Lovestuck (Theatre Royal, Stratford East, London)
Verdict: A whiffy hit
Rating:
A whiffier, more toe-curling idea for a musical is hard to imagine.
For, yes, gentle reader, this one is about a real-life social media sensation from 2017, in which an unfortunate young woman, on a first date from hell, found herself trapped in a stranger's bathroom window, after attempting to dispose of a poop she had been unable to flush.
And yet, despite being in the very, very poorest taste, this is the maddest, funniest and best natured musicals I've seen since Titanique.
It takes up the tumbleweed love life of A&E nurse Lucy, who finds herself back in the flat of graphic designer Peter, grappling with his dysfunctional lavvy and antique double glazing.
The bottom line: Callum Connolly spells it out for us, in the lavatorial comedy Lovestuck
And from this humiliating baseline James Cooper and Bryn Christopher have fashioned a surreal, schmaltzy, laugh out loud, disaster romcom.
Stepping in for an injured Jessica Boshier on the night I went was Ambra Caserotti: a gutsy, Linda Robson-ish comic actor whose hapless Lucy is persecuted for imperfection by the merciless social media influencer inside her head (‘My life is in pieces, thanks to my own faeces!').
Shane O'Riordan's Peter is a loveable Irish nerd — a graphic designer whose hobby is ‘larping'. Acting out characters from fantasy fiction, in costume, in case you're wondering (‘I've never shown anyone my sword on a first date before').
Bryn Christopher and Martin Batchelar's music is giddy, girl-and-boy-band, Eurovision kitsch.
Caught in a trap: Lucy (Jessica Boshier) gets stuck in a bathroom window on a dire first date
Chi-San Howard adds comic choreography, and the direction by Jamie Morton (creator of hit podcast My Dad Wrote A Porno) wraps it all up as a big smiley, primary coloured salute to the survivors of dating hell (basically everyone).
I predict it's destined for cult status.
Until July 12 (stratfordeast.com)
Showmanism (Hampstead Theatre, London)
Verdict: Theatre odyssey
Rating:
Showmanism is a play about acting. More precisely, it's performance art about the art of performance.
Put together by the extraordinary, ripped, sinuous, and cerebral actor Dickie Beau, it's also a meditation on the history of theatre since ancient times, pondering how as Shakespeare once said ‘all the world's a stage'. And adult video it's presented by splicing together interviews with all manner of thesp and theatrical authorities, including reverences Ian McKellen and Fiona Shaw.
But the twist is that Mr Beau then lip synchs or, as he prefers, ‘body synchs' with these edited interviews so that he appears to be possessed.
Every facial tic and flinch is registered, while performing mostly in his tattooed birthday suit — modesty preserved by a pair of brilliant white underpants. Perhaps it's just as well. The male appendage, McKellen warns, is the one part of a chap that can't act.
Rub a dub dub: Dickie Beau takes us on a journey through the history of theatre
Orbited by flickering tellies, with Yorick's skull to hand, alongside assorted props, lamps, and a bathtub containing an orange tree, it's a road trip not just through history, but also into the recesses of our collective unconscious.
The point about the ‘body synching' is to create a dissociation between mind and body, which Dickie sees as the origin of both anxiety and creativity.
And while that is very thought provoking, it makes for a very shaggy dog story in danger of vanishing up its own fundament (as it does at various points), despite those pants.
Besides, 90 minutes is too long for a gothically illustrated lecture, untroubled by an absorbing story.
Stripped down theatre: Beau in his thought-provoking (if overlong) one-man show
Less would have been more, here; 60 minutes ample.
Having said that, I am very glad that Dickie Beau exists, and I suspect that as well as being an excellent showman, he really is a shaman.
Showmanism runs at the Hampstead Theatre until July 19.
Celine Dion