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      Shirley Henderson: ‘I start off thinking: ‘How will I ever be able to do this?’

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 08:00 · 1 minute

    The Harry Potter and Bridget Jones star is a dazzlingly versatile performer, with a string of Michael Winterbottom films under her belt, as well as Star Wars, TV’s Happy Valley and an Olivier award. She explains how she keeps on top of it all

    It is easy to feel protective of Shirley Henderson on this gloomy winter afternoon. Is she warm enough? Does she want to put the heating on? “Aye, I’m OK,” she says from her home in Fife, a few strands of chestnut hair falling over her glasses as she huddles close to the laptop. “It’s a wee bit blowy out. But I’m at the age where you can get too warm, so I’m all right.” Her giggle is helium-high: the sort of sound you want to trap, like in one of those toy moo boxes, so that you can play it when you’re down in the dumps. Hearing Henderson laugh, or say “Sorry darlin’?” when she hasn’t quite heard your question makes you feel as if you’ve been cuddled.

    Her allusion to the menopause, though, takes a moment to sink in. Though 58, she looks barely old enough to be online without parental controls. (No suspension of disbelief was required when she played a mother who dresses as her own adolescent daughter to sit an exam in May Contain Nuts .) Henderson came to prominence in the 1990s as one of the UK’s most probing, unpredictable character actors. After being spattered with excrement in Trainspotting, she won pivotal roles in two masterpieces: she was a soprano pining for her son in Mike Leigh’s Gilbert-and-Sullivan extravaganza Topsy-Turvy, and a feisty hairdresser smacking her lips at London life in the rhapsodic Wonderland . That was the first and best of her six collaborations with the director Michael Winterbottom , as well as the one which got her hooked on improvising.

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      The Lover/The Collection review – Pinter plays psychological games

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 16:10

    Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal, Bath
    Bourgeois boredom is pervaded by fantasy and betrayal in these one-act plays with an astute cast including David Morrissey and Mathew Horne

    Truth, lies and fantasies in long-term relationships sit at the slippery centre of these one-act plays from the early 1960s, originally written by Harold Pinter for television. The couples – straight, bisexual, jealous and betraying – are not so much engaged in power battles as playing psychological games whose terms can suddenly change. They are enacted under Lindsay Posner’s slick direction, the nervy comedy drawn out by an astute cast, without being hammed up.

    The first is the simpler in its setup but more satisfying for its clever twist. A quintessential home counties couple, Sarah (Claudie Blakley) and Richard (David Morrissey), act out “adulterous” sexual fantasies with each other. The husband is the wife’s Lady Chatterley-style lover every afternoon. Then it becomes a delicious satire of bourgeois norms as they return to middle-class respectability by evening, talking about the hollyhocks in their garden.

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      The Odyssey: It’s a Really Really Really Long Journey review – Behold, Telemachus the mummy’s boy!

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 11:10

    Unicorn theatre, London
    Even a cyclops can get lonely, even a parent can make a mistake … this electric rendering of the classic is for all the family as Odysseus’s son takes centre stage

    ‘Wallet, phone, keys, sword,” Telemachus recites to himself as he checks his pockets. Backpack on, teddy tucked in and he’s ready to go, setting off on a grand quest to find his dad. What he doesn’t reckon on is finding himself along the way.

    At its highest points – of which there are many – Nina Segal’s new production of The Odyssey is electric. Made for families, Jennifer Tang’s direction delights in Naomi Hammerton’s fast-paced songs, whirling dances and moments of highly absurd dramatic images. It’s when the music slows and the pace falters that the tension drops away. But this cast approach everything with full hearts and bright smiles, so that every lag is soon followed by a new burst of energy and adventure.

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      Carmen review – stripped-back ballet focuses on the femicide

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 11:09 · 2 minutes

    Sadler’s Wells, London
    Given its UK premiere by English National Ballet, Johan Inger’s new version of the Bizet story cuts out cliche and embraces the bleakness – albeit at the expense of some passion

    Who is Carmen? A free-spirited lover, a woman bent on destruction, or a pragmatist using the only currency she has to get what she wants? In Johan Inger’s ballet, given its UK premiere by English National Ballet, it’s hard to say. She flirts (and more) with every man she passes, but merely for sport it seems. And it turns out this is not really Carmen’s ballet – she doesn’t even get a solo – and the story belongs to Don José (Rentaro Nakaaki), a man so tortured by the fantasy of a woman who will never love him that it leads him to murder her.

    The bleakness only comes later though. It all starts out much warmer, with Bizet’s perky overture and the lively impulse and attack of the choreography. You feel a rush of energy as the women arrive, storming the stage with ruffled dresses and self-possession. Swedish choreographer Inger gives us limbs angled like arrows; deep, squat plies in second position followed by bodies zipped up on the vertical. There’s levity too and lots of floorwork, all handled easily by ENB’s agile dancers – not en pointe, but on point.

    Inger likes a choreographic device, whether that’s the chorus-like figure of Francesca Velicu who stands outside the action, reflecting its hope and woe, or the ominous gang of black-clad and masked figures who sometimes manipulate the players. Among the various lovers Carmen (Minju Kang) takes, Erik Woolhouse’s Torero, soloing in front of a bank of mirrors in a sequinned bolero, might be her true match in the narcissist stakes. Woolhouse is good, hamming it up and throwing his body into the deep curves of the choreography.

    The piece uses Rodion Shchedrin’s 1960s reboot of the Bizet score, with moody additions by Spanish composer Marc Alvarez. The stripped-back designs shift into darkness in tandem with the story, the Spanish cliches are cut out, and so is the passion. Inger’s is an interesting if emotionally hollow interpretation, focusing on Don José’s obsession and ruin. Inger’s intention was to explore violence against women, specifically men who kill their ex-partners, and there’s something in that. But perhaps we owe it to the woman in question to make her a three-dimensional character.

    • At Sadler’s Wells, London , until 6 April

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      MJ the Musical review – sterilised moonwalk through the King of Pop’s life

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 2 days ago - 23:00 · 1 minute

    Prince Edward theatre, London
    The jukebox musical has gravity defying dancing and all the megahits, but it’s hard to ignore the glaringly unpleasant biographical absence

    ‘I want to keep this about my music,” says Michael Jackson in MJ the Musical. No surprise there. The musical, set during the rehearsal period of the Dangerous world tour in 1992 – coincidentally a year before any sexual allegations were made against him – seems to wipe away almost all the scandal that surrounded Jackson. Of course, it has moonwalks, one megahit after another and years’ worth of biography, but there’s a glaringly unpleasant absence. MJ the Musical is a sterilised swirl through the life of the King of Pop, but in reality, it is no black or white tale.

    A musical recounting Jackson’s fame was always going to face an awkward challenge. First, there is the issue that every jukebox musical encounters: how to squeeze well-known songs into a succinct narrative? Then there is the itch to say something fresh about a figure who was a global phenomenon, yet also notoriously enigmatic. But these problems pale in comparison to the issue of Jackson’s own legacy. He was always a man of mystery and a deeply controversial one at that. Since the harrowing 2019 HBO documentary Leaving Neverland , it is hard to ignore the repeated allegations of child sexual abuse.

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      The secret life of Paul O’Grady – by his friends: ‘His number’s still saved in my phone. I can’t delete it’

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 2 days ago - 10:00 · 1 minute

    He rose to fame as foul-mouthed drag star, Lily Savage, then abandoned the wig and became a national treasure. Friends including Sandi Toksvig, Amanda Holden and Gaby Roslin remember a true, terrific one-off

    ‘I can’t believe it’s been a year,” says Malcolm Prince, the producer of Paul O’Grady’s long-running Sunday teatime Radio 2 show. “Awful, awful, awful, awful. It’s been such a very difficult year. I’m embarrassed to say how tricky it’s been.”

    O’Grady’s death on 28 March 2023 , from sudden cardiac arrhythmia, came as a shock to the world. For decades, he had achieved the rare feat of presenting himself to the public as he truly was: funny, sharp, outspoken and compassionate in roughly equal measure. To some, he was best known as a comedian, to others a gameshow host, or an animal lover, or a political firebrand, or an LGBTQ+ pioneer. O’Grady’s appeal was so broad that people argued about what his legacy should be after he died; even ITV’s big Good Friday show this year, a documentary entitled The Life and Death of Lily Savage, can’t begin to contain the multitudes in O’Grady’s life, instead choosing to focus on the years he spent in drag.

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      The schoolday I’ll never forget: ‘I staged a play and caused a riot’

      Arwa Mahdawi · news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 2 September, 2021 - 05:00 · 1 minute

    It was a play about the murder of the headteacher. What could possibly go wrong? Then an ill-considered marketing plan caused the crowd to erupt

    You know those annoying kids who are good at everything? They are athletic, they are musical, they get the lead role in the school play, everyone loves them? Well, I was not one of those kids. I did well academically but possessed no other discernible talents. The highlight of my athletic career may have been when I came third in a sports day egg-and-spoon race. As for music, I was so challenged that I was once asked to lip-sync the recorder during a school concert. The ignominy of this left me with a burning hatred of the recorder – a cursed instrument – that I carry with me to this day.

    Despite this lack of stage skills, I did harbour some frustrated thespian ambitions. Luckily for the 10-year-old me, my primary school had a progressive new headteacher, Mr Cooper, who was very enthusiastic about encouraging creativity. I had a little gang of friends who liked to write stories and one day we asked the headteacher if we could put on a play in the school hall during lunchtime. There would be a 10p suggested donation and all the money would go to a charity for sick horses. He was thrilled by our initiative. He didn’t even seem to mind that the play, a tragi-comedy, was called The Murder of Mr Cooper.

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