Keith P. McKenna

1 week ago | britishtheatreguide.info | Keith P. McKenna |Keith J. Mckenna

January 6, 2021, was a terrifying day for many people across the world as thousands marched on the Capitol Building in Washington. As elected politicians fled or hid in the building, the FBI estimated that a couple of thousand protesters entered the building. The performance company American Vicarious has created a game show around those events, with participants divided into either the blue police team or the red protester team.

1 week ago | britishtheatreguide.info | Keith P. McKenna |Keith J. Mckenna

The steel town of Workington in West Cumbria helped create the wealth of Britain, the railways, the homes and the businesses. The work was dangerous and not brilliantly paid, but workers collectively fought for basic standards. Unfortunately, the wealthy didn’t like unions and could find cheaper steel from places where union standards were lower. Never mind that transporting it across great distances spews more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; it made the wealthy richer.

1 week ago | britishtheatreguide.info | Keith P. McKenna |Keith J. Mckenna

Consumerism is the theme of the stand-up comedy See Primark and Die, taking us from a city supermarket to a shopophobia support group and dumpster-diving for free food. It begins with Claire Dowie, standing centre-stage between two racks of hanging clothes, asking us, “have you ever thought you might die in Primark?” Peckham Primark is so cheap she loves it, even though it feels like you are “entering The Cage… full of atmosphere and menace” from packs of 14-year-old girls.

2 weeks ago | britishtheatreguide.info | Keith P. McKenna |Keith J. Mckenna

The peculiar moral panics around trans people can make you wonder if those panicking are worried they will one day wake up with a changed gender identity. Claire Dowie’s surreal satire, inspired by Kafka’s Metamorphosis, imagines the character Helen waking up one morning to find she is turning into a man. It started with her right hand. She woke to find “it attached like a limpet to my left tit”. It said, “oh go on let me.” That’s typical of men for you.

2 weeks ago | britishtheatreguide.info | Keith P. McKenna |Keith J. Mckenna

The child at the centre of Claire Dowie’s memory monologue feels isolated and unloved. The adult she has become recalls that “the feeling is an empty feeling, a hole in your stomach.” You were “trapped in your feelings of hurt and frustration and lack of love… that makes you hit out.” She describes herself as an untidy, clumsy, fidgety child or so her parents made her seem. Her dad, at one point, tried to make her less fidgety by tying her rigidly to a chair for a while.