This musical is billed as a work-in-progress showing as it will premiere at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer. I didn’t know how developed this show would be and thought it might be hard to review a sharing of work. But this piece is polished and full of promise.
Be prepared for fun audience participation. This part of the show was actually my highlight and I felt it could have gone on longer.
Starring the delightful John Hinton as Marie Curie and actor musician Jo Eagle as Pierre Curie and also written by the two of them, this is billed as ‘a radioactive musical comedy about the death and life of Marie Curie’ and that describes it very well.
Tangram Theatre Company’s mission is sharing great stories and making life-affirming theatre and looking at their website they seem to be booked up with many touring venues. This is good news for everyone as if you missed them in Brighton you can catch one of their fun, high quality shows somewhere else in the country
With catchy songs – I was singing Radium long into the night – and witty dialogue, this is a great way to educate both children and adults alike. Marie Curie is clearly a fascinating subject and although we laugh our way through the production we all leave at the end knowing how important Curie’s work was and that she was not only a pioneer in her field of science but played an important part in opening doors to women in science and helping the feminist cause. There is also a scientific advisory panel from the University of Sussex who have verified all the information, so you can be sure when you sing Radium to your friends later in the pub you will be passing on correct info.
Both Hinton and Eagle are talented performers, whilst Hinton is the main driving force Eagle supports with wonderful accordion playing and singing. Hinton is a fireball of energy, changing characters and accents at high speed and at times ad-libbing; nothing throws him off his game and his larger than life characters fill the entire space.
Be prepared for fun audience participation. This part of the show was actually my highlight and I felt it could have gone on longer.
This show is four going on five stars and I’m sure once there has been a little bit more honing of the script - there were just a few times when it got a little confusing with the amount of names and could have perhaps done with losing five minutes - this show will be getting five stars once it’s polished for Edinburgh.
