Latest news with #Palamides
New Statesman
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Why I'm falling for East 17
Illustration by Charlotte Trounce We seem to have chosen just the right moment to move to Walthamstow. The week before we got the keys to our new flat at the end of August last year, the area's only cinema – closed since the previous summer – reopened under new ownership. Next, in March, the Times named E17 the best place to live in London. Getting 'Stay Another Day' stuck in my head every time I write my postcode seems a fair price to pay for such heights. Then, last Friday, the new outpost of Soho Theatre, the confusingly named Soho Theatre Walthamstow, opened. It's not often that a PR invite lands in my inbox that I actually want to say yes to, but a long-anticipated opening night a ten-minute walk from my flat? It was an easy yes. The site has been a cultural landmark since 1887, when a Victorian music hall opened there. The building that now exists opened in 1929 as a cinema, and was often frequented by Alfred Hitchcock, who was born in the borough (though too late, sadly, for William Morris, our other famous alumnus). Later, it operated as a music venue, hosting the Beatles, the Who, the Rolling Stones and Buddy Holly. In 2003 the building was bought by the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, but they were unable to get planning permission, and it fell into disrepair. Various groups campaigned for it to be restored and reopened as an arts venue, and in 2018 the council acquired it and announced that Soho Theatre would operate it. We missed all these years of hard work by local activists, swanning in at the last-minute for the rewarding part. But still, seeing the buzz on the street on opening night, I felt pride for my little corner of London. For our first six months of living in the area, the theatre was boarded up and, save for the odd glimpse through a door left open by a workman, we had no idea what lay behind. As it turns out, what lay behind was an opulent baroque theatre, which, at 1,000 seats, proffers a new sort of comedy venue for the capital: far bigger than Soho Theatre's Dean Street home, but far smaller the Hammersmith Apollo. The opening-night show, Weer by the LA comedian Natalie Palamides, is a piss-take of Nineties comedies, in which Palamides plays both on-off lovers over the course of their three-year relationship. When her right-hand side faces the audience she is Mark, with a plaid shirt and a brooooooo-ish drawl; her left is Christina, in alarmingly low-rise jeans and a G-string pulled up to her waist. It's an extraordinary feat of physical comedy; Palamides, at various points, runs into herself, snogs herself, tries to revive herself after a car crash. It's clownish, explicit, and fearless. There are a lot of in-jokes – knowing nods to the duality of the performance; references to Notting Hill and The Notebook – and some truly hilarious audience participation (though perhaps I'd feel differently had I been called upon to pretend to dance in a club on stage). Those roped in are generally good sports, though Palamides has to petition three audience members before one will deliver the traditional 'discovering he's cheating' voicemail. I am all ready to go, should the mic be pointed in my direction: 'Hey baby, I had so much fun last night. You left your pants behind…' There's also a lot of nakedness; I keep waiting to get used to the fact that Palamides has her boobs out for a considerable chunk of the show, but the moment never comes. After a high-energy 80 or so minutes, Palamides gives an emotional thank you and the whole room stands to applaud, and I find myself moved that this space could mean so much to so many, as I often am by collective demonstrations of emotion. I never really wanted to move to Walthamstow – leaving Islington was a financial necessity more than anything. But I'm getting to know it, growing to love it, more each day. Here's hoping those drawn out to the end of the Victoria Line by our very own Soho Theatre don't feel the same, because house prices are bad enough as it is. [See also: The solitary life of bees] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
Telegraph
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
London's most opulent fringe venue opens with a brilliant no-holds-barred show
Friday night saw London's newest and most opulent comedy venue open its doors with an extravagant bang thanks to US comedian Natalie Palamides. Quite a few 'bangs' in fact, if one's being smutty, which Palamides sure is − and certainly, as an opening, determinedly fringey mission statement and outrageously entertaining evening out, it is hard to see how this show could be bettered. An offshoot of the much-loved Dean Street institution of similar name, Soho Theatre Walthamstow turns out to be quite a place. Built in 1930 as an astonishing 2,700-seater cinema, the building has been lovingly restored and transformed into a theatre with a still-ambitious 960 seats. ('Soho' don't seem to be publicising how much it cost, but we can safely go with: a packet.) The auditorium is marvellous, a grand, old-school space with luxurious, Alhambra-inspired trimmings, good leg-room and excellent raking and sight-lines. There's a capacious foyer with a disco ball the size of Jupiter, two large and well-staffed bars, and you can get a naan wrap for a tenner. Plus, it's barely five minutes' walk from the local Tube station. What's not to like? First aired in Edinburgh last summer, the show with which Walthamstow is setting out its stall echoes the venue in terms of being at once reassuringly old-fashioned and utterly modern. A no-holds-barred comic paean to the big-screen romances of the 1990s, and flipping between 1999 and 1996, Weer sees Palamides simultaneously play both of the central lovers, Mark and Christina. (A bizarre quadruple coincidence for this particular writer, but that's quite another story.) So, her right-hand side is Mark, all macho plaid shirt, cargo pants, short-ish 'male' hair, and preposterous painted-on stubble; but when she turns about 180 degrees, she's Christina: long hair, regular make-up, a pink top, groovy jeans. It's a clownish trope as old as the hills, but make no mistake: as anyone who caught Palamides's previous, full-bore creations Laid (2017) or Nate (2018) would expect, the material is bracingly and brilliantly 21st-century. Going into the show, I'll admit I feared slightly that this performer who − be warned − loves to get the audience involved and thrives on the sense of a charged, intimate huddle, might be lost in the enormous space. But not a bit of it. A completely fearless atom-bomb of energy, she instantly fills the stage and auditorium alike with muscular misrule, and simply does not let up. Roughly 80 minutes straight through, the show often uses surprise as a (very effective) weapon, so let's not go into too many particulars. But Palamides's mickey-taking of specific 1990s films and general filmic tropes is as marvellous as her casual, almost aggressive disregard for her props, and my, what an inspired and inventive physical comedian she is. She frequently turns on a sixpence to give us both characters' actions as good as simultaneously, a trick that works as perfectly in the moments off near-death melodrama as it does in the shamelessly funny, insouciantly semi-naked bedroom scenes. You can't help feeling that this 'Zone 3', comedy-focused theatre has got its work cut out for it in terms of consistently putting bums on seats, especially given the fact that very few of the names on its extensive programme qualify as 'household'. But after an opening gambit as strong as this, how not to wish it well? At the curtain call, the still bare-breasted Palamides said how marvellous it was that 'small comedians' like her could experience being in a room like this. Amen to that, even if something tells me the astonishing Ms P, 5ft 1in though she is, won't be a 'small comedian' for very much longer.
