Billionaire Boy

Review by: Paul Towers, 04/03/20

Billionaire Boy by David Walliams, adapted, directed and lyrics by Neal Foster. Music by Jak Moore

Produced by The Birmingham Stage Company

At DeMontfort Hall 4 – 8^th March 2020

“David Walliams’ latest touring show”

Following on from his successful stage adaptations of Gangsta Granny, Awful Auntie and The Boy in The Dress David Walliams’ latest touring show is The Billionaire Boy.

Joe (Matthew Gordon) is twelve years old and the son of a self made multi billionaire single father (Jason Furnival). Rather than the love and attention he craves his father showers him with money and material things. Desperate for a friend he transfers from a posh school where he was bullied for having the wrong accent to a comp where he is bullied for being rich. Life doesn’t get any better.

The script is full of schoolboy toilet humour with a few gags especially for the grown ups with their teenagers

The set is, appropriately, made of stacks of loo rolls, the product that made Joe’s father rich. It is a jigsaw of  cupboards and cubby holes which serve as locations.

The cast of  nine work very hard singing and dancing.

Billionaire Boy is at DeMontfort Hall until Sunday 8^th March. Tickets are still available

DeMontfort Hall http://www.demontforthall.co.uk/
http://ptheatre.blogspot.co.uk/

The MP, Mandy & Me

Review by: Paul Towers, 03/03/20

The MP, Aunty Mandy and Me By Rob Ward

A Made at Curve co-production with Emmerson & Ward

At Curve: 3-4 March 2020

“This is a tour de force of acting”

For the third year running Rob Ward has been an integral part of DMU Pride. Previously he presented his award winning Gypsy Queen but this year he brings us a new Curve commissioned show, The MP, Aunty Mandy & Me, a darkly comic tale of a socially awkward gay boy stuck in a northern town backwater who is desperate for a loving relationship.

Dom thinks that  being an Instagram Gay influencer is the be all and end all of his life but he struggles to get past the 100 likes for his posts. His social anxiety is under control, sort of, so long as he takes his medication. But sometimes he forgets and has an ‘episode’. He tries, he really tries to meet guys. He goes to the gym but never gets picked up. His love of trains is the only real passion in his life. Until he meets the MP. He makes Dom feel good about himself and, if we are being honest, Dom allows himself to be groomed for the self worth he now feels, even if some of the things asked of him are not to his taste Of course being groomed is not a novelty for him. His druggy mother has also groomed him to follow in her footsteps into substance abuse calling her seemingly never ending supply of MDMA her Aunty Mandy.

Rob Ward has produced a very funny, thought provoking play about coercion and the things we are prepared to do for love, or at least what we perceive to be love. This is a tour de force of acting as Rob switches at alarming speed from character to character, male to female, drunk to stoned, all with many laugh out loud moments and sudden descents into pathos, all littered with innuendo and northern vernacular.

Direction by Clive Judd and a very apposite soundtrack designed by Iain Armstrong it all comes together to highlight some of the pitfalls of modern gay youth. This should be required viewing for all LGBT youngsters today

Curve https://www.curveonline.co.uk/
First published on Western Gazette