AUSTENTATIOUS To 28 March.
London.
AUSTENTATIONS
music and lyrics by Matt Board and Joe Slabe book by Matt Board, Jane Caplow, Kate Galvin, Luisa Hinchliff and Joe Slabe.
Landor Theatre 70 Landor Road SW9 9PH To 28 March 2009.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sunday 3pm.
Runs 2hr 25 min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7737 7276.
www.landortheatre.co.uk
Review: Geoff Ambler 6 March 2009.
A riotous evening of highly professional am-dram. Pride and Prejudice as Austen intended. Probably.
Following an amateur theatre company staging a new adaptation of Pride and Prejudice with some new company members and their new young director, Austentatious brings together some well-observed and seriously hilarious writing, delightful and comical music and a truly remarkable real cast from which real director Lotte Wakeham crafts one of the most memorable and entertaining shows around.
An ode to the Stage Manager Austentatious praises the role of this overlooked hero of the backstage, and opening with ,I Manage,, SM Sam arrives, a lonely, melancholic professional in a world beset by egos and fools. Director Dominic (Ilan Goodman), "so New School I’m still a hole in the ground," is self-indulgent, pretentious and arrogant, indeed every actor's nightmare; His girlfriend Emily (Fem Belling), cast as the lead, is also the show's writer and tries to introduce pirates, clog dancing and 2nd Street into proceedings.
Austentatious starts on a high and never slows down. Culminating with the show within the show, the Austen play is one of the finest, funniest pieces of musical farce I’ve seen. The situations that had been intricately set up in the previous scenes are delivered with finesse. Simon Lipkins’s pothead Blake couples unerring comic timing with periodic mania; Fem Belling and Ilan Goodman are magnificent as the incompetent, bickering creatives and Cassidy Janson, as put upon Sam, takes over as my new favourite actress, with a joyous performance among a cast of calibre.
Leafing through the programme I noticed the long list of writers Austentatious boasts. More than three is pushing it and five, surely a very bad sign. However ... Austentatious was the best night out I have had in a theatre for a very long time and I have seen some big budget and much lauded shows recently. I laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks then laughed some more. Rarely does a show leave the band rolling around with the sheer hilarity of the event and the ostentatious new musical at Clapham’s Landor achieved that in its final scenes. Make a bee line for The Landor; they’ve done it again.
Sam: Cassidy Janson.
Emily: Fem Belling.
David: Richard Meek.
Lauren: Lucy Mills.
Jessica: Jenna Boyd.
Blake: Simon Lipkin.
Dominic: Ilan Goodman.
Director: Lotte Wakeham.
Designer: Sophie Mosberger.
Musical Director: Chris Mundy.
Choreographer: Tim Jackson.
2009-03-08 23:42:15