Shifters overview: This bittersweet romcom sizzles with chemistry
Shifters (Duke of York’s Theatre, London)
Verdict: Love’s labour won
There’s a joke at the end of Woody Allen‘s film Annie Hall about a guy telling his psychiatrist he’s worried about his brother, who thinks he’s a chicken. The psychiatrist urges his patient to bring the brother in. But the patient isn’t sure… ‘I would, but I need the eggs.’
The point is that no matter how crazy or frustrating our romantic attachments seem, we go back to them because… we need the eggs.
That same compulsion underpins Shifters, the bittersweet romcom by female playwright Benedict Lombe first seen at the powerhouse Bush Theatre in West London, which has now transferred to the West End.
It’s the story of Dre and Des, a pair of thirtysomething on-off lovers who first met at school… ‘two little black kids, destined to oppose each other’.
The show’s best feature is the two heartfelt performances from Tosin Cole and Heather Agyepong as Dre and Des
He’s cheeky and playful but guarded. She’s smart and direct, yet oddly elusive
Their paths cross again after the funeral of Dre’s grandmother, eight years on from their split. She is now a successful artist in New York. He has a restaurant in London. An elegy for a relationship that never was, Shifters feels real, complicated and soulful.
The show’s best feature is the two heartfelt performances from Tosin Cole and Heather Agyepong as Dre and Des. He’s cheeky and playful but guarded. She’s smart and direct, yet oddly elusive.
Both turn out to be secretive, reluctant to reveal childhood scars. And yet their fizzy chemistry is to die for.
My only real complaint here is that Lombe’s play doesn’t demand that they risk more for each other.
There’s lots of clever, charming banter which wins gales of laughter. But the play can also feel like a loved-up Waiting For Godot, as the couple make excuses, reminisce and beat about the bush.
Even so, Lynette Linton’s simple and warm-hearted production, under a neon shower of shooting stars, casts a lovely, dreamy 100-minute spell.
Go to the Charing Cross Theatre site HERE and the Duke of York Theatre HERE.
The Fabulist (Charing Cross Theatre, London)
Verdict: Love’s labour sings
The Fabulist is a Gilbert and Sullivan-ish comedy caper, based on Giovanni Paisiello’s 18th-century opera The Imaginary Astrologer, by U.S. cyber war expert James P. Farwell.
Re-cast on a film set in Tuscany in 1929, it concerns a female film director, her sister, and their astronomer-scientist dad, who’s trying to hide a magician (the Fabulist of the title) with designs on his younger daughter from a witch-hunting Cardinal.
The Gordian knot of a plot is not worth trying to unpick.
And while Farwell has supplied amusing lyrics for Paisiello’s wonderful score, he has also linked them with painful set pieces — including one where the fugitive fabulist speaks proverbs in bird squawks. For these moments, life is too short.
James Paterson (Count Petronius) and Stuart Pendred (Cardinal Bandini) in The Fabulist
The Fabulist is a Gilbert and Sullivan-ish comedy caper, based on Giovanni Paisiello’s 18th-century opera The Imaginary Astrologer
Paisiello’s music is another matter. A five-piece chamber orchestra performs with spirit. The soprano sisters (Lily De La Haye and Reka Jonas) are a joy.
Stuart Pendred is a hoot as Cardinal Bandini, who has launched a one-man inquisition against sorcery.
John Walton’s production is pleasingly creaky, with mini columns, cut-out trees and cotton wool clouds. And there are top-of-the-range magic tricks, too.
Shifters runs until October 12.
Antony & Cleopatra (Shakespeare’s Globe, London)
Verdict: Love’s labour dims
We can all salute the noble decision by Shakespeare’s Globe to integrate British Sign Language (BSL) into their new production of Antony & Cleopatra. But that doesn’t mean we’ll also enjoy this new version of a play that was very much written to be heard.
The language is horny, lubricious and hot. Here, though, with Nadia Nadarajah’s part of Cleopatra rendered as BSL, some of the Bard’s finest poetry is translated into mime. And although screens supply the text, unless you’re fluent in signing, it means you’ll see only 50 per cent of Nadarajah’s performance — because you’re busy reading her lines.
Lamentable slapstick when Nadeem Islam bears bad news from Rome might not even have made the cut for Carry On Cleo
Alongside her, John Hollingworth’s Mark Antony — Roman legend of the bed and battlefield — is a solid, middle ranking officer. But I got little sense of the headlong, death-bound passion that can drive this great erotic drama, in Blanche McIntyre’s listless production draped in denim-coloured fabrics.
Lamentable slapstick when Nadeem Islam bears bad news from Rome might not even have made the cut for Carry On Cleo.
But thankfully Daniel Millar, as Antony’s friend Enobarbus, allows some of the play’s verse to sparkle. My hunch is that this would work much better in a smaller venue.
Tender yet powerful portrayal of life as a British Muslim
Peanut Butter & Blueberries (Kiln Theatre, London)
Verdict: Love at first bite
Bilal clocked her kingfisher-blue hijab and vintage Raleigh bike; Hafsah was put off by him being ‘one of those Bilals that lets white people call him Billy’, yet was still (despite herself) impressed by his presentation based on a year spent in Kashmir.
Both working-class students at SOAS — him from Birmingham, her from Bradford — they are the only two who need subtitles to understand an old Bollywood movie.
Bookish Hafsah isn’t looking for romance. Nor is Bilal, who is more concerned about his mum, who can’t pay her mortgage.
There is a real sweetness and lightness as well as a keen intelligence at play in Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan’s funny, touching debut drama about the Muslim experience of living in Britain today
Director Sameena Hussain draws winning performances from the pair, who have a lovely chemistry
But knowing where the other is coming from — a shared Muslim faith, a shared sense of humour and a shared peanut butter and blueberry sandwich — creates a powerful connection between them.
Unspoken religious boundaries mean that there is always daylight between them as they walk side by side, or sit on a bench. But when Bilal takes Haf’s specs and tenderly dries the raindrops on his shirt, the charge is electric. They never, ever touch.
There is a real sweetness and lightness as well as a keen intelligence at play in Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan’s funny, touching debut drama about the Muslim experience of living in Britain today.
Humera Syed gives Hafsah a calm assurance, which seems to stem from her faith and feminism as well as her sharp intellect.
By sharp contrast, Usaamah Ibraheem Hussain’s quick-tempered, explosive Bilal is always on the defensive.
When a white guy tells him to shut up in the library, he cries Islamophobia. On the train, he leaves his stuff unattended and finds himself at the centre of a ‘See it, say it, sorted’ drama.
Director Sameena Hussain draws winning performances from the pair, who have a lovely chemistry.
But for some crude movement sequences when the couple swerve towards one another only to shy away, the tension vibrates until the final moment.
Show until August 31. Go to the Kiln Theatre site HERE.
What is on at Edinburgh Fringe?
Tommy Cooper, Bob Monkhouse and Eric Morecambe walk into a dressing room
No, it’s not the set-up to a joke, but the premise of Paul Hendy’s warm play The Last Laugh (Assembly, George Square, ★★★★✩), which imagines an encounter between three great names of 20th-century comedy.
The funnymen reminisce about other greats, and a comic’s worst nightmare: dying on stage when a gag fails.
But we know Cooper (Damian Williams) actually died on stage, while Morecambe (Bob Golding) collapsed backstage and later expired.
The banter is affectionate but the comics, being comics, are constantly trying to outdo each other. Though the reflective Monkhouse (Simon Cartwright) is keen to credit the writers behind the jokes.
An affectionate study of the nature of comedy — and the perils of fame.
You may know Ivo Graham from his stand-up comedy, but Carousel (Assembly, George Square, ★★★★✩) is in the theatre section of the Fringe brochure. Maybe he thought reflections on death, regret and bad choices might be light on laughs, but this a beautifully crafted hour in which he describes growing into his own skin.
Former Taskmaster contestant Graham presents items he holds precious — a tiger-print onesie, a drawing by his young daughter — as he ruminates on the people in his life.
He’s hard on himself (‘the most highly evolved narcissist in the whole of the Edinburgh Fringe’ — a very competitive category) as he talks about becoming a father, the messy break-up with his partner, the deaths of his grandmother and a friend.
Carousel is sad and moving; and yet still produces some big laughs. It deserves a life beyond the Fringe.
VERONICA LEE
Sidi is whip smart with audience banter and surreal
Looking and sounding absolutely nothing like Gray, Sidi turns the political advisor into a gloriously thick Essex girl. (Emma Sidi is Sue Gray)
Emma Sidi Is Sue Gray (Pleasance Courtyard, ★★★★✩) is a brilliantly gratuitous send-up of Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff and author of the Partygate report.
Looking and sounding absolutely nothing like Gray, Sidi turns the political advisor into a gloriously thick Essex girl. Cabinet Secretary Simon Case is an ‘absolute legend’, Philip Hammond is ‘gorgeous’ and Starmer is ‘dripping in rizz’. Sidi is whip smart with audience banter and surreal, too.
PATRICK MARMION
All three shows end on Sunday.
