Category Archives: Featured

Featured, Musical, Theatre

Martha – a review by Eva Marloes

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out of 5 stars (4 / 5)

Sweet, funny, and irreverent, Martha conquers the hearts of the public. Martha is a musical play about the marginalisation and repression of deaf people and the use of the sign language that mixes historical episodes with a future dystopia.

The play starts in a retro-looking cabaret club from an undefined era which echoes Berlin during the Weimer Republic as well as Chicago in the prohibitionist era. It’s a clandestine burlesque club where deaf and British Sign Language (BSL) users perform. It is their work, their refuge, their home. In this, it reminded me of Edouard Molinaro’s beautiful and sensitive La Cage Aux Folle.   

Martha is set in dystopian Britain 2055, where sign language is forbidden and deaf children are put through the ‘programme’, which forces different types of therapy in the hope of getting deaf people to speak. Sarah, played by Cherie Gordon, becomes part of the club ‘family’ by claiming to be a deaf person being pursued by the government. In reality, she is a secret agent whose mission is to identify the club and prosecute the people running it.

Sarah’s story of reconciliation with her deaf identity is interspersed with the burlesque acts of the club’s artists. They recount historical deaf figures, such as Princess Alice of Battenburg who sheltered Jews during WWII and Kitty O’Neil who was the stuntwoman for Wonder Woman and speed record breaker. 

The title Martha comes from Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the shore of Cape Cod in the US, which had a higher than usual deaf population and where the deaf and hearing inhabitants used sign language. Martha’s strong message is that of BSL as language, not just a means of access. 

Although the play begins with meta-theatre, by interacting with the audience and with Sarah as a member of the audience, this is lost as soon as Sarah joins the community. The ensemble does a good job at conveying BSL as language and the deaf community as a home, often a refuge from hearing people’s lack of understanding, from condescension, and from repression. 

For a play that deals with harrowing themes of child abduction, forced therapy, torture and killing, Martha is a little tame. The fun duo Duffy and Eben James are remarkable in their clowning abilities, a la Philippe Gaulier. The fun is not countered sufficiently by tragedy. The elements are there, however, and the public shares in Martha’s call for recognition of the full dignity of sign language and of deaf people.

Martha plays until the 21st of June at the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff (see details), then on the 25th and 26th of June at Pontio, Bangor (see details).

Art, Featured, Film & TV, Uncategorized

Grenfell & We Stand With You – a reflection by Eva Marloes

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On the 14th of June 2017, just before 1am a fire starts in the kitchen of flat 16, on the fourth floor of Grenfell Tower. The Fire Brigades are called and arrive at the building a few minutes later. The fire quickly spreads. The policy is to ‘stay put’. Residents are ordered to stay in their flats. The fire reaches the roof, then spreads horizontally. At 2.35am the control room revokes the ‘stay put’ advice. It’s too late. Too many are now trapped. 72 people die. 

That wasn’t an accident. It was well known that cladding was dangerous. Before Grenfell, there were fires in the UK and other countries where cladding played a significant role in the spreading of the fire, such as Lakanal House in London in 2008, Mermoz Tower in Roubaix, France in 2012, Lacrosse Tower in Melbourne, Australia in 2014. 

It was well known that the ‘stay put’ policy was wrong. Six people died at Lakanal House because residents had been told to stay put. It was well known that high-rise blocks needed sprinklers. Yet, still in 2023 Inside Housing reported that over 80% of social housing blocks lacked sprinklers and fire alarms. Sprinklers and the evacuation of residents at Lacrosse Tower ensured that there were no deaths.

Removing cladding and retrofitting sprinklers and fire alarms costs money. Telling people to stay put is easier than evacuating. It also means you don’t need to worry about specific measures to evacuate disabled people. Before the fire, residents raised concerns about safety in the building. They were dismissed, bullied, stygmatised as trouble makers. Deregulation, profit-making, and prejudice killed 72 people.   Grenfell was not an accident.

Chapter Arts Centre honours the victims by showing Steve McQueen’s short visual medidation on the fire at Grenfell Tower and by hosting a series of events, including the ‘We Stand With You’, Common Wealth exhibition, which opens on the 5th of June. The full programme for the events can be found here. 

Featured, Theatre, Uncategorized

Review: Calamity Jane, Wales Millennium Centre by Gemma Treharne-Foose 

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out of 5 stars (3 / 5)

A rootin’-tootin’, boot-scooting good time…

For anyone looking for a way to escape the horrors of the 2025 news cycle, may I recommend instead a little excursion to the prairies and saloon bar of Deadwood City in Goldrush-era USA? 

The 2025 touring production tweaks the 1961 stage play, based on the 1953 Hollywood smash musical movie featuring the iconic Doris Day and gives it a little bit of a “modern” touch. You may have memories watching Calamity during holidays, or maybe on a Sunday with your grandparents…you may not know *how* you know the “Whip-crack-away” song or the tune to “Just Blew in from the Windy City”, but even if you don’t remember the movie exactly, the 2025 musical will draw you in for its spectacle. From its cowboys and hoe-downs, to the the Americana bluegrass musicians and the vocal powerhouse that is Carrie Hope Fletcher, there are plenty of story, song and dance nuggets to keep you satiated. 

We meet Calamity, Wild Bill Hickock and a rag-tag ensemble of Deadwood City saloon-goers at the Watermill Theatre, HQ for the production’s story where Director/Choreographer Nick Winston and Director Nikolai Foster first imagined the world of Calamity in 2014. For this production, the production team have added a few extra songs and lost others synonymous with problematic representation or iconography. 

The production does well to navigate some of the awkwardness and “cringe” (to quote my daughter’s favourite phrase) of songs written in an era where men literally imagined the idea, wrote the story, the theme tunes and then staged and directed the show featuring predominantly white men. It’s a bit like watching Little House on the Prairie – it’s almost an absurd parody of the true harshnesses, shocking injustices and brutality of frontier life, but it sure was nice escaping to a fantasy for a few hours. I even enjoyed a song sung by Katie Brown (Seren Sandham-Davies) and Calamity about “A woman’s touch”, where they spruced up the homestead cabin with some tablecloths, patchwork curtains and dried flowers. No trad-wives here though, thankfully – Calamity is whip-smart and there is plenty of sass and energy from Vinny Coyle (playing Wild Bill) and the wonderful Samuel Holmes playing Francis Fryer. Holmes’ comedy chops and comic physicality were a real highlight throughout. 

There were some humorous queer-coded moments which the producers could have leaned into a little more during the scenes where Katie Brown moves in and “runs away” with Calamity Jane. It’s a little “nudge-nudge, wink-wink”, but at least this production has a little more diversity than the man-fest that was the original film. The musicians and ensemble cast mingled about freely providing pace and colour to the script, which at times fell a little flat here and there. Being set in the Wild West with a gaggle of blow-ins, the accents did wander a little “off-piste” at times, but anyone whose watched a production of Guys and Dolls will be familiar with accents oscillating between Noo Yoik and Surrey. It’s all good, clean fun and the cast were great sports and had a great rapport. Huge respect (or should I say Yee-Hawwww!) to Richard Lock for his bow-legged shuffling and toothless gurning as “Rattlesnake” – he really looked the part! 

Centering the entirety of the production in the same Saloon spot may have made sense, but I did find myself wanting to see more more travel, movement and visual interest in the wider set, which could perhaps provide more of a sense of place of the vast rolling plains and prairies where Calamity roamed. Her stagecoach excursions are brought to life by straddling the saloon pianos and chairs, spinning umbrellas, wheels and the two tapping coconut shells for horses hooves. It’s a nostalgic, good time romp through some of Hollywood’s most enduring musical classics and Carrie Hope Fletcher’s voice is truly beautiful. The production finished with an audience rendition of the Black Hills of Dekota, a hoedown reprise and joyous soft-shoe shuffling, spins (and – spoiler alert – there’s a double wedding). Well it was written in 1953 don’t forget…

There’s plenty of life in Calamity Jane and her musical / film iterations – It would be wonderful to see a Hollywood biopic of the real Calamity. Her letters and diary to her and Wild Bill’s daughter Janey in the 1800s were found to contain a true glimpse of her life and character. The songs only tell part of the story. But in the meantime, the stagecoach, Wild Bill and Calam will be in Cardiff til they “Whipcrack Away” on the March 15th. So if you’re fancying a hoe-down and a Sarsparilla, with the gang you’d better saddle up….

Calamity Jane at the WMC – Book here (closes 15th March)

Featured, Film & TV, Music, Musical, Theatre

Review: Everybody’s Talking About Jamie by Gemma Treharne-Foose

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out of 5 stars (4 / 5)

Press Night 23 October 2023

“A riotously upbeat tale for our times….” 

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (playing at the WMC until the 28th October) has had a meteoric success since the original documentary about 16 year old Jamie New (who wants to be a drag queen) was introduced to us on our TV screens in 2011. Since then, we’ve seen a musical, an award-winning world tour and a movie starring Richard E Grant and Sharon Horgan. Attending the opening night in Cardiff with my teenage daughter, I wondered if the setting of much of the play (in a typically grim British state school) would chime with her or potentially be shot down as a sad attempt by Millennials to capture Gen Z culture…never an easy line to tread!

It’s the kind of premise that would make a Daily Mail reader’s head explode. We have a gloriously camp 16 year old Jamie New who daydreams of stardom as the next big thing in the Drag scene. His accomplice, a Muslim, hijab-wearing Pritti Pasha (Talia Palamathanan) is his best friend and wing-woman. Supporting his bold and some might say outrageous career aspirations while maintaining her own moral and religious code, the friendship represents the kind of unity and integration that we all wish for. This is never too forced, or too jarring in its earnestness. Talia Palamathanan’s voice is absolutely sensational and her solo number ‘It means beautiful’ (by Dan Gillespie Sells) is stunningly delivered and I saw multiple folks around me wiping away the tears at the end of the number.

Huge credit for first-class character work and rapport with the audience must go to Shobna Gulati as Ray and stand-in Georgina Hagan (who was replacing Rebecca McKinnis as Jamie’s Mum Margaret New the night I attended). Georgina’s two solo tracks “If I met Myself Again” in Act 1 and “My Boy” in Act 2 were truly some of the best numbers in the show. Georgina’s vocals gave me goosebumps and although I’m not usually a fan of sequences with contemporary dance peppered into some scenes, Georgina’s emotional delivery took the whole scene to the next level. The dancers accompanying her were superb – it helped to tell the story and made Georgina’s incredible vocals even greater.

Some of the set-up for Jamie’s big reveal may remind you of Billy Elliott (young Northern lad overcomes toxic and stifling masculinity and a troubled father-Son relationship to follow his dreams, plucky ‘Diamond in the rough’ family members will rally around to support him when it really counts, etc etc). But this show, though perhaps formulaic in places, manages to simultaneously pack in a great story, outstanding choreography, quality songs and a great set. I wasn’t a huge fan of the visuals on the screens behind the stage set – it made the overall look and feel a little ‘commercial-like’ or trying to be like MTV or a swishy campaign when the action and performance on stage really is enough to carry the show…no glossy brand-like photography needed!

Hot on the heels of the incredible Layton Williams who played Jamie New in 2019 (and is now fox-trotting across our screens in BBC’s Strictly), is Ivano Turco. Ivano’s performance as Jamie is spectacular. Sometimes when you listen to the original soundtrack to popular musicals, it can feel like it’s not possible to improve on this ‘original recipe’ – and no disrespect to anyone on the original soundtrack but Ivano’s silky smooth voice is like honey. His approach to the songs is beautifully soulful and his relationship and interaction with Georgina Hagan as his Mum was lovely.

My daughter and I LOVED this show. We listened to all the songs again on the drive back home and we’ll be closely following Ivano’s career – he’s destined for a glittering future. This is a gloriously upbeat tale for modern times and it’s a dopamine booster. Highly recommend it!