HEAVEN HELP US

Heaven Help Us2
Pic Sirmai Arts Marketing

Forget the lock outs and the last drinks policy plaguing Kings Cross pubs and focus on the comedy that’s on offer at the Kings Cross Hotel’s level 4 Bordello Theatre.

HEAVEN HELP US is a cheeky cherubic chutzpah of a play that pits the pit dweller Lucifer against God Almighty over the soul of a lawyer called Allcock.

Apparently, after the success of the Resurrection, God and his son took off for a little celebratory R&R. For two thousand years they’ve been painting the planet red, though I doubt they spent any time hanging round The Cross. Like Scott and Zelda’s wild New Year’s Eve parties, they’ve only just got back to find that Earth has gone to hell in a hand job.

God wants to smite but Archangel Michael, recent recipient of a gender reassignment and calling herself Michaela, pleas with the Big Cheese to allow her to fall to earth on a mission of redemption to tease the philanthropist out of the philanderer, the aptly named Allcock.

Writer Keith Bosler has scripted a light, tight and clever play with a number of zinger lines, battle of the sexes truisms, and a liberal dose of cultural iconoclasm- although I detected a confusion between the Virgin Birth and The Immaculate Conception. A canon quibble.

Bosler directs an energetic and focused cast who work as well-oiled ensemble.

Orleena Steel-Prior as Michaela presents a neo Raphaelite angelical quality, possessed of a flinty feminism but coated with caring and nurturing.

Lyn Pierse is an exuberant and effervescent God somewhat exasperated by his creations, both terrestrial and extra, but benevolent and forgiving, as I’m sure, HE, SHE or IT would be.

David Woodland exudes a sleazy charm as the prince of pandemonium, black leather clad and hairy chested hubris, a slinking, strutting Satan who marvels in mischief. There’s a nice detail in his devil.

As his hellish hench wench, Naamah, Emma Galliano oozes the sultry succubus style the role demands.

Tai Scrivener tackles the louche lawyer, Allcock with alpha male swagger and tectonic testosterone shifts between heart and hard-on, the archetypal pants man whose sense of masculinity has his penis by the balls.

Rounding out the cast is Nick Radinoff as Jarrod, protégé of Allcock but complicit in his manipulation by the Triple Sixer.

This Global Gherkin Production is a fun Fatwa free frolic that restores faith in pub theatre.

HEAVEN HELP US is playing the Bordello Theatre, Level 4, Kings Cross Hotel- Wednesdays to Fridays at 7.30pm and Saturdays and Sundays at 3pm until the 29th March.