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Manwatching: a secret female playwright’s liberating look at sex

January 6, 2017TheGuardian

The author of a hit show about desire explains why she’s staying anonymous – and why her play is only performed by male comedians

You’ve written a hit play, it’s been programmed for a run at the Royal Court – and you can’t take a shred of credit for it? You’d forgive the anonymous writer of Manwatching for feeling some frustration – but there’s little in evidence. “I keep telling the friends who know it’s me [and who are sworn to secrecy] that everyone should do a piece anonymously once in their lives. It’s tremendously liberating.”

Of course the part of me that would like to boast is frustrated

Capital panto: Ricky Whittington surveys modern London’s malaises

December 30, 2016TheGuardian

A crack cast of millennial comics deliver social satire amid the poo jokes and spoof songs in an alt-panto created by Liam Williams and Daran Johnson

The “all-age family entertainment” of panto is being “doused with ill-disguised ordure,” protested one correspondent in the Guardian’s Letters page last week, in response to Michael Billington’s review of the London Palladium’s smutty Cinderella. Whatever would she make of Liam Williams and Daran Johnson’s Ricky Whittington and His Cat at the New Diorama: an alt-panto with poo jokes, crude social satire and featuring “fuck London!” as its most spirited refrain? It’s not for the kids, mind you: this Dick Whittington retread is aimed squarely at millennials and comedy fans, and – after two and a half hours of spoof fairytale and gentrification gags delivered by a crack cast of hip young comics – few will leave disappointed.

It’s great fun, in short. The animating idea – that the Dick Whittington story offers a bitterly ironic frame through which to view modern London’s various malaises – proves extremely fruitful, as Williams and Johnson’s show mocks the idea that the capital’s streets might be paved (for the newcomer at least) with anything other than exploitation, penury and angst. In King Rat, they find an easy metaphor for the kind of rapacious developer who wilfully degrades London’s housing stock, the easier to replace it with luxury flats when its occupiers are forced out. Whether, in real life, they do so by luring rats to their properties with cheese – well, you wouldn’t bet against it, would you?

Tristram Kenton’s stage photos of the year – in pictures

December 29, 2016TheGuardian

Tristram Kenton captures theatre, dance and comedy performances for the Guardian. Here are some of his best stage shots of 2016, from David Threlfall’s Don Quixote to Gemma Arterton’s Nell Gwynn

‘As long as there are hairbrushes, people will sing’ – the best of 2016’s webchats

December 29, 2016TheGuardian

Jon Bon Jovi’s key change killer, Gemma Arterton’s weep-off with Glenn Close, the weirdest thing that ever happened to Harry Shearer … here are the highlights of 2016’s culture webchats

Have you ever vomited while talking to somebody for a film? (asked by elalpineclub)

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