A stage adaptation of horror classic ‘Paranormal Activity' is coming to London's West End
But if there's anyone who can make this sort of thing work in the theatre it's Felix Barrett, who as the driving force behind immersive theatre gods Punchdrunk has specialised in making impossible possible in a very creepy way for almost a quarter century now.
Written by US playwright Levi Holloway – who scored a solid Broadway hit with the similarly spooky Grey House – it's a heavily reimagined version of the story, that sees Chicago couple James and Lou move to London only to discover that something dark has followed them.
The show premiered in Leeds last summer: press weren't invited but word of mouth for the run seems strong, and it'll have an autumn tour of the US before settling into the West End for a 12-week limited season, where it'll replace the shutting Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Horror doesn't always work in the West End – it wasn't so long ago that the Ambassadors Theatre played host to the execrable Catherine Tate vehicle The Enfield Haunting – but the signs are there that this should be satisfyingly chilling.
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Scotsman
2 hours ago
- Scotsman
Fringe theatre reviews: Laura Benanti The Spy Who Went To Rehab
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Laura Benanti: Nobody Cares ★★★★ Underbelly Bristo Square (Venue 302) until 24 August Laura Benanti is Broadway royalty. She made her debut as a teenager in The Sound Of Music in 1998, won a Tony Award for her performance in Gypsy in 2008, and has been nominated four more times. On television, she has starred in Nashville, Gossip Girl, The Gilded Age, and as Melania Trump on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. In this hour-long show – first seen in New York last year and subsequently released on Audible – Benanti looks back on her life and career with sly, self-deprecating humour. It is essentially a stand-up show with songs, and while it lacks anything particularly edgy or insightful, it is still a supremely polished piece of musical comedy. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Backed by a three-strong band led by fellow Broadway star Todd Almond - who had a hit at last year's festival with I'm Almost There - Benanti reflects on how her insatiable desire to be admired has led her into some awkward and embarrassing situations. Much of it revolves around the men in her life: the older producer who propositioned her as a teenager, the early boyfriends that became famous – she wryly nicknames her vagina 'the portal to greatness' – and the two marriages that came and went before she met and wed her current husband. There is a particularly funny section in which she cringes at the memory of her pretending she had cancer rather than reject a marriage proposal. Winningly frank and friendly throughout, Benanti also weaves in touching sections about her husband and two daughters, plus articulate insights into the stresses and strains of aging as a female actor. The songs are great, too: intricately composed ditties about craving attention, 'good' men, and more. And, of course, she sings beautifully. It is not boundary-breaking stuff, but it is pieced together proficiently and performed impeccably. You would expect nothing less from a Broadway star like Benanti. Fergus Morgan The Cadaver Palaver ★★★ Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Summerhall - Anatomy Lecture Theatre (Venue 26) until 25 August Christopher Samuel Carroll's lovingly rendered Victorian caper is both a paean and a pastiche of the adventure novels of yesteryear. Sherlock Holmes spliced with the swashbuckling swagger of Robert Louis Stevenson. Bennett Cooper Sullivan, a rakish adventurer, is drawn into Edinburgh's murky underworld after an old acquaintance vanishes without a trace. What unravels is a twisting tale masked in mystery, secret cabals, and Egyptian mummies. Carroll goes full hog, acting, directing, and writing. His script is liberally sprinkled with daft one-liners and garnished with gymnastic wit in a gallant and graceful performance. Each caricature is sketched with the sly exaggeration of a Vanity Fair cartoon, with names as gloriously ridiculous as their owners. The clichés come thick and fast, rendering the plot sometimes more predictable than perilous, but that is the hazard of homage: the tight rope balancing act demands sufficient recognisable tropes with enough of a twist to keep us engaged. Alexander Cohen Desperate Wee Gay Boy ★★★ Underbelly Cowgate (Venue 61) until 24 August Ollie is living the dream as a young Scottish man throwing himself into all that London's gay scene has to offer. On one memorable night - actually his birthday - he meets his long lost crush from school, goes to his first orgy in a sauna and has a hook-up with a man from Grindr known only as FitBottom. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Ollie is played charismatically by Fraser Kelsey and the audience was clearly loving the character's audacity and no-holds-barred shamelessness. 'I won't indulge you with the details,' he says, coyly, at one point, but he does - every time. Kelsey is also the writer; this is his debut as a playwright, directed by the award-winning Charlotte Anne Tilley. Was Ollie's great night really so brilliant? There's an emptiness in it he would rather not admit. His various hook-ups want something from him but, more often than not, don't offer anything in return. Is his desperate pursuit of the next (sexual) thrill preventing him from valuing what's really important? Desperate Wee Gay Boy is a simple enough story with a straightforward message, but the encounters are well observed and well written. It's promising work from a first-time playwright. Susan Mansfield Karen Houge: Dreamgirl ★★ Underbelly (Venue 61) until 24 August A capable, confident performer with an intriguing true story at the heart of her solo play, Norwegian theatremaker Karen Houge just appears to have the tone all wrong in the telling of it. Sold as though this were a burlesque show on the theme of trust, she appears in dazzling showgirl regalia, but then quickly shrugs this off and instead gets into a story about accompanying a group of Syrian refugees across southern Europe. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Frankly, this is very interesting, and hearing more about this journey would certainly be of interest, but too many digressions into stints of tangential audience interaction and vaguely related Lego-building constantly rob a promising play of momentum. David Pollock The Spy Who Went To Rehab ★★ Pleasance Dome (Venue 23) until 25 August Special agent Simon Cross is a heavy-drinking, chain-smoking, compulsive-gambling womaniser in the style of James Bond. His outdated ways have become a liability, though, so he has been sent to rehab, where, surprisingly, he starts to see the light. Martinis are replaced with meditations, pistols with Pilates, self-destruction for self-discovery. US Greg Ostrin's five-handed comedy entertainingly skewers Ian Fleming's problematic superspy through therapy sessions, unexpected face-offs, and a delightfully double-crossing finale. The clunky staging lacks polish and the performances are laboured, hence two stars, but there is the spark of something seriously funny here. Fergus Morgan Bitter Baby ★★ LeMonde (venue 47) until 25 August There's a work-in-progress feel to this production, unsurprising given that writer Elis Wear stepped into the role just days before the Fringe run. Commendably, she tries to make it work, and there's promise in her writing, which includes honest reflections and moments of humour. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The story of an academically strong woman turning to sex work to make ends meet is intriguing, but the piece struggles under unclear direction and static staging, with Wear seated almost throughout. Emotional scenes use unnecessary music to heighten feeling, which is a shame, as this is when Wear's performance is strongest. It reflects the sheer determination behind many Fringe efforts, but it doesn't quite come together. Suzanne O'Brien How To Become A Movie Star at theSpace | theSpace How to Become a Movie Star? ★★ theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall (Venue 53) until 23 August The title is meant as a question but it also might serve as a warning. This autobiographical one-woman show by Sarah Maria Lafferty — who is not yet a movie star — documents her first experiences of becoming the centre of attention as a child through to drama school and travelling to New York in order to meet her hero, Gabriel Byrne. Mr Byrne's name is invoked so often as to become an incantation, and you may leave this without ever wanting to hear it again. Lafferty may well be a fine actress, but she's not a gifted memoirist and some of her anecdotes wouldn't be that interesting even if they happened to you. Rory Ford Chameleon ★★ Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 23 August There's no doubting the talent and ability of young actor Ruben Sparks, whose solo show sees him inhabit a confined psychiatric patient named Delaney. The chameleon of the title, with a creepily impressive impersonation of the creature to go with Sparks' many other abilities, Delaney recalls his troubled family history, acting out the various sibling, parental and other parts, often in dialogue with one another. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Although Sparks' central performance is compelling, there's an impressionistic vagueness to the text and the too-similar voices of each character, meaning the audience has to work hard to keep up with the storytelling.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Telegraph
Finally a romcom that admits earning less than your partner can be a passion killer
Most romcoms like to pretend money is immaterial. But should it matter? This is the question Materialists thoughtfully asks, by giving Dakota Johnson's character a choice between a rich man and a poor man, and making their earnings such a transparent part of the equation. Whether the film works as an actual romcom is doubtful – but there's an almost radical lack of sugar-coating, which makes it worthwhile for plenty of other reasons. Lucy (Johnson) works for a matchmaking agency, and we find out that her salary is $80,000 (£59,000). That's a lot less than most of her male clients, and some of her female ones. But it's also a lot more than her ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans) makes as a 'cater waiter', paying the bills between off-off-Broadway acting gigs. At 37, he's living in a grimy flatshare with drop-outs, and in danger of never making it at all. Money ruined their relationship the first time around, because John never had enough of it. Years later, Lucy starts dating a single, loaded businessman called Harry (Pedro Pascal), having successfully matched his brother with a bride. Harry is what's known in Lucy's trade as a 'unicorn' – a perfect, rich, charming, bafflingly uncoupled specimen with great hair who is not even under 6ft tall. We get that love comes hard to him, but romance all too easily. Lucy is built to notice his smooth way of picking up the cheque in chi-chi restaurants, and wonders if he's husband material, while John – more skint than ever – pines for her on the sidelines. The writer-director, Celine Song, broke hearts with another love triangle, in her feted debut Past Lives. This won't repeat the same trick, and doesn't intend to. After all, we're spending a lot of time with people referring to each other's 'tangible assets'. More than that, though, a rooting interest is curiously tough to find. It's surprising that the performances from this hyped trio don't supply one. All are fine; all have been better. Johnson renders Lucy as such a cool-headed pragmatist, we're unsure if she's capable of love. Many Lucys wouldn't think twice about the offer Harry is tendering. So why would she? The ubiquitous, ever-suave Pascal and a committed Evans will delight their established fans. (The Captain America star is arguably best in show here.) Still, it's a snag that the men they're playing are so sketchy, lacking quirks beyond their respective wealth and poverty. As a romcom, the film's too much like a scientific field study to give us that heady rush of watching two people realise they're soulmates. It has been dubbed 'broke boy propaganda', but that's too rude. For all the plot's strain, at least Song has packed her film with crisp insights about the dating economy and our unrealistic standards – nowhere more cut-throat than in New York, surely. On height: 'Six inches can double a man's value in the market.' On a client's unrealistic expectations: 'Audrey, I don't know if there's a cat-hating, Christian, conservative lesbian in most parts of New York who wants to date a closeted 49-year-old with three children…' Materialists may not persuade us that it has made any good matches at all – which is undeniably a flaw. But it's sharp and interesting for daring to admit what commodities dating apps have made of us all. In cinemas now
The Independent
a day ago
- The Independent
'Mamma Mia!' returns to Broadway after a decade away, bringing the dance party back to New York
When the musical 'Mamma Mia!' said goodbye to Broadway a decade ago, there were tears and hugs and tons of applause. In the audience of its last show, one woman wasn't entirely buying it. 'I felt then that it wasn't goodbye forever. I felt we'd be back one day,' says producer Judy Craymer, who had conceived of the show in the 1980s. 'I always hoped.' That one day has become today as the ABBA-fueled, feel-good musical returns to its first home on Broadway, the Winter Garden Theatre. It reopens Thursday night. 'It's like when you go to visit the old place where you went to high school,' says Victor Wallace, who made his Broadway debut in the show in 2012, stayed to the final curtain in 2015 and has returned. 'There's so many backstage stories and people and I'm a little overwhelmed.' Fans have fueled the return of 'Mamma Mia!' to make it among the top earners on Broadway, last week grossing $1.57 million over seven previews, fourth behind only 'Wicked,' 'The Lion King' and 'Hamilton.' 'A time of peril' 'Mamma Mia!' endured plenty during its first Broadway life — wars, hurricanes, the 2008 financial meltdown, the move to a smaller theater and critics, who never warmed to the show's high-energy sweetness. A hit in London — where it is still playing — 'Mamma Mia!' opened in New York just a few weeks after the 2001 terror attacks when there was deep gloom and anxiety. Christine Sherrill, who recently toured as the show's mom and is now making her Broadway debut in the role, says audiences are responding to another time of stress. 'We're kind of in a time of peril again, where communities are divided. So to be able to go into some of these cities and have 3,000 people — who would never find themselves enjoying the same thing outside of the theater — sitting there all enjoying this communal experience is really interesting.' The show, featuring more than 20 classic ABBA hits, including 'Dancing Queen' and 'Waterloo,' has been a smash in dozens of countries, including South Korea, Italy, Denmark, South Africa and Spain. Craymer sees the data about the new flock of theatergoers and notes this 'Mamma Mia!' is popular with groups. 'There were people that had seen it on Broadway — probably when they were younger — and now coming back in their 20s and 30s and then bringing their daughters or family.' A Greek story is born Craymer decades ago approached members of ABBA and made her pitch: Instead of doing a musical about the band, she insisted that their songs help tell an original story. Craymer teamed up with playwright Catherine Johnson, and a story set on a Greek island was born about a young woman who is about to be married and wants her father to give her away. But she's not sure who he is, so she invites her mom's three former lovers to her wedding. The musical prompted Craymer to produce a movie version starring Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth, that became the fifth highest-grossing film of 2008. A sequel, 'Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again,' came out a decade later. ABBA's music continues to be the backdrop for numerous popular TikTok trends. In some way mirroring the joy onstage, backstage at 'Mamma Mia!' is a party backstage, too, with milestones celebrated, outings, door decorating contests and gatherings 'Because of the nature of the show, I think it just bleeds into life backstage and that joy that you see on stage, it just overflows into our lives,' says Wallace. Themes of the 'Mamma' Wallace, who started in the musical's ensemble and grew to play the young leading man, Sky, and now is one of the three possible dads, says the show is about friendship, parenthood, hope and second chances. 'It's always surprising how the show surprises you emotionally,' he says. 'It's a great time. It's fun. But I think people identify with these themes and these characters and I think that people are caught off guard as to how the show captures their heart and moves them.' Sherrill looks at the story through a mother's eyes and realizes she's a different person than she was before she had twins. She offers another theme. 'It's a lot about finding your identity,' she says. 'I think that appeals to people on all levels — all people, all levels. Everyone's trying to figure out who they are and what the best version of themselves is. So, I think, that's sort of a universal message that's really playing on people's heartstrings as well, at least mine.'
