 573948

http://www.mercurytheatre.co.uk/

Thursday 4 June 2009

Deceptions - Understudy Rehearsals

The A Team have gone off to Truro for a publicity thing. In their absence the understudies get their first proper crack of the whip. We've been snatching rehearsal time between ASM jobs, errands and prop buying.

This our first chance to learn the blocking, use the props and act.

Tuesday 2 June 2009

Birthright

I've been lucky enough to be one of the first people to read Afterbirth by Philip J Reed. I've been mostly fact-checking, slightly proof-reading and barely helping.

A more in-depth write up with actual content will follow when Afterbirth is delivered. By delivered I mean published. That's exactly the kind of insightful hilarity that people want.



I've fraudulently tagged this as Writing since mine is mostly on hold at the moment.