Fitzrovia Radio Hour

The Fitzrovia Radio Hour combines two of my obsessions, theatre and all things vintage. The troupe of writer-performers stage original 1940s-style  radio shows which are performed as if being broadcast live, accompanied by riotously funny sound effects using household implements and otherwise mundane items, creatively deployed... the banging and squelching of cabbages and watermelons simulate the bloody and gory end of one character's life while a melody of small jars and pots accurately convey the (rather inept as it turns out) playing of a game of pool. the ways and means of making the sounds are just as entertaining as the plays themselves. Not to feel left out, the audience are invited to 'cheer' and 'educatedly mumble' etc to enhance the all round atmosphere of the performances. 

Pastiche, parody, whatever, the three plays that are performed during the 75 minute show (each read in two parts, and broken up by supposed adverts of the period), hilariously send up the more un-PC and preposterous elements of 1940s attitudes and views on romance, adventure, and world events. In one play, poor Frank the Leeds lathe worker comes to a sticky end because he 'should have known his place', while in another, during a feisty hunt for treasure in the backwaters of Europe, fey Nazis frolic about, before getting their just, and brutal comeuppance.

An utter delight from beginning to end.

The Firzrovia radio Hour runs until 5 Feb at The Trafalgar Studios, tickets £15. 

Party

I can't remember when i guffawed with such uncontrolled fervour (well, during a play, film, book or at anything on the TV, certainly) as when i was watching Tom Basden's Party, a play about 5 students gathered in a potting shed to set up a political party - albeit one with no name, no policies, no beliefs or manifesto, but a great deal of personal ambition and faith in the grand objectives: change the world (never mind to what)! China - for or against it? Is 'them' offensive? There's internal politics by the bucket load, though, if nothing else.

Right on, petulant, megalomaniac, flighty - each of these founding party members is thrown into sharp relief by the presence of Duncan, the new and fifth member who has unwittingly been drawn into the party to create an uneven voting number, and whose father handily owns a printing press, but who himself mistakenly believes he's come for a celebratory party rather than a political party, and persistently asks for cake.

It's less of a biting political satire than a farcical one, but it's no less effective for that, and the moments of physical comedy - a leg flung out, water being rigorously poured, the eye rollings and hand movements of a fastidious, but bafflingly ignorant, party member (a quasi Mrs Malaprop transposed to a contemporary political environment) - are brilliantly milked for all they are worth.

Sadly the run is over, but it's being adapted for radio, which'll definitely be worth tuning into.