The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby will be on at The Space, London playing 20 March – 7 April 2012. 

For more information and tickets: http://space.org.uk/?p=6089

She’s also been working on an in-house futuristic campaign for Blackberry. 

Hannah will be resuming the role of Terry.

Download the flyer here or visit The Tabard Website here for ticket info.

Time Out says 4 Stars

By Nina Caplan, Posted: Thu Apr 21 2011

Read the full review at The Stage.

Extremities - Published Thursday 21 April 2011 at 16:11 by Paul Vale

“There is great support from Hannah Dean as Terry”

A physically demanding play, Extremities offers a complex and thoughtful argument about the nature of revenge and the value of real justice. Written in the early eighties for an off-Broadway stage, it foreshadows the rise in stalking, which is currently the fastest growing crime in the UK.

Angela Bull is particularly good as Marjorie, walking that fine line between victim and assailant, without resorting to histrionics or melodrama. Bull’s is an even tempered performance that is both provocative and engaging. There is great support from Hannah Dean as Terry and Kas Darley as the pragmatic Patricia, the flatmates who are drawn into Marjorie’s situation.

John Schumacher is excellent as the improbably named Raul, who is in turns both pitiful and frightening. The violence between Marjorie and Raul is particularly well handled, and credit should go to fight designer Lewis Penfold for some excellent attack scenes throughout the play.

Jessamy Willson-Pepper’s design has depth but no texture, and a flimsy construction is much more noticeable in this violent play.

Learn more here.

Read the full review at PlanetBrowny

The Fringe is Alive, Well and Extreme

“There is also tremendous support from Hannah Dean as Terry with a truly believable performance”

 

 

- Review by McHustler (24 March 2011)

William Mastrosimone’s “Extremities” is a shocking piece of theatre and even more shocking when you discover that the idea for the play came from a chance meeting that he had with a woman who had been through a horrific experience.  He followed her story as it went to court and the fear that she lived in after her attacker was set free.  She said to Mastrosimone of her attacker ”If I could have 5 minutes in a room with him now…” and never finished her sentence.  Mastrosimone wrote Extremities to finish the sentence for her.

Marjorie has nothing planned for the day except to clear up the dishes that her flatmates have left and potter about the house.  The first “fly in the ointment” so to speak, is the wasp that stings her, and then there’s Raul.  A stranger who wanders in and makes sure her life will never be the same again.  However, when her housemates return, they find that the tables have been turned and that Marjorie has taken control, or has she lost it?

Extremities is a story about basic human survival instincts and asks the question “How far are we willing to go in the name of self-preservation?”

I have to be honest, I’m not sure that I was looking forward to the play.  It is one of my favourite pieces of theatre and I would hate to have had it ruined for me by a sub-standard performance on the London Fringe.  However, Epsilon Productions have been getting rave reviews so I steeled myself and booked my ticket.

I am so glad that I did.  This is one of the best productions that I have seen on the Fringe for many years.  The atmosphere was electrically charged, the cast worked brilliantly together and when the interval came, I couldn’t believe that an hour had passed.  The second half passed just as quickly and if I had another free night this week, I would go again.

Angela Bull excels as Marjorie.  The audience is not only witness to her pain and anguish, she broadcasts it to us so that we feel everything that she feels and are almost willing her to strike the match that will set her attacker on fire.  It is not an easy part for an actress to play but Angela shows her skill and courage as an actress and does not dissapoint in any way.

John Schumacher’s Raul is truly vile.  His pacing drives the play forward, giving us the impression that every thought that comes out of his mouth is fresh and new, every piece of lies has been put together on the spot and the intelligence of his performance is astounding.  Yet he still manages to invoke sympathy at the right moments.  We know this character is lying, we want him to be buried in the garden, yet somehow you want to believe that there is good in him and he should be let go.

There is also tremendous support from Hannah Dean as Terry with a truly believable performance and Kas Darley as Patricia.  If I was to criticise anything, it would be that the character of Patricia felt a little stilted.  I can’t quite put my finger on whether this was the direction or Kas’s performance.  At points, she would lose the “stiff upper lip” composure and let fly with a barrage of words which brought her scenes to life, before withdrawing again behind Patricia’s “social worker” facade.  However, both Kas and Hannah are actresses to watch out for in the future.

On the direction front, Rob Stuart has done a fantastic job.  He handles the subject matter with sensitivity and care, allowing the actors to breathe life into their characters while driving the pace of the piece onwards at all times.  Again, I’d like to see more from Rob in the future.  In addition to Robs creative vision are the perferctly directed fight scenes from Lewis Penfold.  Every move is timed to perfection and performed immaculately by the talented cast.

This was a most enjoyable night, if you can call watching a play based around rape and torture as enjoyable and I look forward to Epsilon’s next production, hopefully in the near future.

It’s only on for one more week at The Courtyard Theatre, Pitfiled Street, London (Old Street Tube)!!!  That’s right, it finishes on the 27th March 2011 so get onto www.ticketweb.co.uk and book now.

Stick around to meet the cast in the bar afterwards and tell them that McHustler from planetbrowny sent you.

McH

 

 

 

Read the full review at The British Theatre Guide

Extremities

Review by Lizzie Singh (2011)

“Hannah Dean as Terry is at once sweet and bitter, casual and on the edge and a great foil to the uptight, perfectly pitched Kas Darley playing Pat.”

After making it safely home from seeing Extremities tonight, I checked that the door was locked about five times. This is something the protagonist, Marjorie (played with credibility by Angela Bull) had neglected to do as she faffs around the house in her dressing gown, idling the morning away painting nails and the like. An awful punishment is visited on her for this lax behaviour in door locking.

Moments after the play begins a slightly unnerving chap (John Schumacher, playing Raul, although he’s thereafter only referred to as Animal) sticks his head round her door and asks for Joe. Upon a firm and sensible rebuttal that ‘there’s no Joe here’, he changes tack and asks to use the phone. On being refused, Animal gets angry, unexpectedly locking himself in, smashing the phone and suddenly the stage events to follow portend very bleakly for our heroine, Marjorie.

The opening twenty minutes of this play are the most unpleasantly violent, savage and frightening I have ever witnessed. Animal relentlessly, with an agreesive, wild and insatiable sexual energy, attacks Marjorie and begins forcing her to perform sexual acts against her will. It is horrible to watch. As he forces himself on her, she manages to grab a can of wasp repellent (handily referenced earlier in the plot) and sprays the contents in Animal’s face.

There is then a blackout. It is the first of many. When the lights come up, Marjorie has tied up her attacker and has him under her control. The remainder of the play deals with the fall-out of this situatio: what happens when her friends return, whose side they take, how far a victim can go to protect themselves before it becomes revenge, the irrevocable joining of the victim and the attacker in the shared identity branded on them by the act.

There is more cold-blooded violence to follow, the sort that shows why it is that victims are not allowed to discipline the perpetrators; to avoid cruel and unusual punishment. Marjorie pushes us to the limit of sympathy, but Animal’s previous pleasure in twisted perversion and disregard for her consent add weight to her ‘righteous’ anger.

Extremities has a driving, visceral plot, two central characters who are well drawn, who show a depth of pain and anger and occasional flashes of black humour that shoot through the terse and no-holds-barred script. The play also has two other characters, the housemates, who are surprisingly strong and add a great deal of enjoyment, realism and perspective on the events, as well as the odd laugh here and there. Hannah Dean as Terry is at once sweet and bitter, casual and on the edge and a great foil to the uptight, perfectly pitched Kas Darley playing Pat.

Robert Stuart, the director, has chosen a tough play to take the helm of; so much violence in an intimate space has to be judged precisely in order to avoid sniggers or injury to the actors. His real gift lies in keeping the audience engaged once the battleground moves from the physical actions to the dialogue and this he does with skill and subtlety. It is hard to watch Animal wheedle his way into the minds of the friends or to see Marjorie, who fought so bravely for her freedom, unable to stop herself from fighting on and becoming the Animal herself.

The ending is extremely neat, almost too neat, one suspects, for the real life that the writer purports to portray. A chance discovery proves Animal to be so perverted, dangerous and inhuman that the understanding we have gained of him is turned on its head and leaves everyone with no doubt as to his intentions or capabilities.

Extremities aims to be a particular victim’s answer to her rapist. Scary, disturbing and brutal, the play succeeds from the point of view of one victim, Marjorie. However, I doubt that all victims would care to be defined by her revenge.

(Lizzie Singh)

- Peter Brown, londontheatre.co.uk

Read full review on londontheatre.co.uk

Review by Peter Brown, 10 March 2011

Every once in a while a play turns up which has something special to offer. Sometimes it’s simply great acting, or a novel idea, or a different take on a subject that’s already been done to death. ‘Extremities’ is one of those shows, an evening of theatre you’re not likely to forget in a hurry, thanks to an astonishingly realistic fight scene, terrific ensemble acting, and a staggeringly fine script.

The subject is rape. American playwright William Mastrosimone wrote this play after talking with a rape victim. His programme notes make for harrowing reading as he recounts how the victim’s case went to trial but resulted in the rapist being acquitted. Later, he confronted her on the courthouse steps with a warning that he intended attacking her again. ‘Extremities’ was first produced off Broadway in 1982, and a film version was produced in 1986.

It’s an ordinary morning. Marjorie is listening to the radio and getting herself ready for the day. Her flatmates, Terry and Pat, have gone to work. Suddenly, Marjorie is stung by a wasp. She kills it with fly spray. Just to make sure it’s dead, she holds a cigarette over it. But then, equally suddenly, the front door bursts open and a man walks in. At first he’s full of excuses about why he’s there, but as he closes in on Marjorie we know exactly what he has in mind. And, within seconds, he has Marjorie on the floor and is smothering her into compliance with a cushion. However, in the struggle which follows, Marjorie is able to grab the fly spray and spray it in the attacker’s eyes. Now the tables are turned, and Marjorie is able to bind her attacker and imprison him in the fireplace. When her flatmates return, you would think it was simply a question of phoning the police to get the intruder arrested. Not so. The flatmates have their own views about how things will turn out and what should be done, and, even in this desperate situation, there’s still room for petty accusations. And while this is going on, the perpetrator tries to manipulate events to secure his freedom.

This play simply wouldn’t work if the fight scene at the beginning of the play wasn’t totally realistic and believable. But it does because it is. The fight direction by Lewis Penfold couldn’t be better, but the execution of the attack by John Schumacher as Raul, and Angela Bull as Marjorie is astonishingly good. It’s incredibly tense and scary, yet compelling, even if it’s also very uncomfortable to witness.

Rob Stuart’s meticulous direction provides great pacing and staging. I particularly enjoyed the choice of topics for the radio interviews and the buzzing wasp which covers the scene changes. Nice touches. My only reservation was whether there should have been an interval. In one sense, the interval broke the tension and the flow, but at the same time it also gave the audience and cast some much-needed respite. However, the show picks-up after the interval at exactly the same moment in time where it broke off, so it didn’t actually affect the momentum too much. A fine cast tackle a difficult subject and equally difficult staging with amazing confidence. John Schumacher brilliantly portrays the fast-talking, Liverpudlian attacker whose gift for manipulation almost reaches the heights of an art-form. Angela Bull is superb as victim Marjorie, defining a capable and intelligent woman whose luck is fortunately matched by her ability to recognise it. There’s terrific support from Hannah Dean as the reticent Terry who seems to care more about her job than what Marjorie has gone through until she reveals her own nightmare experience. And Kas Darley is the reasonable and sensible Pat, who wonders who the victim really is until the denouement.

Jessamy Willson-Pepper’s set, obviously designed on a fringe budget, is nevertheless almost perfect to describe a flat-share with three young women whose material aspirations are not nearly matched by their income. But the leather sofa, curved Scandinavian chair, the wooden fireplace surround and plants in the kitchen do more than enough to suggest a feminine, low-rental home.

Like all great drama – and this is definitely great drama – there are times when the audience can’t help but laugh. Partly, it’s to do with nerves of course, but it’s also to do with great writing which senses moments that, even in the midst of incomprehensibly dreadful events, funny things can happen. For example, when Raul is feeling sick, he tells the women he can’t vomit because he ‘doesn’t want to ruin your lovely carpet’. And when the flatmates decide to fetch antidote from the chemists, it’s victim Marjorie who has to cough-up the cash – a stoke of writing genius.

Crimes against the person are always insidious, but rape has life-changing consequences for the victim. Not only do they suffer the immediate brutality of the actual attack, they must re-live it during police enquiries, in open court, with friends and relatives, and partners. Then, with all that behind them, they have to live with the possibility that their attacker may return. ‘Extremities’ doesn’t cover all the ground about this terrible crime, but it does raise issues which might help us to better understand what rape victims have to endure. In addition, it’s riveting, unmissable drama.

(Peter Brown)