Ping! There’s a bell on the desk in Amsterdam. The kind of calling-for-immediate-attention bell that invites a sharp smack with palm or finger, and drives Basil Fawlty to the very verge of derangement. Ping! It’s a comedy device – an indicator of short-fuse entitlement, an enhancer of retro-farce chaos. It retains its comic tinge in Amsterdam, by Israeli playwright Maya Arad Yasur; which is … [Read more...]
Archives for September 2019
Propwatch: the photo album in Appropriate
In Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, her graphic memoir about her parents’ old age, the New Yorker cartoonist Ros Chast has some advice about hoarding. Don’t hold onto anything you don’t want your kids to have to sort through once you’re gone. In her case, plastic tchotchkes beyond number. In my case, look forward to old theatre programmes and a surprising quantity of wooden spoons. … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the kettle in The Doctor
Is a home without a kettle even a home? ‘Oh David, such a homemaker,’ sighed a visitor to my spartan university room, softened only by a kettle and the complete Arden Shakespeare. But the kettle was hospitality and self-care for a scaredy-cat student; even today it amplifies (and, on grouchy days, paves the way back towards) connection. A kettle is the first step towards home. In The Doctor – … [Read more...]