Reviews

Once again StageArt brings us a musical that 99% of us would never have the chance to see a professional production of otherwise, and we’re all the better for that.

Most of us are familiar with Spielberg’s film and Alice Walker’s book, and we know that this was a huge - in terms of staging - Broadway hit a few years back. But this year it won the Tony award for best revival in a more streamlined, cut down version – thus allowing StageArt to mount the show in the limited space of The Chapel.

Disgraced is an explosive, taut piece of drama and as pertinent today as when it was first written in 2012. Filled to the brim with hot-button topics; Islam, radicalization, faith, identity and culture, Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize winning play could not have been more contemporary.

They say there’s nothing more delightful in theatre than an old-fashioned fairytale brought to life, yet last night I experienced the World Premiere of Rumpelstiltskin and discovered there’s something even more wonderful - a truly modern fairytale, graced by the enhancements that exquisite use of technology can provide.

Director Helen Ellis does a sterling job with an excellent cast on Ken Davenport’s compilation play My First Time – an offering about losing one’s virginity.

Plays constructed from real life conversations are not new, and some of them have become classics.

The Laramie Project and The Vagina Monologues, along with The Exonerated, are at the upper echelon of this kind of amalgam. My First Time drifts somewhere down at the bottom of the scale.