By Louise
Link: https://www.stream.theatre/season/164
Available on demand until 14th July
New musicals tend to focus on young people including Six, & Juliet, Waitress and lots of the musicals we’ve watched during lockdown. The musicals are usually about young people and they usually fall in love.
By Sophie
Link: https://www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/show-homepage/preludes-in-concert
Available until: Livestreams on Saturday 8th May at 3.15pm and 7.45pm. The show remains available for a couple of hours after broadcast.
Plays about composers have a habit of being exceptional. The first I recall was a production of the play Beethoven’s Tenth at the Watford Palace, at a time when I was much too young to appreciate the nuances of the work but old enough to believe the leading actor was the real Beethoven. Later, I saw brilliant productions of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus at the Old Vic and National Theatres, with two very different but excellent Mozarts in Michael Sheen and Adam Gillen, joined by two equally brilliant Salieris in David Suchet and Lucian Msamati. (I probably had entirely the opposite experience to most people in my delight at discovering that “Hercule Poirot is played by Salieri!” and am now very excited by Google’s suggestion that ‘the real Beethoven’ was played by another Poirot, Peter Ustinov, who also wrote Beethoven’s Tenth.)
By Cal
Link: https://www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/show-homepage/tarantula
Available until: Livestreams on 3.15pm and 7.45pm on Saturday 1st May. Although advertised as livestreams, they are available for a few hours after the event. A lot of Southwark Playhouse shows are made available on demand after the event so if you do read this after Saturday, it might be worth checking the Southwark Playhouse and Stream Theatre sites to see if it has been made available, but don’t just assume that will be the case – grab the opportunity to see it now if you can.
Philip Ridley has kept us all brilliantly-entertained throughout lockdown, first with his The Beast Will Rise series and then with The Poltergeist, which was so good, I watched it twice – and there isn’t a lot of room in my online theatre schedule to watch things twice. Not forgetting the small matter of university taking up my time.
By Emma
Link: https://www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/show-homepage/nine-experiments-to-change-the-world
Available until: 22nd April
Nine Experiments to Change the World is a Zoom play which was written (apart from the bits by Shakespeare, Tony Kushner and maybe other people I didn’t notice) and performed by the Southwark Playhouse Young Company.
Link: https://www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/future-voices
Available until: Unknown
I do like a bit of murder. Not personally, no-one’s actually murdered me yet, though I think a few people have thought about it. Not in a bad way. Just an ‘Aashiq is so annoying’ way. But on a psychological level, the subject is really fascinating. There are so many different types of murder and reasons for murder and so many different ways of telling the stories.
By Aashiq
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hENM4sMGZbU
Available until: Unknown
Just a reminder that Future Voices is a series of plays written by young people. I don't give star ratings because I don't want to compare them with the other Future Voices plays. But the standard of writing is very high and if I did give stars, they would compare very favourably to plays by professional writers.
Babylon is set in a strange world. Rules are different. Names are different. There are two characters. One of them seems to have some understanding of what’s going on. The other has questions and wants to understand more about the world she lives in.
By Dave
Link: https://soundcloud.com/southwarkplayhouse/puffins-by-sophie-ellerby
Available until: Unknown
Puffins is all about regrets. You don’t go through life without amassing a few of them and it’s often when you reach an ending of some sort that you look back on these regrets and wish you’d done things a bit differently.
By Cal
Link: https://soundcloud.com/southwarkplayhouse/time-lapse-by-stewart-melto
Available until: Unknown
Time Lapse is the story of four sisters – Lucy, Angela, Minnie and Sophie. They’re very close. But they’re not all still alive. One of them has died.
The others are sad. Of course they are. They miss their sister. But they also don’t want to suffer as she did. They don’t want to die.
By Tommy
Link: https://soundcloud.com/southwarkplayhouse/red-tide-by-justina-kehinde
Available until: Unknown
Southwark Playhouse’s Plays For Today series, which I believe is written and performed by members of the Southwark Elders Company, has encompassed a wide variety of subjects. Although there has been a strong focus on family relationships, the stories told have been very different.
By Louise
Link: https://www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/livestream/brother
Available until: Remaining performances on 6th March at 3.15pm and 7.45pm. It’s possible the musical might become available for livestream in the future.
Southwark Playhouse have been really wonderful during the pandemic. Most theatres haven’t been able to put on performances, which is completely understandable, but that means the fact Southwark Playhouse have done so much is like a miracle. I think they’ve done six live performances which we’ve reviewed and probably others before we started reviewing. They’ve also managed to run their Future Voices scheme and put the finished works online and now they’ve started uploading the Southwark Elders Company’s work as audio dramas.
By Emma
Link: https://soundcloud.com/southwarkplayhouse/melancholy-by-abraham-adeyemi
Available until: Unknown
A lot of plays especially modern ones have a really big and clever idea which you’re supposed to figure out or some kind of really major issue which is really important. I think these plays are really enjoyable too and they’re a great way of getting people to think about the important things in the world. But sometimes you don’t want to use your brain in order to understand the story. Sometimes you just want to enjoy the play and let your brain kind of figure things out in the background.
By Cal
Link: https://www.stream.theatre/season/25
Available until: Livestreams Monday-Saturday at 7pm, with matinées on Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday at 2.30. Final performance Sunday 14th March.
Stream Theatre has come such a long way since its first weeks of concerts in the London Coliseum. They’ve progressed from streaming concerts to full-scale musicals and plays and it’s a great opportunity to see shows that are completely new, whether it’s a show that (unless I missed it) hasn’t made it to the UK yet, hasn’t been performed in the UK for a long time or is a very new musical.
By Dave
Link: https://soundcloud.com/southwarkplayhouse/how-to-kill-your-mother-by-georgia-green
Available until: Unknown
As you get older, even when you’re actually quite young to anyone who’s not a twelve year old girl (who will give me the most wonderful eye-roll if she deigns to read this, just wait till you hit forty, young lady), it does sometimes happen that people show you a bit less respect. They act like you’ve lost your marbles when they’re actually all neatly in the box on the shelf. They act like your opinion doesn’t matter so much because you don’t know what you want, anyway. It’s sad and wrong. This incredible play demonstrates in all sorts of ways how wrong it is and how the older generations are actually kind of brilliant.
By Cal
Link: https://www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/show/public-domain £15
Available until: Livestreams on 16th
January at 3.15pm and 7.45pm
There’s not much privacy around
nowadays. Everyone is expected to have social media profiles. Twitter,
Instagram, Facebook, snapchat, TikTok… But it’s not just about being a member
of the site; you’re expected to produce content too. Personal content. This
might be ignored by absolutely everyone or you might be attacked for posting
it, but it’s still expected.
By Aashiq
Link: https://www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/future-voices
Available until: Unknown
On a surface level, this is an
enjoyable play which a lot of people can identify with. Although it is about
adolescents taking exams and we tend not to do that anymore after we finish our
education, I’m sure it’s something everyone from (currently) Year 13 and older
remembers and there are other aspects of the play that don’t go away just
because we’re grown up.
By Dave
Link: https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/show/stay-awake-jake
Available until: Livestreams on 19th
December at 3.15pm (captioned) and 7.45pm.
The current situation is a great
opportunity for people to explore the idea of one-person musicals. Until now
they haven’t really been an option as one-person musicals tend to be a bit
short for a full evening at a theatre but they work online. Six (while
obviously not being a one-person musical) is an obvious exception to the rule
about short musicals, I think it’s only 70 minutes and yet people are very
happy to pay the highest prices in the West End. But you really need to have a
hit on your hands before you think about asking people to go all the way to
London just for an hour.
By Aashiq
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niM7VCUePus
Available until: Unknown
This is another really incredible play
from a young writer. It’s hard to know what to say about it. It feels like writer
Kieran Anderson has taken away my ability to speak and nobody does that. Plenty
of people wish they could, but not many people manage it.
By Aashiq
Link: https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/show/the-fabulist-fox-sister/#schedule
Available until: Further livestreams
on Saturday 5th December at 3.15pm and 7.45pm
Okay, you have got me at a Very Bad
Time and I shouldn’t even be writing reviews in my delicate condition (oh, grow
up! Of course I’m not pregnant. Only women, non-binary people and trans men can
get pregnant and even then, it’s not all of them. And if anyone even thinks
about saying obviously I’m not pregnant as I’m clearly having my monthly
moment, you can just leave my presence forthwith. Or some such phrasing.) So I
can’t promise to be my usual delightful self. (My husband is being unacceptable.
We all make mistakes, but he hasn’t so much as bought me a handbag to make up
for it. And he keeps asking what he’s done. Am I expected to tell him everything?)
By Imogen
Link: https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/show/fiver-the-concert/#schedule £15
Available until: There are livestreams
on Saturday 28th November at 3.15pm and 7.45pm. It seems to be
available for a while after the show too so you don’t have to watch it
completely live and you can pause it.
Fiver is a great show because the star is a member
of the audience! At the start of the show, Alex James Ellison invites an
audience member onstage and grinds against them till they give him a £5 note. I
wonder how successful that is. I mean he is so hot, some people might hold out
on him all night and only admit right at the end that they don’t even have a
fiver. I mean not many people do. It’s all plastic nowadays. Cash isn’t even
legal right now in some places.
By Aashiq
Link: https://www.stream.theatre/home
£18 +£3 booking fee
Available until: Further livestreams
on Friday 27th November at 7.30pm, Saturday 28th November
at 2.30pm and 7.30pm, and Sunday 29th November at 5pm.
The Last Five Years is a great musical
for lockdown. So great, it’s been done twice. A filmed version with Lauren
Samuels and Danny Becker, both filming their own section of the music. (And
they were wonderful. I absolutely adore Lauren and Danny. They could probably
sing one of Donald Trump’s speeches and I’d still love them. Well, probably. If
I put them on mute, anyway.) And now a filmed version of Southwark Playhouse’s
staged production, starring Molly Lynch and Oli Higginson.
