Thank you to everyone who attended our production of La Chunga at the Phoenix Artist Club. It was our pleasure sharing with you this beautiful script written by Nobel Prize Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, who has become Second Skin Theatre’s newest patron. Stay tuned for more Second Skin Theatre news!
Archive for February, 2012
La Chunga – Closing Night!
By adm!N on February 24, 2012 | Category: Blog | Comments Off on La Chunga – Closing Night!REVIEW: Write Out Loud
By adm!N on February 7, 2012 | Category: knuckleball,Stay With Me Til Dawn articles | Comments Off on REVIEW: Write Out LoudSecond Skin Theatre Double Bill
Thursday 21st January 2010
Alain English saw “Stay With Me Til Dawn” and “Knuckleball”, both staged by Second Skin Theatre at the Rosemary Branch Theatre near Old Street, London on 20th January 2010.
Stay With Me Til Dawn by Graham Farrow
A young boy hides from his abusive father in the room of a troubled man with dark secrets…
This was an excellent piece of theatre that explored ideas of masculinity and isolation within society in a visceral and upfront way. It had a good point to make about the not always accurate impressions we create in our heads about other people, and turned popular stage stereotypes (the middle-aged deviant, the hardman) cleverly on their heads. It had a nicely ambiguous ending to it, that was open to chilling interpretation.
It was very well staged in the Rosemary Branch … accompanied by a pulsing undertone of music that helped create a tense, fraught atmosphere. The actors have been tightly directed, although I thought the stage violence needed some more sound to give it a little bit more impact.
The performances were excellent, notably Peter Glover as Redford who gives a bravely physical performance that keeps the audience guessing as his intentions either way. Matthew Haigh is at once playful and vulnerable as Nick, and while I thought David Swain could have added a touch more menace to his voice, he nailed the physicality and attitude of his character perfectly.
The play last over an hour but it flew by. A well-paced, exciting start to the evening.
—
Knuckleball by William Whitehurst
A young couple’s burgeoning relationship is turned upside down when a marriage proposal becomes the catalyst for some horrifying, life-changing revelations…
This latest piece by Second Skin co-founder William Whitehurst is brilliant, hitting you with the unexpected, with dark but entirely logical twists to the characters. The staging is excellent, capturing the wayward desolation of its characters and highlighting the play’s main theme – one’s life ends up in a mess when you don’t know who you are. It was very well lit, with an orange hue to the set that gave you the feeling that this was the kind of place where these sorts of conversation might happen.
The play hinged on great performances from Bryan Kaplan and Laura Pradelska. They made their characters plausible, playing off each other well and handling some well-written but still very difficult speeches with panache. In this, they handled the play’s darker ideas very well.
Fantastic, provocative theatre from Second Skin and hopefully a sign of more good things to emerge from the company this year.
REVIEW: British Theatre Guide
By adm!N on February 7, 2012 | Category: knuckleball,Stay With Me Til Dawn articles | Comments Off on REVIEW: British Theatre GuideStay With Me ‘Til Dawn by Graham Farrow & Knuckleball by William Whitehurst
Second Skin Theatre Rosemary Branch Theatre
(2010)
Review by Howard Loxton
The violent confrontation between Peter Glover’s seemingly gentle Radford and the sinewy Lewis of David Swain has our sympathy shifting surprisingly back and forth between them. Is Radford a man mourning a wife and children run down by a rogue motorist? Is Lewis a repressed homosexual? Which man is the monster?
The situation escalates in horror adding extra layers of meaning and concludes with an ambiguous image that suggests a continuing cycle of violence and serial killing. Gruelling but gripping.
Knuckleball, for those of you like me who don’t follow baseball, means a slow pitch that’s given a bit of spin to make it unpredictable ball. William Whitehurst’s play, which forms the second half of this bill is far from slow but it is certainly unpredictable (so I’m going to be careful not to give too much away).and its back story concerns a couple of trophy winning baseball chums, one of who disappeared many years ago.
Designer Nika Khitrova sets it in a room with an open, unmade sofa-bed surrounded by boxes and piled possessions: more squat than home. It’s less a real location than a symbol for the disordered life of its owner, like the bleak setting of the first play. When a young couple rush in and bounce onto the bed and immediately, fully-clothed begin to have frantic sex you think could be in for a romping comedy. Good-looking Ross (Bryan Kaplan) is so virile that even his tools smell of masculinity and Laura Pradelska’s Trish is elegantly sexy and there are certainly some laughs along the way but this a play about quite serious stuff.
These two are not just hot for each other – though I can’t believe Ross really needs time to ‘recharge his batteries’ when Trish wants to start a new bout of fellatio. They seem truly a couple in love so; why, when Ross proposes, does Trish say she can’t marry him. It’s not just that he’s a blue-collar worker and she’s a travelled, multi-lingual, cultured lady with quite a lot of money in the bank. It’s a story, which Predelska’s performance makes entirely believable but I’m not going to reveal it. Enough to say that, once again, it explores prejudice and repression – though here with a chance of a happier outcome.
Until 7th February 2010
REVIEW: whatsonstage.com
By adm!N on February 7, 2012 | Category: la chunga | Comments Off on REVIEW: whatsonstage.comReviewed by Vicky Ellis
Venue: The Phoenix Artist Club
Date Reviewed: 7 February 2012
(excerpts)
“Chunga (the mesmerising Victoria Grove) is husky and commanding of voice, tolerating the ribaldry of dice-playing ‘super studs’, really just a bunch of cerveza-swigging layabouts.
“Director Andy McQuade draws great pacing and nicely underplayed moments of tension from the generally strong cast, in a piece which boldly explores sexual desire and gender.
“The characters are compelling: why is Chunga content to be alone? Is it because, as she suggests, falling in love makes you weak? Her excellent seduction scene with Meche is both intense and touching, even if you can’t be sure whether it really happened or not.”
REVIEW: Remote Goat
By adm!N on February 6, 2012 | Category: knuckleball | Comments Off on REVIEW: Remote Goat
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“Double Bill gives double thrill” by Philip Herbert for remotegoat on 20/01/10 |
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Directed by Andy McQuade this is a splendid night out at The Rosemary Branch presented by Second Skin Theatre.
‘Knuckleball’
A giggling couple enter kissing and cuddling and end up on the bed. A sexual act is performed and as Ross (Bryan Kaplan) reaches orgasm we all laugh at his enthusiasm. Trish his girlfriend (Laura Pradelska) is a gal who has traveled the world, learnt “I’m coming” in five – no six languages and has stories to tell. She is quite a handful but Ross loves her , tells her so and even wants to marry her. Not bad for a regular guy with no imagination who “likes beer and baseball”. But as this gripping yarn unwinds both characters have secrets to reveal to each other – and us as spectators. “I need a drink” is something they say to each other all the time – but have they been pissed together before. Is there more to this relationship than meets the eye? I don’t want to give the game away but loads of admissions and heartaches follow with plenty of whisky consumed too. Both actors give powerful and believable performances as the secrets fall out and the truth is revealed. This for me was the better play but both are worth seeing.
| Event Venues & Times | |
| Rosemary Branch | 2 Shepperton Road, London, N1 3DT | |
REVIEW: Remote Goat
By adm!N on February 6, 2012 | Category: Stay With Me Til Dawn articles | Comments Off on REVIEW: Remote GoatReview of Stay With Me Till Dawn
Directed by Andy McQuade this is a splendid night out at The Rosemary Branch presented by Second Skin Theatre.
‘Stay With Me Till Dawn’
A disturbing and intense play – played out with skill and superb timing from all three cast members. A confused young boy , his irate father and an older man who “likes boys” meet in a tiny cramped flat with no escape. Is the boy hiding from his Dad? Is the man really someone to be worried about? Is the angry Dad as straight as he makes out? All of these questions are thrown up into the air and answered with guts and gore. Loads of blood and very effective fight sequences took us all by surprise and the stunned silence before appreciative applause summed up the atmosphere – both tense and frightening. Full marks to Peter Glover as the Man, David Swain as the Dad as Mathew Haigh as Nick the Son.
| Event Venues & Times | |
| finished | Rosemary Branch | 2 Shepperton Road, London, N1 3DT |
REVIEW: broadwayworld.com
By adm!N on February 6, 2012 | Category: Poe Articles | Comments Off on REVIEW: broadwayworld.comSaturday, November 19, 2011; 10:11 AM – by Gary Naylor
Poe:Macabre Resurrections is an extraordinary night’s entertainment quite unlike anything else in London, probably unlike anything anywhere. Once you find St Mary’s Old Church Stoke Newington (it’s opposite the much larger new church) you are ushered to a pew in the gloomy chill and left to stare at the pale light of the staiNed Glass window beyond. You are in the oldest Protestant church in the country, and the 400+ years of religious observance resonates through the space. A preacher ascends to the pulpit and you realise that there’s no escape now…
Second Skin Theatre’s Artistic Director Andy McQuade’s has pulled together a group of writers and actors who use some of Poe’s most celebrated works as the jumping off point for their own febrile re-imagining of his gruesome tales for these gruesome times. Hence the victim of the Pit and the Pendulum is an Afghan under interrogation; Premature Burial concerns a soldier in the same conflict; the Masque of the Red Death is a quasi-Nazi rallying call; and The Black Cat is a deranged mother’s tale of jealousy and depression.
There are some very fine performances from the ensemble: Stephen Connery Brown is devilishly charming as the fallen preacher and David Hugh recalls Klaus Kinski’s Nosferatu as The Raven; Michael Amariah is funny and fearful as the soldier doing his country’s bidding; and Mia Zara is frighteningly convincing as the cat-fearing mother. Undoubted star of the evening is the old church itself, the potential of which is fully exploited in the production’s promenade format. Lighting team Sarah Grogan and Anna Sbokou find eerie shadows that complement Poe’s metaphorical darkness unsettlingly; the audience’s tight corralling around the font mirrors the incarceration of Priyank Morjaria’s interrogated prisoner; and the using of the ancient cemetery that surrounds the church for Premature Burial is obvious, but spectacularly realised.
See it – and be scared, surprised and shocked!
Poe: Macabre Resurrections continues until 4 December 2011
REVIEW: Remote Goat
By adm!N on February 6, 2012 | Category: Poe Articles | Comments Off on REVIEW: Remote Goat4 goat hooves
Post-Hallowe’en, pre-winter solstice, just a hint of the foggy London nights of yore, what better notion for Second Skin than to re-visit the work of that baleful son of Stokie, E.A Poe? I say “re-visit” advisedly : apart from the resonating but much-truncated Raven of the first of six pieces of the evening, be ready for startling re-imaginings of the old melancholic’s works. Be ready too for startling new writing : a bold decision, given Poe’s wondrous way with language.
The evening is compellingly dovetailed together by Stephen Connery Brown’s ingratiatingly ambivalent, bibulous Preacher, confessor, compère and confederate, keeping our minds ever focussed on frailty, mortality and transience, our nightmares not so different from our forebears’. The ease of his transitions between these various roles was vital, not least in the segue from comfy pulpit to haunted chamber, with a Raven (David Hugh) straight out of Murnau …
This church is a treasure-house of usable things for a show like this. If you have an altar, a gallery, a grill to the crypt, box pews, plain stuccoed walls above Tudor arches, sepulchres within, a graveyard without, powerful acoustics and dark shadows everywhere, use them. Second Skin does, comprehensively, with bold lighting and high-impact sound … and in one piece, most spectacularly : no need for spoilers.
That said, that there is some electrifying new writing, in The Pit and the Pendulum and Premature Burial in particular. We have full-on updating from the Toledo of the Inquisition to the cells of Abu Ghraib, and from Poe’s first-person narrative of “charnel apprehensions” to the dangers of Helmand. Poe’s prose has gone, but there are new resonances ; new rage as well. But The Black Cat hits the perfect note. The family situation, the gender of the narrator, the dark deeds are all adapted, but the best of Poe’s writing is preserved and above all the quality of the lucid yet raving narrative. In Mia Zara’s mesmerising vocal and physical performance under Andy McQuade’s sensitive direction we get the full, claustrophobic Poe experience.
It would be invidious to commend the acting without mentioning Priyank Morjaria’s tour de force in The Pit and the Pendulum, peopling his chamber of horrors both with his tormentors and his remembered family : a touching, shocking and riveting performance, the obscenities uttered in his pain and panic echoing legitimately around the ancient, hallowed walls.
Site-specific, promenade productions are one of the great strengths of the Fringe. It’s truly appalling that a wonderful, unique and historic venue like St Mary’s should be under threat, as are so many others. If it’s your local, please support it.
I don’t normally justify stars, but on this six-part production I should just say that it is, indeed, a **** production, plenty of very sound three-star stuff going on, but at least two performances that are shakingly excellent. What an evening!
| Event Venues & Times | |
| The Church Street Theatre | St.Mary’s old Church, Stoke Newington Church Street, London, N169ES | |
REVIEW: The Stage
By adm!N on February 6, 2012 | Category: Poe Articles | Comments Off on REVIEW: The StagePoe: Macabre Resurrections
Published Friday 25 November 2011 at 15:31 by Jonathan Watson
Rumours scurried around the pubs in Stoke Newington when Second Skin Theatre’s tenure at Ryan’s Bar on Church Street came to an abrupt end. Quite frankly, the hearsay – whether its tantalising La Chunga was too provocative for the landlord – is not the concern. I’m more interested in the company’s response. And, nodding to Punchdrunk’s stifling Mask of the Red Death at the BAC, its decision to infect every nook of the Rectory of the Old St Mary’s Church with Poe’s insidious, macabre imagination was unnerving, yes, but also inspired. Relocating to such a monumental building in the heart of the area was also welcome proof of its commitment to the community in north London.
Fitting then that it is a strong, communal effort, from artistic director Andy McQuade down through his ensemble of keen-eyed directors, the energetic cast and writers who know how to graft a modern mask onto the short story master. The whole site, from the altar to the font to the graveyard, is alive, bolstered by the superb sound design that breathes in the background. As our guide, the Preacher, Stephen Connery Brown is masterfully unbalanced. His intuitive pronunciation echoes into the darkness of the church and Poe’s imagination, and, if at any time the pace of five different stories starts to lag, his complete performance tugs you back into the atmosphere and reminds you where you are – a gloomy, cold burial ground.
As a fringe production, and with tight purse strings, this does not ascend the heights of Punchdrunk’s magnificent reimagination. That said, it is still a marker of an adroit ensemble that promises more gripping, and hopefully grisly, treats for the future.
Production information
- By: Edgar Allan Poe, adapted by Rob Johnston/Mike Carter/Jacob Hodgkinson/Nadine Hearity/Richard Allden
- Management: Second Skin Theatre
- Cast: David Hugh, Stephen Connery Brown, Mia Zara, Priyank Morjaria, Owen Nolan, Sarah Scott, Micheal Amariah, Stevie Brown, Conrad Williams, Zane Lapsa, Jenny Gruner
- Director: Anthony Lau and Andy McQuade/Samuel Miller/John Kachoyan/Hayley Byfield/Yolanda Ferrato
- Design: Nika Khitrova
- Lighting: Anna Sbokou
- Costumes: Vasiliki Sirma
REVIEW: Plays to See
By adm!N on February 6, 2012 | Category: la chunga | Comments Off on REVIEW: Plays to SeeReview by Suman Bhuchar
In the subterranean setting of the Phoenix Arts Club we are transported into a sleazy bar in the Peru of the 1950s. The proprietress is La Chunga.
The club is “a perfect venue,” as author, Mario Vargas Llosa described it when the Nobel Prize winner dropped in to see the opening of this UK West End Premiere of La Chunga, the 1986 drama that he said he wrote “to project into dramatic fiction the human totality of actions and dreams, of facts and fantasies.” If at one level the play is a hard-edged naturalist depiction of seedy men and the two women that they believe they can control, on another level it also shows Llosa’s trademark techniques of running together realism and fantasy and utilizing multiple perspectives and neo-surrealist strategies to make an audience think about what they have seen.
Central to La Chunga is one of his favorite themes of exploring how women survive in male dominated societies and the way masculinity functions as both reality and fantasy.
La Chunga (Victoria Grove), a tall woman with a deep voice, enters, cleans the bar table, lays down the dice game and proceeds to sit on the rocking chair, fanning herself. The bar is not only owned by her, it is named after her and the audience quickly realizes there is something exceptional about her and her establishment. Much as with Pinter’s characters, La Chunga’s ability to ignore barbed comments and sneers is a mark of her confidence and self-possession. Grove conveys the haughty disdain that his powerful woman has of her regulars with a self assuredness that would leave the landlords of the Queen Vic quite stunned. She rivals them in strength and doesn’t let them forget who is in charge.
It is a play about power and territory, but also about exposure and shame and the male actors have to be as brave as their female counterparts in what they are prepared to show to the audience. If the play is about the battle between La Chunga and her regulars in a patriarchal world where it is clearly unusual for a woman to have any power at all, it also attempts to examine the male character’s deepest and often most forbidden fantasies.
Second Skin Theatre’s taut production is charged with eroticism and an underlying violent tension, with excellent all round performance. Andy McQuade’s direction is sharp . He manages to fuse seamlessly reality and fantasy. Perhaps unsurprisingly McQuade won best director 2012 from The Fringe Report as this review went to press.
Is this a feminist play challenging notions of patriarchal masculinity and the machismo of the superstuds? Does La Chunga help Meche to escape her likely fate due to sudden feelings of sisterly solidarity? Or is it really about the anguish of unfulfilled love and erotic desire? Might it be about what women must do to survive in a world ruled by men and their fantasies?
It is a fine production that leaves you with more questions than answers and is satisfyinglydissatisfying with performances as electric as any you will see on the London stage at present.
~
La Chunga
By Mario Vargas Llosa
The Phoenix Artist Club
Director: Andy McQuade
Producer: Samuel Julyan
Cast includes: Victoria Grove, Nika Khitrova, Stephen Connery Brown, Corin Rhys Jones, Marco Aponte, Tyler Coombes,
Dates: 24 January to 19 February 2012
Time: Tuesday to Thursday at 19:30 and Sunday matinees at 15:00.
Running Time: 2 hours (includes 15 minute interval).
