The things we do for love… America the Beautiful (2026), Kings Head Theatre

Liam Jedele and Borris Anthony York (credit Ross Kernahan)

LaBute refuses comfort… That willingness to sit inside discomfort is what makes the work so compelling.

Borris Anthony York

"America the Beautiful" is a patriotic song first published on 4^th July 1895 with lyrics written by Katharine Lee Bates and music composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward at Grace Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey, though the two never met. Together they created a song for the ages and one that means something different to every age as the shifting signifiers of American Beauty coagulate into a murderous slop.

Oh sorry, that’s just my take but, to the point, what to make of one of the USA’s finest playwrights Neil LaBute, epic nine-scenario cycle addressing his homeland, love and persuasion in the 2020s? Tonight we saw the first of the triptych with three of these scenarios presented at the Kings Head all different in tone and building a bigger picture that forms itself in your mind as you dash for Kings Cross after realising that Angel Station is closed.

As played by various combinations of just four actors: Liam Jedele, Borris Anthony York, Anna María and Maya-Nika Bewley there is so much thinking required to map the emotional content of three widely different situations and never has the personal being so political in terms of the wider meaning in this, the second week of the Third Gulf War or, as might be said, WWIII.

The first sequence sees Liam Jedele as an anxious and conflicted man aiming to commit murder at the behest of a man Borris Anthony York whom he desires and wants to commit to a life together. Borris plays his paramour as an almost light-hearted and playful guy who winds his uptight boyfriend up with forgetting his key card, buying Danish pastries and turning up with a strict no contact clause in their relationship.

His character is about to marry a rich older man and, sizeable insurance policies being what they are, he can bear the repulsive sexual contact just long enough to get married before sending his new groom to his death at the hands of his younger lover. We’re just not sure, the longer they talk, if things will work out, Liam’s character apparently battling his own disgust at his sexuality and winding himself up to do the dead so that he can be with his love.

Any relationship between the flirtatious and ultimately faithless rulers of certain states and the War-maker in Chief are purely coincidental.

Borris Anthony York (credit Ross Kernahan)

Talking of which, Borris Anthony York makes a quick change of character and posture as his morphs into an American soldier on trial for the apparent killing of his wife, her lover and several others… This is the fanatic deceived by his own lack of logic – perhaps little reason to believe in his wife’s fidelity whilst also blaming her for what he “had” to do… cognitive dissonance in the face of so many dead.

Women have a “power”… his wife almost bade him do it and he had no rational explanation for his vengeful ferocity. It’s only a short leap to imagine the ICE agent’s decision to execute US citizens in the streets for simply getting in his way or for being “unfaithful” to a common culture someone had convinced him was shared widely. America is Ugly in different ways as it is beautiful: the kill switch is in the hands of the beholder.

Then last we saw either the greatest saleswoman in the world or the sweetest lover as Anna María works to persuade Maya-Nika Bewley that they should be lovers by firstly sleeping with her faithless boyfriend and then telling the other woman that she had to do it as a chance encounter had left her instantly smitten and convinced that she was the love of her live.

Taken at face value this is a sweet story but nothing is clearly as it seems in any of these acts, and given that there are six more to come, one should reserve judgement even as new possibilities emerge the more you think about what has just transpired.

It’s an exercise in persuasion and logic and, given this can be as much technique as anything else you’re not quite so sure that this is a love match or a power play? Have we not seen sexual power – or just force of personality – used to make people act against their will?

Anna María and Maya-Nika Bewley credit Ross Kernahan

IThankYouTheatre verdict: I’m reeling on the train post show and can only throw four big stars back in the play’s direction. It’s daring and engaging and so well performed by the four leads who make the most of LaBute’s outstanding words. ****

These are actors we will want to see more of and the direction from Artistic Director of Greenwich Theatre James Haddrell is outstanding creating another world just yards away from the comforts of Upper Street.

The first two chapters play at the King’s Head until 21^st March and then transfer to the Greenwich Theatre from 31^st March to 4^th April.

Do not miss these intimate and impactful shows, you won’t stop thinking about them for days…

 

History Men... The Gang of Three, King’s Head Theatre

 

Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about Sunny Jim, far too common to be a leader…

It’s now a truism that all political lives end in failure although over recent years we’ve seen more than enough profiting healthily in that state but in the midst of that life we are always so close to death with the knife hovering close to the backs of even the best of friends.

Events open with The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again as we join old Oxford and political allies Anthony Crossland (Alan Cox) and Roy Jenkins (Hywel Morgan) meeting at the latter’s house after he has just resigned, on principal, as Labour Party Deputy Leader. Tony senses an opportunity here and wants Roy to support his bid to take over in that position but, as we are to discover, these two have much that divides them as well as the vast amount they have in common. 

Robert Khan and Tom Saliinsky’s new political drama gets us inside the head of these key players at a time of possibility and danger for the Labour Party. Then they had failed to get a third term for Harold Wilson as Ted Heath took the Tories to victory and then, against the odds, they bounced back in 1974 with a win that Jenkins describes as both unlikely and unlucky: Labour was left with an economic time-bomb as well as unruly industrial relations and a Conservative Party starting to define itself around the monetarist purity of Mrs Margaret Thatcher.

The play gets to grips with the anxieties at the heart of Labour’s top team as three moderates fail to form an alliance that might have fended off Thatcher and the subsequent splintering of the party with Jenkin’s departure to form the Social Democratic Party with Roy Rogers, Shirley Williams and David Owen, as the left wing took over with the Tony Benn supporting Michael Foot into power leaving the party in opposition for the longest time since its 1945 landslide.

Hywell Morgan and Alan Cox - photographer Manuel Harlan

Do we tend to lionise former politicians or do we just long for a time when they were more driven by principals and less concerned with sound bites and social media. Writing in the programme, Steve Richards, explains the conditions of the time which were much more conducive to a broad church which allowed debate and lengthy careers to flourish with Jenkins, Healey and Crossland all having served in Wilson’s governments in the sixties and before that Gaitskell in opposition. Crossland’s book, The Future of Socialism (1956) is made the butt of a few jokes here – it’s a framework that supports analysis in any era… not out of date! – is still a key text for the likes of Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband. 

In the play the men are combative and friendly in moments that only occasionally hit the future nail on the head too hard… we’re subsumed in a time of more intellectual debate over possibilities that may never end – a polite civil war involving egos and views of Europe, nationalisation and the balance of payments. There’s love behind the barbs with Tony celebrating Roy’s legalisation of homosexuality and abortion: “you were the bespectacled Father of the Age of Aquarius!” – these men have achieved things but maybe they’re out of ideas when all they want is more power?

Thus, it is that these two friends and a third, from the year above them at Oxford, Dennis Healey (Colin Tierney) play games over the years as fortunes shift and the game slips away as the left with Benn and Foot seemingly making the deal their centrist colleagues couldn’t bring themselves to agree as the popular vote shifted decisively through The Winter of Discontent, and the book balancing resisted so forcibly by the Trade Unions.

The play makes light work of the history and, assumptions there may be aplenty, but they are informed and help to map out the chemistry that combined with circumstance to consign this Labour generation – 12 years in government out of the previous 16 – to opposition for the next 18. It’s not so much how it happened as who it happened to and the characterisations are rich of these three brilliant minds. I can’t see a Reeves, Streeting and Kendall version working quite so well… but then maybe all political lives are revived by the distancing of time?

Colin Tierney and Hywel Morgan - Photographer Manuel Harlan

In these days when there is no longer a “natural party of government”, we see the delusional certainties that make the trio miss out on history with Healey playing games with the IMF and his party and Jenkins driven by principle and privilege and Crossland perhaps wrong-footed by the gifts that came too easily.

IThankYou Theatre rating: **** The political theatre of the recent past makes for a gripping analysis of our politics today; history does not so much repeat itself as continue on the same lines evolving around the same issues and divisions with the added spite of social media and new forms of communication.

Alan Cox is a very plausible Tony Crosland full of charm and wit with his old Oxford edge over Jenkins still informing their relationship, a friendship somewhat deeper than I had imagined. Hywel Morgan’s “Woy” is a man of destiny yet still full of insecurity and a guile whilst Colin Tierney’s assured old Mertonian is the true heavyweight just lacking the charm and the destiny… perhaps all three together would have made the perfect leader?

Kirsty Patrick Ward directs and creates a compelling world of political intrigue, the potential and the quite desperation of ‘70s Britain only a few dozen metres below the streets of 21^st Century Islington former home of King Tony and the young man with the scruffy beard who used to hang on Tony Benn’s every word…

Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky have previously written the acclaimed play on Brexit, as well as other political works Coalition, Kingmaker and Impossible. Their attention to detail is fabulous and their wit hits home throughout, I look forward to Truss: How I Won the War!

The Gang of Three plays at the Kings Head Theatre until 1^st June and you can buy tickets directly from their website here!

All photographs by Manuel Harlan

Tale as old as time… Beauty and the Beast, Kings Head Theatre

Spot the cast from the mob! All photos by Nick Rutter

At one point two cast members chime “please don’t sue us Disney…” but it’s far too late for that! This is now the only true version of Beauty and the Beast and Disney can afford to over look their casting errors in the recent live action film.

This production puts the cheek back into tongue in cheek right from the get-go with a mime of Mickey in Steamboat Willie (fnar!) followed by a torch-lit shadow-puppet introduction from within a child’s canvas castle that must have literally cost pounds. It’s a pitch-perfect piss-take that treats its source material with such affection that you could scare call it beastly.

If anything, it restores the earthy heart of the fairy tale, the lust that goes with the love and the humble faults that all heroes must have – even in Disney. Beau (Jamie Mawson) is a handsome bookworm who longs for a better life away from his ordinary, illiterate little town… every plastic prince must escape from the tawdry to a higher level. His mother Maureen (Allie Munro) is an artist fond of “lesbian ceramics” who wants only for her son to meet a girl who loves Jane Austen as much as he and to exhibit at the Camembert Art Fair.

Jamie Mawson photo by Nick Rutter

But Beau is coveted by Chevonne (Katie Wells) an alpha female fond of hunting all round and specifically concerned with capturing this winsome fellow. In truth they’re ill-matched but she has eyes only for surface attraction and is in every respect so like a man oblivious to the loyalty from La Fou Fou (Allie Munro again).

The plot dances round the well-worn narrative playfully inserting overt commentary that everyone who grew up on VHS copies of the cartoon would now be old enough to appreciate. It’s bawdy but then everyone’s old enough to vote.

Maureen sets out for the Art Fair with her wares on their trusty steed, “bicyclette” but is ambushed by Lynx ending up imprisoned in a mysterious castle… Beau sets off to find her and ends up swapping places after meeting her captor the Beast (Robyn Grant). The Beast is really a princess who was bewitched by an itinerant and highly-judgemental magician (Aaron Dart) who cursed her to remain as a beast until and if she could ever find a man to love her for herself.

Tough task… but once Beau settles in he begins to realise that there’s more to this gal than horns, hooves and hair: she’s well read for a start and that is, you know, so important.

Allie Munro attacked by lynx on Bicyclette! Photo by Nick Rutter

The castle is also populated by talking house hold objects, a Clock, a Teapot and his daughter, a cup called Crack. They also sing a song about that awkward eating time between breakfast and lunch, “eat our brunch” … well, be their guest!

It’s looking very like a fairy tale and we know how its going to go but Chevonne has Maureen committed in an attempt to lure Beau to her lap and things get complicated…

Beauty and the Beast is a riot from start to finish and the audience is so much in on the joke as the King’s Head’s performance space is used to maximum impact. It’s a perfect seasonal treat for all those who secretly believe in fairy tales but who have a mortgage to pay and jobs to hold down… somewhere out there amongst all the beasts is our sweetheart! And he/she might well have a sense of humour!

The cast are a blur of madcap invention with Allie Munro at one point playing two characters almost at the same time either side of Katie Wells. There’s a terrific impersonation of the Pixar Lamp by Aaron Dart who also plays a mob with the aid of two brooms. Robyn Grant makes for a perfectly beastly heroine and sings as passionately on the matter of eggs as she does for her Beau. Jamie Mawson harmonises so well with his Beast and is soppily sincere throughout.

Jamie Mawson and Robyn Grant photo by Nick Rutter

The troupe is well drilled and clearly used to playing together as part of the Fat Rascal Theatre company. Fat Rascal Theatre strive to create fresh and funny feminist musical theatre and here they succeed emphatically well.

Robyn Grant wrote the book and lyrics with Daniel Elliot and the music was written by James Ringer-Beck and well performed on the night by Nicola Chang.

  

Beauty and the Beast runs at the Kings Head until 6^th January and if you’re looking for a more adult rendering of the classic tale with songs and humour then please don’t think twice - tickets available here. Male or female, in any combination, this story is indeed enduring… Disney won’t need to sue at all.

Ithankyou Theatre Rating: ****

Rebel without a pause? Wet Bread, Kings Head Theatre

Where are we now as waves of seemingly unconnected political shocks rock long-held certainties of the democratic process? As Adam Curtis says in Hyper-normalisation, “We live with the constant vaudeville of contradictory stories that makes it impossible for any real opposition to emerge because they can’t counter it with a coherent narrative…”

There’s plenty of fight but who do we take it to and do placards and principles count for anything when a self-motivated electorate swings violently form one protest vote to the next.

Written by BBC Trans Comedy Award Winner, Tom Glover, Wet Bread was inspired by the aftermath of the 2015 General Election when victory was snatched by David Cameron from the jaws of a hung parliament. Now, after Teresa May has engineered the exact reverse, things may be a little different but… for how long?

Morag Sims plays every character in this affecting and very funny show but mostly she is Adele, a young-ish Labour supporter who, well… is a dedicated follower of the protest of the moment.  She’s earnest about everything even if she never seems to quite follow through with steadfast resolve once the placards have been packed away. Unsurprisingly, Adele was based on people Glover knows in Brighton and, naturally, the play travelled very well to Islington – as you’d expect – with a lot of us laughing along with the jokes at our expense.

Morag Sims a woman of many parts!

It’s good to laugh as, along with wet bread “funny” is one of things we can all agree on and Morgan is not alone in thinking that this is something we should be doing more of.

Adele is not meant to represent all left-wingers though, just a particularly funny take on the type of person who finds protesting cathartic even if, in the opinion of many in the play, it achieves little or nothing. At one point, it seems as if the political battle is being compared with the physical battle Adele’s mother is having against cancer. She refuses to fight the disease because that way she can’t lose but there’s no way she’ll ever give in to it: a subtle but important distinction.

We can fight specific political narratives – such as they are – but we shouldn’t overlook the need to live and love and we shouldn’t forget the need to respect our fellow electorate: to paraphrase Evelyn Beatrice Hall you might not like what someone says but you must accept their right to say it, painful though that may be.

Staging a protest...

In the play Adele is constantly trying to live up to her left-wing principles only to be disappointed by the reality of friends who find her suffocatingly-distracted, working class neighbours in abusive relationships who don’t appreciate her platitudes and even the Scotsman, Richard, who she tries to help by offering him accommodation. Richard finds her condescending and compares her caffeine “addiction” with his own substance abuse…

But this relationship offers a chink of light at the end as he appreciates that she tried… so much so he gives her his sole possession, a broken foot spa!

One policemen reflects: “tofu types… they don’t actually change anything for all their noise….” But it’s hard to completely accept this after the last election and in the face of every successful revolutionary movement in history. 

The Beatles Revolution plays us out at the end but don’t forget there are two versions one with John saying, “count me out” and the other “count me out…in…” Some revolutionary moments are important not to miss.

As the country continues to batter itself to a social media standstill over “taking our country back” it’s important that protests are still made. The play’s message of Stop Fighting Just Love is that we should take politics more seriously. We need to follow through.

Morag Sims is quite amazing, playing literally dozens of characters and all of them convincingly well: so subtle in dialogue with herself and carefully demarcating each personality. Quite a feat and she gets the Alec Guiness award for theatrical flexibility!

The Sheer Drop company have produced a gem here and whilst Wet Bread played three dates at the Kings Head as part of Festival 47, I would urge you to catch this thought-provoking play when next it pops up. And watch out for Morag, for she is a sincerely impressive performer!

Ithankyou rating: ****