The Unfriend

 

Review by Paul Towers, 29/9/25

The Unfriend by Steven Moffat

Directed by Jane Towers (no relation)

Produced by Leicester Drama Society

At The Little Theatre til Saturday 4th October 2025

Unfriend /ʌnˈfrɛnd/

verb: unfriend;

1.     remove (someone) from a list of friends or contacts on a social media application.

This sitcom/thriller has opened at The Little Theatre for a week. Let it be a lesson to all about the dangers of giving out your contact details to all and sundry when on holiday.

Suburban couple Peter (Jordan Handford) and Debbie (Emma Bamford) are on a short cruise and have palled up with American tourist Elsa (Rachael Barker). Unwisely they give bolshy Elsa their email address. Typical Brits abroad they are full of good intentions about keeping in touch but assume that that is just holiday talk.

Some weeks later, having been bombarded with emails from across the pond, they are pressured into offering to put up Elsa for a week. But having done their own online research it turns out that Elsa is actually a serial killer with six bodies to her name. Understandably Peter and Debbie are concerned about letting a murderer into their home and around their truculent teenagers, Alex (Thom Jones) and Rosie (Amelie Wilson-Knight). Their dithering about cancelling the upcoming visit is to no avail when Elsa turns up unannounced on their doorstep.

In true sitcom style the parents are too British to kick Elsa out. The laughs start right from the outset and don’t let up. The twists and turns of the plot keep you guessing. Is she really as bad as they think or is Elsa misunderstood? Like Mary Poppins she seems to at least have a magical touch with the teenagers. So maybe she isn’t the monster she seems.

Add into this Terry-and-June family the irritating next door neighbour, annoyingly played to perfection by David Lovell. Also, inexplicably turning up in the garden and befriended by Elsa is dopey policeman PC Junkin (Allan Smith) just in time for an hilarious, tasteless, scatological episode.

The Unfriend runs at The Little Theatre until Saturday 4th October.

Pics: Jonathan Pryke

www.thelittletheatre.co.uk/

https://ptheatre.blogspot.com/ 

The Code

 

Review by Paul Towers, 25/9/25

The Code by Michael McKeever

Directed by Christopher Renshaw

At Southwark Playhouse Elephant til Saturday 11th October 2025

Back in the heyday of Hollywood image was everything. Behind the glitz and glamour of the big screen much was not what it seemed. Reputation was everything and box office was king.

If you wanted to work you often had to pretend to be something other than your true self, and not just on the screen.

Many stars of the time were secretly gay but could never come out. Some even used those secrets to their advantage.

The Code is the imagined story of the meeting of Billy Haines (John Partridge), a successful star of the silver screen who refused to play the game and pretend to be straight, and arch closeted manipulator Henry Willson (Nick Blakeley). Prior to a meeting with a studio head the pair, along with Haines’ best friend, similarly outspoken star, Tallulah Bankhead (Tracie Bennett), and Willson’s latest pretty boy protégé Chad Manford (Solomon Davy) meet up for cocktails and a good gossip.

Bankhead, chain smoking and getting steadily sozzled, acts as an almost narrator while slinging barbed comments left right and centre. Gradually the conversation turns to whether young Chad should ditch his boyfriend in order to present a respectable front and advance his career. Willson and Haines have very different views. Do you choose career or domestic well-being?

Tracie Bennett, John Partridge and Nick Blakeley tear up the stage as things come to a head.

A cautionary tale of what might be if censorship is allowed to creep back.

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/

https://ptheatre.blogspot.com/ 

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

 

Review by Paul Towers, 8/9/25

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach

Directed by Lynn Moore

Produced by Leicester Drama Society

At The Little Theatre til Saturday 13th September 2025

This is a stage production of the beloved film and TV series by Deborah Moggach based on her novel These Foolish Things.

Taking inspiration from all the tales of ex-pats moving to the Costa Brava this takes it one stage further as a group of retirees up sticks and move to India. Their motivation is that it is warm and cheap.

Some just want to bask in the sun and wait for the inevitable end while others look upon it as a new adventure.

The Marigold Hotel is advertised as an exotic retirement home in Jaipur. In reality it is a run down hotel on the verge of both bankruptcy and collapse.

Heading up the cast is Alison Kisby as Evelyn, a shy, diffident widow who doesn’t know how to emerge from the shadow of her deceased husband. Alongside her is Helen  Gronhaug as serial divorcee Madge, a feisty blonde looking for a maharajah to whisk her off her feet and keep her in the manner to which she wants to be accustomed. Fellow travellers include Douglas (Richard Hill) and his overbearing wife Jean (Rachel Draper), retired cleaner Muriel (Trish Kenyon), opinionated Norman (Carolos Dandolo) and Dorothy (Katy Weaver) the only one of the group with an ulterior motive for ending up at The Marigold. Each have their own stories to tell, some happy, some sad but all thrown together in this exotic mix of cultures in a strange land.

The issue of arranged marriages is met head on with the conflicts between Sonny (Bhav Bhella) and his widowed mother Mrs Kapoor (Ketna Butron). Sonny spends a lot of the time trying to pluck up the courage to tell his mother he will marry for love to Sahani (Nisha Vegad).

Raj Brahmbhatt’s old factotum, Jimmy, leads the ensemble of Tejal Purohit, Nikhil Raja and Yasin Mohammed who play various roles

There are lots of laughs right from the start as well as pointed digs at colonialism, poverty, the caste system, old age and call centres! But at the heart of the story is how different people deal with loss and aging in their own ways.

Pics: Jonathan Pryke

https://thelittletheatre.co.uk/

https://ptheatre.blogspot.com/