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Day: May 11, 2019

‘La Voix’ returns to Eastbourne Hippodrome

Posted on by Contributor

“To describe La Voix purely as a singer would be like calling Picasso a decorator”….. Broadway Baby

FOLLOWING a hugely successful show in 2018, due to popular demand, La Voix will be returning to The Royal Hippodrome Theatre next week (Thursday, May 16).

Every generation has its own much-loved alternative diva and the 2010s are no exception. La Voix has taken the class and style of the heyday of variety and honed them beautifully into a top-end act tailor-made for contemporary audiences.

This exceptional show is packed with La Voix’s unique blend of comedy and live vocals all backed by a great live band. You won’t enjoy a more glamorous evening’s entertainment this side of Las Vegas.

“The show is super glamorous and the audience were mesmerised – Go along and see a Legend in the  making”….. West End Wilma

La Voix is best known for her show-stopping appearances on Britain’s Got Talent backed by The London Gay Big Band. Her final audition alone received 300,000 YouTube hits in the first 24 hours.

For the past decade she has been entertaining audiences on stage, screen and arenas around the world and has starred alongside some of the biggest names in show business including Mickey Rooney, Cilla Black, Bobby Davro, Pamela Anderson, Brigitte Nielson, Ruby Wax, David Gest and Miss Jason.

“A born entertainer”…..David Walliams

La Voix has appeared in music videos including; Katie Melua’s Call Off The Search, Billiam’s We are the Beautiful Ones and Attic Lights’ Bring You Down.

She impersonated Liza Minnelli and sang with David Gest on Channel 4’s The Friday Night Project, was a special guest to Spandau Ballet at the 02 Arena and performed for Princes William and Harry at their New Year’s Eve party on two consecutive years.

She made her film debut in 2016 opposite Julia Sawalha in Ab Fab The Movie and regularly presents La Voix Meets at London’s iconic Crazy Coqs in which she has interviewed celebrities including David Emanuel, Jennifer Saunders, Harriet Thorpe, Joanna Lumley, Dawn French and many, many more.

“La Voix is what Britain needs”….. Amanda Holden

Event: La Voix

Where: Royal Hippodrome Theatre, 106-114 Seaside Road, Eastbourne, BN21 3PF

When: Thursday, May 16

Time: 7.30pm

Cost: £22 – £24

To book tickets, click here:

Or telephone the Box Office: 01323 802020 

Fringe THEATRE REVIEW: Closer @The Rialto Theatre

Posted on by Brian Butler

“Tell me the truth. Without it, we’re animals” says 1 of the quartet of characters in Patrick Marber’s complex, dense, dark drama of marital and extra-marital sex and betrayal.

A CHANCE meeting involving a rescue from death by running over throws Dan (Jonathan Howlett) not a fatal attraction and relationship with Alice (Caitlin Cameron). She is a stripper, a wanderer, orphan. He is an obituary writer – what he calls “The Siberia of journalism.”

So Dan and Alice roll up to A & E with her injured leg and meet Dr Larry (Steve Chusak) a liar, cheat and philanderer.

Dan and Alice get together but her view on men is strange to say the least – “Men want a girl who looks like a boy” she claims.

And the play is full of such throw-away one liners from a master of language, worthy of his idol Pinter.

The episode ends and we fast forward – as we constantly do in this 2-Act piece – to meet the 4th character – photographer Anna (Lucy Laing) who is snapping Dan for the cover of his novel, which turns out to be all about his sexual exploits with Alice. You’re getting the idea? These 4 lives get constantly interwoven with dire results.

In a bizarre scene, Dan pretends to be Anna in a deeply sexual chat online with Dr Larry. It’s a set-up for Larry to meet Anna at an aquarium.

Fast forward again to Anna’s photo exhibition where she meets Alice again. Anna is now Larry’s girlfriend, and Dan is becoming deeply dissatisfied and trouble. In fact all 4 characters are deeply troubled and confused by their insatiable sexual appetites and constant dissatisfaction with what they’ve got in terms of partners.

Marber’s one-liners neatly sum up each twist in the tangled relationships. Dan tells Anna: “I cannot live without you.” Anna replies “You can; you do” Larry says Alice has “the moronic beauty of youth” and that he was in flares when she was in nappies.

Another one liner sums up: “Happiness is not enough; need is greater”. And Anna says to Dan
“Love bores you”. His reply is “No it disappoints me.”

And so the single sentence ripostes carry us nowhere: “Please don’t hate me – It’s easier than loving you.”

This early Marber piece struggles sometimes to escape from the Wildean avalanche of aphorisms and clever comments, but the piece is saved here by strong performances from all 4 actors.

The final scene sees a sort of reconciliation between 3 of the 4, and a startling revelation about the 4th. I won’t give it away.

Closer is a Pretty Villain production, directed by Lauren Varnfield, at the Rialto Theatre, as part of the Brighton Fringe. It ends Saturday May 11. The director will also play Moor’s murderer Myra Hindley at the Rialto Theatre from May 30.

To book tickets for tonights performance, click here:

Review by Brian Butler

Builder fined for unauthorised dropped kerb

Posted on by Besi

Brighton & Hove City Council makes first successful prosecution for an unauthorised dropped kerb crossing.

THE case against Jason Bennett and CCE Sussex Limited was heard at Brighton Magistrates Court on May 1, 2019. They faced five charges of making unauthorised dropped kerb crossings in Reading Road, Brighton contrary to the Highways Act 1980.

The prosecution came after council officials examined the five crossings and found that they were of sub-standard construction and had been created without the necessary permissions.

Mr Bennett, a former director of CCE Sussex Limited, pleaded guilty to all the charges in his absence relating to the unauthorised highway works.

CCE Sussex Limited of Horstead Keynes was also convicted in their absence. They were each ordered to pay a fine of £1000 for each of the five offences, together with £600 costs and £100 Victim Surcharge.

In addition, they were each ordered to pay £4301.52 of compensation to the council to cover the costs of correctly constructing the vehicle crossings.

Each defendant has 14 days in which to pay a total of £10,001.52 fines, costs and compensation.

Example of dropped kerb
Example of legal dropped kerb

Anyone can apply for a licence to build a vehicle crossover (dropped kerb) for access to their property but must meet the relevant criteria and safety standards.

 

Festival THEATRE REVIEW: Dead Dog in a Suitcase @Theatre Royal

Posted on by Brian Butler

John Gay’s Beggars Opera was an 18th century sensation – an opera about the lowest murkiest levels of English society, featuring the popular songs of the day.

SO it’s highly relevant to today’s world that the internationally known Kneehigh theatre group should have updated this tale of a murderous anti-hero to 2019. It’s high octane farce and physical theatre at its most exciting and dangerous – dragging us into a world of shady businessmen, pollution, corrupt politicians and powerful women.

On a soaring set of scaffolding, giant slides and staircases, the actor/musicians race through a complex story centering on a local mayoral election. When the sitting mayor and his dog are assassinated the scene is set for skullduggery of the lowest form.

As business tycoon Les Peachum, Martin Hyder is every inch the villain, driven by his manic feisty wife, a big lady dressed in leopard skin and furs, played delightfully by Rina Fatania.

Leading the fight for justice, Lucy Rivers as Widow Goodman is full-throated and no mean violinist – and indeed the only survivor in the final destructive climax (spoiler there).

Anti-hero Macheath, Dominic Marsh is a chavvy wide boy in teddy boy suit, red socks, Superman underpants and a tee-shirt showing the hangman’s noose – a noose which hovers above the stage throughout the performance.

If all the musical and scenic excitement wasn’t enough, there are skilfully manipulated puppets to entertain – the said dead dog, all the characters from a Punch and Judy show and gruesome cabbage patch babies – the offspring of one night stands by Macheath at the local night club.

Of course what Carl Grose has written along with composer Charles Hazlewood, is a modern morality tale, where Money Money Money is God and we hear the cast regularly lament “What’s the World Coming To?”

They provide no easy answers but rather a call to arms to fight evil, greed, oppression and hatred, yet it’s an equivocal message, as one of its chief proponents is the multi-murderer Macheath.

It’s a dilemma we take away and the power of this magical production will make us think if nothing else.

Dead Dog is part of Brighton Festival and plays at the Theatre Royal, Brighton until May 11.

Review by Brian Butler

Fringe THEATRE REVIEW: The Milkmans on his way @The Old Courtroom

Posted on by Brian Butler

Based on the ground-breaking novel of the same name, by David Rees, this coming of age gay love story starts in the small Cornish village of Bude.

IT’S 1979 and Ewan, 17-year-old son of the local milkman is struggling with his adolescence. He’s got a girl friend of sorts, played with a touching gentleness by Lucy Penrose.

But for Ewan, a chance masturbatory exchange with his best mate Leslie, confuses him. Of course he misreads the situation which leads to violence and even more confusion.

Bryan Moriarty is delightful throughout as the attractive teenager trying to find out his sexuality. For a long time he is unsure, but his eventual and inevitable move to London opens up his life.

In this pre-Aids era, there is no suggestion of monogamy or safe sex, and he parades through the usual gay club scene, and from  lover to lover.

It’s no easy passage. When he tells his parents he thinks he is gay, he is thrown out – his mother screaming “I wish you’d never been born”.  Ewan laments that his parents have nothing in common with him “They think you’re a carbon copy of them.. I didn’t want to disturb them,” he tells us.

As one of his sex encounters says: “We need someone to hug us and tell us it’s going to be ok.” Ewan confides in us “No-one could see the horrible mess that was inside.”

It’s highly potent that as the audience files in we are played an anti-gay speech by Margaret Thatcher on an increasingly annoying loop. But it’s important for young audiences to know how dreadful gay life could be in the 1970s and 80s, with the fear of gay bashing, imprisonment and social isolation.

We have come a long way and though this love story ends with gay marriage, recent events in English schools and the streets of Kemptown on our doorstep, show that the fight continues. But this adaptation by Kevin Kelly, directed by Tim McArthur teaches us not to forget the struggle is worth it and it’s confident message of hope is heart-warming.

There is no weak link in the talented cast of Lewis Brown, Robert Hook, David McNair, Claire Calverley and Martin Teall. As the black boyfriend Ewan marries tells us: “I didn’t choose to be gay; I just got lucky.”

Worth taking that thought home with you.

The show runs at the Old Courtroom Theatre, Church Street as part of Brighton Fringe, till May 12.

Review by Brian Butler

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