A lot of firsts are happening in Balham theatre at the moment. Theatre N16 has moved from N16 to a new home in SW12, The Bedford Pub. There is little theatre in the immediate area – Tooting Arts Club is further down the Northern line, Clapham and Stockwell both have venues closer to town, BAC is a bit of a trek and there’s a new theatre tentatively in the works in Streatham, but that’s it.
JOANNE – Soho Theatre
We never meet Joanne. We do however, meet four women who encounter her at different points over a crucial 24-hour period of her life, and one that remembers her as a child. We learn that she cuts a tall, striking figure, makes immediate impact on those she meets and she doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere the world. Joanne is homeless and has just been released from prison.
BARBARIANS – Tooting Arts Club at Central Saint Martin’s
Punks Paul, Jan and Louis are working-class lads living in south London. School didn’t do much for them and unemployment is high, so they hang around and smoke, nick cars and try to pull girls. They’re bored, angry and frustrated at the lack of opportunities available to poor kids like them. They want to improve their quality of life and feel like they belong in society, but society’s too busy fighting terrorism and racism to pay them any attention so they do their best to get by, or not. It sounds like the present, right? Nope.
NEWS: Donmar Warehouse’s The Vote Achieves Record TV Viewing Figures
The live broadcast of The Vote from the Donmar Warehouse on More4 (Thursday 7 May 2015) attracted an audience of more than half a million, peaking at 555,000 viewers during its election night broadcast. This is the highest figure for a Donmar Warehouse production – with the previous record of 180,000 being set by Josie Rourke’s production of Coriolanus broadcast …