You have a final chance next week to catch the last weekend of Celebrate, part of Artists Open House 2016, at Oxford Street Studio, Venue 16 on the Beyond The Level Trail.
Artists exhibiting include:
♦ Nick Ford: Metallic Photographic Prints
♦ Pat Poore: Handmade Greeting Cards
♦ David J Lilly: Turned Wooden Nest Boxes and Bowls
♦ Caroline Marsland: Encaustic and Painting
♦ Carol Cleveland: Acrylic and Watercolour Painting
♦ Judy Alexander: Encaustic Painting
♦ John Nutley: Photography
♦ Tina Stiles: Gouache and Acrylic Painting
Event: Celebrate!
Where: Oxford Street Studios, 19 Oxford Street, Brighton
Debuting in Brighton following a critically acclaimed run at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe, ‘Madame Señorita: ¿Who are you?’ is the result of thirty raucous late-night improvised shows at Edinburgh. Now, with the best material chosen this is the result – a riot of a show involving Spanish ghosts, housewives and Rock ‘n Roll.
With her slightly cruel but utterly engaging series of nutty characters who ran the gamut of emotions from & to % and back again, Madame Señorita is not scared of looking or being stupid, and this wonderful clash of Spanish theatrical styles and culture and a British fringe audience smashes into the wall, goes out the other side with Madame Señorita’s one foot on the steering wheel and the other up in the air describing arabesques from the walls of a Granadan Alcazar with her elegant dancers toes. You don’t get a moment to draw breath once she’s off, it’s full pelt and wonderfully funny.
Comedian Paula Valluerca is the unmitigated and unfiltered comedy genius behind Madame Señorita and she is wonderful on stage, not a moment is wasted and she flies from scary, to daft, to profound, to teasy, erotic, bonkers, threatening and heart breakingly sad in flashing bursts of surreal energy. She’s very Almodóvar and utterly Spanish in the ordinary being teased out and explored for the full emotional impact and that being a full color, full volume explosion of ommph! The audience loved her and it was a pleasure to watch such an essentially silly show have such a deep affect on people, they were buzzing when they left. The show is clowning at it’s simplest, which is often a wonderfully dark and surreal experience and was created from the material produced during a longer run of improv nights in Edinburgh Festival
It was curious to watch a show rooted in improvisation and with a performer so close to her spontaneous creative roots be so stern and unwelcoming of any deviation from her set script, which didn’t detract from the quality of the show in the slightest but did jar a touch. In an hour the need to keep on track must be adhered to for the sake of narrative tension.
Valluerca managed the raucous fringe audience well, charming everyone with just a hint of brooding loco’Iberian menace behind those flashing eyes. She reminded me of the crazy sister of my Spanish Ex, who also had that wonderfully Spanish mix of dark and light so compounded in the Spanish soul, like Goya eating candy floss of getting your face sliced by las Meninas, Madame Señorita is disturbing & brilliant and will stay with you after the laughter has faded.
If you like your Fringe off the wall, funny and downright bonkers then Madame Señorita is the show for you. The Pink Fringe continues to hold the spirit of the festival in it’s perfectly turned out hands and is probably the best part of the whole swollen Brighton festival.
Written by Jack Stigner
Puppets by Annie Brooks of Colossal Crumbs
Design by Ulysses Blac
A man explains the nature of the theatre to his daughter in the 17th century and the audience gamble with puppets in the 21st century is how the show was described. Instead we got a wonderfully fresh production about Tudor theatre and entertainment without a single name check for You Know Who, this 400th anniversary year of all things Bardy. It was a seriously engaging fun and electric performance that changed from improvised audience participation, serious reflection on the nature of cruelty, violence and harm in the name of entertainment, some touching sweet puppetry and an utterly bizarre dénouement that ended up with us being plunged into a bear pit re-enacted with audience members a huge bear and some rather menacing undertones. Foul Play Productions, winners of the Brighton Fringe ‘Best Outdoor Event’ 2014, return to the Festival with a wining but bloody tale of bards, barks and bears.
Foul play use a combination of styles; comedy, serious acting, clowning and crowd engaging skills to pull the audience together into the ‘bear space’ and their deft handling of some of the more robust audience participation was a pleasure to witness, always kind, with a hint of direction. This company knows how to pull the best experience from both venue and audience and it’s a treat to go out and see such a sharply written, well acted and funny show with such a gory, shocking punch at the end.
That ending (which I won’t reveal as it’s a big part of the experience and possibly changed with the performance on the night) was emotionally charged leaving us pondering on what we had seen, wanting more and wandering out into the evening feeling slightly repulsed by the whole concept of entertainment and it’s visceral relationship with cruelty both historically, as portrayed on the stage, and currently in it’s many forms of film and TV violence and harm and what that therefore makes us, the audience, for both facilitating, desiring and consuming it.
Thought proving and funny, in equal measure and never fully tipping from one to the other, a high wire of narrative balancing which is not an easy mix but one which Fouplay produce with verve, style and very funny and engaging performers. Great fun.
Recommended.
Till June 2
For more information or to book tickets, click here:
I saw Briefs last time it was in Brighton a few years ago and loved it. It was fun and warm-hearted and featured some incredibly handsome men in pants. On the whole it’s very entertaining, but on second acquaintance a few cracks are starting to show.
Shivanna has a great presence as the Mistress of Ceremonies, but a lot of her material hasn’t changed. Which would be fine if the routine was perhaps a bit sharper. Of course this is pure personal preference but I tend to switch off when someone is doing acrobatics involving a hula hoop. Unless it’s on fire in which case I’m awestruck.
But the good stuff easily makes up for any longueurs. Evil Monkey Man is still a reliably rampant id, violating bananas and audience members with maniacal glee.
The Naughty Schoolboy routine – it’s not quite as sinister as it sounds – perfectly balances innocence and eroticism which is surely the very heart of burlesque. Or, as I think we have to call it, boylesque. The Dog Sketch – it has a denouement more shocking than even The Sixth Sense – reliably produces shrieks from anyone who doesn’t know its awful twist.
There’s some astounding displays of skill. Monkey Man’s act where he does a routine with an incendiary hula hoop is really impressive – he seems to be constantly millimetres away from some pretty serious singeing. Though having another act with a non-flaming hoop appear later in the show results in an inevitable feeling of anticlimax.
This time round my impression was of a brilliant hour trapped in a ninety-minute show. Though if you haven’t seen it before you’ll almost certainly have a blast.
Continues at Republic, Madeira Drive until June 3.
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