practicalproductions/page6

We take you on a journey through the glossy Sunday supplement magazines. Exclusive stories, readers offers, celebrity interviews, gossip plus of course pages and pages of adverts to tempt you.

This great new play is performed by a highly talented professional cast and it will rock your emotions, and introduce you to the people you read about behind all those words and pictures, as they come to life in front of your very eyes.

Prepare to be shocked, humoured, concerned, turned on, informed, educated and above all entertained.

Indulging in an extra long laze in bed on a Sunday morning while scanning a hot-off-the-press glossy is one of life’s real pleasures.

Here, in Practical Productions’ Sunday Supplement, the contents of the increasingly weighty magazines are picked apart and put under the imaginative, if erratic, scrutiny of no less than 12 actors in the compact Barons Court Theatre. Like the often padded-out publications they lampoon, there is plenty to get through in the show’s two hours and the range of characters and subjects tackled is impressive - everything from the artificial world of an It girl (Olivia Hemingway) to the very real one of coping with cancer, in a scene featuring Marlies Huebner. Andrew Catlow, as Lexy, clearly drew the longest straw during casting as he is the narrator, tucked up in his duvet and cueing up each story as he wades through his paper. Like the actual experience of flicking through your average Sunday paper, if you are not hooked by one storyline, you don’t have to wait long for the next and there are several priceless moments, as the mood swings swiftly from the frivolity of human existence to the darker side and back again.

Sally Hadfield making her professional stage debut correctly underplays a transsexual, and with a performance of that level, I think we will be seeing a lots from her over the next few years, a casting directors dream.

Paul Beckham is outstanding as Danny - one of Soho’s so-called ‘lost boys’, forced to do tricks for male punters to pay for a drug habit - while Simon Brencher brings a marvellous mischievousness to each of his roles, notaby as ‘geeza’ Kev laying down some dating rules. As a hospital DJ out-rapped by an 82-year-old caller, Joe Agyeman is also hugely entertaining - he is training to be full-time stand-up and on this all too brief showing, has real comic potential.

Full Credit to the director, Erin Wheeler, who through subtle use of lights and impressive sound, has taken this complex piece of writing and theatre and given it pace and punch.

Sunday Supplement was written

with some clear aims, and was put

together to meet the demands of

finding a full length piece in which

a large cast, have an equal part and

which shows off their talents. It was

written for the dama school market,

and some of the monologues from

it are often used at drama school

audition. It has been used by the

drama students at The City Lit, and

from it a number secured agents.

Each actor had at least one large role

and also some secondary roles.

The play can be performed with a max.

of twelve actors, or a minimum of three.

The play can have chunks removed and this will not make a major difference to the play.

It is a single set (a bedroom) to keep

cost down.

It is ideal to showcase the talents of the director and sound and light designers and of course the actors.

It is easy to tour with

It tests the actors limits, which is perfect for agents showcases and flits

between high comedy and drama