Square Mile •

Nell Mescal: “I really struggle writing happy songs”

In every romantic relationship, there comes the moment. You know the one, where everything seems to reside in the grey area, and the relationship’s future (or lack thereof) hangs on a knife edge. In your desperation, you bargain with the idea of opening yourself up, weighing the scales of vulnerability against self-protection. It’s this make-or-break instant that bedroom-pop singer-songwriter Nell Mescal aims to encapsulate on her new EP The Closest We’ll Get – the lead single of which eloquently...
Square Mile •

Jeremy Irvine: “People aren’t our fans yet. We've got to earn that.”

Google Jeremy Irvine’s name, and among the first results are articles praising his extreme immersion into the roles he plays – as the famous story goes, he spent so much time in a recreated Battle of the Somme for Steven Spielberg’s War Horse that he contracted trench foot. Even so, he’s remarkably reluctant to be held on any kind of pedestal because of his reputation for method acting.“The trench foot wasn’t deliberate,” he swiftly clarifies to me as I speak to him over Zoom...
BroadwayWorld.com •

Review: JIMMY, Park Theatre

US tennis player Jimmy Connors is an eight-time Grand Slam champion, but he’s now probably best remembered for his unlikely semi-final run at the 1991 US Open at the geriatric (for athletes, at least) age of 39. This is the episode in Connors’ life that comedian Adam Riches has chosen to dramatise in Jimmy, a one-man show newly transferred from the Edinburgh Fringe.Writer and performer Riches is a physically imposing presence who’s used to doing celebrity impressions...
BroadwayWorld.com •

Review: MEDEA, Coronet Theatre

It’s a curious feature of Euripides’ great revenge tragedy Medea that in a story so intimately tied to a woman’s sense of isolation in a foreign land, the omnipresent Greek Chorus is a group of handmaidens who empathise with the child-killing Medea throughout the play. Modern productions have puzzled this out in various ways, some centring a sense of feminine solidarity, others doing away with the Chorus altogether. The Shizuoka Performing Arts Center’s version of the play takes a different tack...
BroadwayWorld.com •

Review: LE NOZZE DI FIGARO, Glyndebourne Festival

You could be forgiven for thinking that there isn’t much more to be said about Le nozze di Figaro, the most performed opera in Glyndebourne’s history. However, Mozart’s classic role subversion comedy is deceptive in its simplicity: beneath the farce and improbable plot twists is a complex web of power dynamics and social cues upended, and above all a libretto full of dry humour that’s striking in its timelessness.Director Mariame Clément innately understands Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto...
BroadwayWorld.com •

Review: WHEN THE CLOUD CATCHES COLOURS, Barbican Theatre

“It’s not Buddhist to be gay”: from this early line in Singaporean drama When the cloud catches colours, one might expect a hard-hitting, intellectual look at homophobia in the South East Asian nation, which decriminalised male homosexuality in 2023. What follows, however, is something both more profound and more tender, a look at queer attitudes towards domesticity and community through the lens of two middle-aged Singaporean lives. The lives in question are those of Qing and E (short for Eileen...
BroadwayWorld.com •

Review: STILETTO, Charing Cross Theatre

A musical set in the 1730s heyday of Venetian opera ought to be a glamorous glimpse into a different, dangerous era. Stiletto, from the composer behind the classic Disney hero’s journey Mulan, has all the ingredients for that to be the case – simmering rivalries, power struggles, romance and murder. Sometimes, though, the real power struggle is between seedy underworld glamour and the story’s tendency to veer into fairytale schmaltz...
MA Portfolio •

New exhibition sheds light on the bygone era of early fashion shows

When you think of a fashion show in Paris or Milan, you’re just as likely to think of rows upon rows of influencers clamouring for the perfect Insta story as you are to focus on the clothes themselves. However, a new immersive exhibition sponsored by Vogue shows that this was not always the case. King’s Cross “projection storytelling” venue Lightroom’s newest exhibit takes us back to the earliest days of the runway show, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when couture was an altogether more intimate affair...
MA Portfolio •

Vivien Ellis: the eclectic vocalist reinventing the community choir

It’s clear even before we start our interview that Vivien Ellis’ twin passions are music and harnessing its power to bring a community together. Ten minutes after we meet, she’s already regaled me with tales of eighteenth century ballads, her efforts to learn how words were pronounced in historical songs in a bid for authenticity, and her love of first person musical narratives that put the singer ‘in the character’s shoes’. And that’s before her impromptu performance of a Bulgarian work song, right there in her suburban living room...
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