Prison is food for thought

Jun 17 2009 By John Slim

Birmingham’s Crescent Theatre is challenging its talented team by embarking on two plays in repertoire – both of them set in prison.

Performances will alternate between Iron, by Rona Munro, and Kiss of the Spiderwoman, by Manuel Puig.

Kiss of the Spiderwoman centres on a Marxist revolutionary and a gay window-dresser who share a prison cell. Iron finds a woman visiting prison for the first time – to see her mother, who has been there for 15 years.

Iron opens the venture on Friday, July 3, and will be there the following night as well – after Kiss of the Spiderwoman has been presented as a Saturday matinée.

Spiderwoman has another matinée the following afternoon, then the alternate evening performances begin with Iron on Monday, July 6.

The Crescent is also embarking on its annual tour of outdoor Shakespeare.

The Taming of the Shrew opens at Birmingham Botanical Gardens from June 30 to July 2 and will be at King’s Norton and Stratford-upon-Avon during the repertoire run.

Watching this excellent team, it is all too easy to forget that its members have day jobs.

* Ara Sotoudeh could be forgiven if, as the philandering cabby in Ray Cooney’s splendid comedy Run for Your Wife, he is apt to forget which wife he is running for.

Hall Green Little Theatre’s production, opening on Friday, features Aleksandra Galiabovich-Everitt as the one with whom he has tired the marital knot – and no fewer than three other young women as Barbara, the one with whom he has managed to set up a second home.

Josie Booth, 17, Harriet Tatton, 18, and Katie Adams, 18, have all been in the Hall Green Youth Theatre for four years, appearing not only in its annual productions, but in other plays and pantomimes as well.

With summer exams coming, they have shared rehearsals and will each take on two or three performances.

* The girls of BMOS Musical Theatre Company caused quite a stir at the recent Birmingham Pride Parade, basking in their basques through the city centre. The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas will be at the Old Rep from July 7-11.

Will bottoms in basques mean bums on seats?