“Vivien fucking Leigh!” An opening statement that certainly makes its feelings clear, in Keith Merrill’s Irrelevant, now on at the Seven Dials Playhouse and starring stage and screen stalwart Debbie Chazen.
‘Focus on grief & suicide in a startling & original way’: DADDY ISSUES – Seven Dials Playhouse
Daddy Issues at the Seven Dials Playhouse a play which definitely adds to the conversation about mental health and what our parents pass on to us, but it didn’t quite get there in my opinion, leaving more questions than answers. Do go and make up your own mind.
‘Read this as an absurdist fantasy & it makes more sense’: HELP! WE ARE STILL ALIVE – Seven Dials Playhouse ★★★
Finn (Elijah Ferreira) and Jass (Jade Johnson), who identify as queer, are the last two people left alive by circumstance after a suffocating fog in the charming one-act musical Help! We Are Still Alive at the Seven Dials Playhouse.
‘The vigour of the staging, & fine performances, leave you exhilarated as well as sad’: DIARY OF A SOMEBODY – Seven Dials Playhouse ★★★
The tiny Actors’ Centre is reborn under its new name, and since this play is set in what was a traditionally febrile, theatrical, subversively arty quarter in the 50s and 60s before it got chichi, it’s a good place to remember Joe Orton and his killing.
‘George Kemp is excellent as Joe Orton’: DIARY OF A SOMEBODY – Seven Dials Playhouse
Diary Of A Somebody is credited to John Lahr, though technically he might be said to be the arranger/editor. For the actual words are those of Joe Orton as recorded in a journal that he decided to keep in 1966/7.
‘It’s flashy, frank & fabulous’: STEVE – Seven Dials Playhouse
Steven (a demonstrative David Ames) is celebrating his 47th birthday at the Manhattan branch of Joe Allen’s, where posters from little-remembered shows line the walls.
‘Entertainingly put together & starrily cast’: STEVE – Seven Dials Playhouse
The Seven Dials Playhouse opens with the European premiere of Mark Gerrard’s gently amusing and affecting Steve.