As a title, there’s something intriguing about Dear Octopus, now playing the National Theatre’s Lyttelton stage.
Before digital TV made it a thing, “watching on catch-up” used to mean spending your Sunday afternoon in front of the EastEnders omnibus.
There’s a famous quote by Winston Churchill that says that Russia “is a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma”.
The Homecoming, as with much of Harold Pinter’s work, is a timeless play, charged with machismo, pride and tension.
There are four strong performances in I’m Sorry Prime Minister I Can’t Quite Remember at the Cambridge Arts Theatre, written and directed by Jonathan Lynn, following the passin…
Written and directed by “l’auteur du naturalisme”, Alexander Zeldin, The Confessions feels like a too-small show on a too-big stage.
Writer Simon Stephens has taken Max Frisch’s 1953 Biedermann und die Brandstifter, variously translated as The Fireraisers or The Arsonists and given it a heightened absurdist in…
Taking on The Threepenny Opera can be a precarious business, as OVO demonstrate, without flinching from the challenge.
Thirty years ago I stood on The Strand in a queue for eight hours intent on getting my hands on early tickets for the first production of Sunset Boulevard.
The extent to which you appreciate James Graham’s adaptation of Boys from the Blackstuff might depend partly on how well you know Alan Bleasdale’s original television series.
After all the hype from it’s reception elsewhere in Europe combined with the legacy of the original film version, the intriguing yet simple plot and the clear characterisation in…
Who has not experienced a situation in which a surmountable incident escalates out of all proportion? Then, on the way to resolving it, further baggage accumulates around the subje…
A Teacher’s Lament is not the revolutionary political statement that we would expect a show of this nature to be.
Steelworks A Cappella group presents a murder mystery, Vocal Vengeance, which is like an musical version of Cluedo.
It isn’t easy representing old age on stage.
My Life Online is an incredibly well performed piece of modern opera, with an unfortunately lacklustre story.
Losing The Plot is a new queer jukebox musical comedy, jam-packed with top hits from the 70s and 80s, Originally performed in Manchester and has now come to the Fringe this year.
Creating an effective vehicle for performers, be it musical, play, comedy set or improv format, is arguably the most challenging task a creative artist can undertake.
Lewis Carroll is turning in his grave at Tim Nelson’s Alice in Wonderland.
Written and composed by Bethany, Cameron and Natasha Lythgoe, Pandemonium is a biblical musical of mundane proportions built upon a confusing amalgamation and re-telling of stories…
The true judges of any show aimed at children are the children in the audience, and the kids at Lucky Pigeons at Underbelly’s Circus Hub seemed to have a good time.
As comedian Stephen Catling ambles onto stage, clad in a novelty dog head, it's apparent that we're sitting in an absurdist comedy show.
Report To An Academy is not Franz Kafka’s best work, but Robert McNamara brings the elusive central character with precision and animal rage that is very watchable.
Peer Gynt: A Jazz Revival by Cambridge company Phonofiddle! comes with an intriguing proposition: taking Ibsen's complex work and transmuting it into an hour of jazz-infused th…
People You Know Productions are going for a cross between Posh, and an Agatha Christie novel, except that nobody here actually wants to work out who the killer is.
Ripper is an unfortunate example of a show that may have promise, but not quite the ability to realise it.
A good story is surely one that absolutely demands to be told.
Sophie Santos…Is Codependent details Santos’ journey through their breakup, narrating the tale combining both comic storytelling and song, embodying conversations with their pe…
The company Darkfield are a Fringe regular now, known for their shows housed in completely dark shipping containers.
Ottisdotter theatre company’s production of Lady Inger provides a rare opportunity to see one of Henrik Ibsen’s earliest, least performed and less well-known works.
From the outset the jazz club on the top floor of Toulouse Lautrec appears to have a cosy rustic atmosphere, like one that we'd associate with a gazebo.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is one of Roald Dahl’s best known books, which is why the expectations are high for James Brining’s tour.
Jonas (Michael Batten) would ideally like to be in full-time employment as an actor on stage.
The myth of Robin Hood has been told and re-told through the centuries, and in the oral tradition, each storyteller has put their own spin on the tale.
Opera della Luna's latest production of Sweeney Todd will show you the barber as you have never seen or heard him before.
In a rather surprising debut choice, Stella Powell-Jones has commenced her incumbency as Artistic Director of Jermyn Street Theatre with Timberlake Wertenbaker’s uninspired adapt…
Given the vast repertoire of plays available to theatre companies one often wonders how they decide on what to perform next and why: in this case, the somewhat lesser-known work by…
The National Theatre continues its support of new writing at the Dorfman with Dixon and Daughters: an emotional play dealing with the far-reaching effects of historic child abuse.
A Macbeth that features only the eponymous hero and his wife is an opportunity to define the characters and chart the shifting balance of power between them as the tragedy unfolds.
The Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch has opened its Spring 2023 season with the world premiere of Ian Rankin and Simon Reade’s Rebus: A Game Called Malice.
Too many cooks, so the saying goes, can spoil the broth.
The Mill at Sonning is a quaint venue that provides all the amenities for a great theatre trip.
There are time when you wonder, “Why?” Lazarus Theatre Company’s Hamlet at the Southwark Playhouse, Borough, is one of those.
Being dead, the great maestro of late baroque composition has the hope of being raised incorruptible.
When you’re a child, Christmas is all about that one big day.
Opening the London Coliseum festive season is the UK premier of It’s a Wonderful Life, based on the classic 1946 Frank Capra movie.
A note on the back cover of Peter Gill’s latest play, Something in the Air, at Jermyn Street Theatre, claims that the stories of the two old protagonists “flow like mist down t…
Mixing survivalism with psychoanalysis, Dave Bain’s Last Sales Conference of the Apocalypse is a fractured and confused trip that leaves us with more questions than answers.
It’s a classic David and Goliath, if by the end, rooting for Goliath seemed like a reasonable thing to do.
Hailing all the way from the bright lights of New York, Sarah Sherman’s self-described horror comedy show - with the emphasis on the horror - is incredibly ghastly and overly gra…
Interminable, intellectually pretentious and self-indulgent, former circus performer James Thiérrée’s Room produced by his own Swiss Compagnie du Hanneton, is presented as phys…
Madagascar Jr is the stage musical version of the 2005 children’s movie, a charmingly simple story of friendship amongst lovable animals.
Prometheus Bound (Io’s Version) finds itself in a double bind.
The After-Dinner Joke doesn’t quite land.
For regular Fringegoers who aim to tick all the most talked-about and cultest shows off your list, I’m going to make a prediction: you’ve seen Spank! before.
The Edinburgh Fringe may have a porn addiction.
Whilst it may be apt to stage John Montgomery and Derek Batchelor’s Flesh - a musical about Burke and Hare - at Surgeon’s Hall, the novelty stops there.
A Dark Place by Boreas Productions at Pleasance Courtyard is an insight into the relationship between friends, Ash and Sam, and how Sam’s mental health struggles have twisted the…
Today I Killed My Very First Bird, a piece of new writing by poet, playwright and performer Jason Brownlee and directed by Lee Hart, is a strange beast.
The end of show speech to an audience.
Adaptation can do more than reproduce.
You can have too many carrots in one show.
Waterloo is a whacky, one-woman show by Bron Batten detailing her affair with a conservative military official.
Whether it was the book or movie, C.
Shakespeare knew what it took to pen a romantic tragedy when he wrote Romeo and Juliet and hence carefully structured all the ingredients to meet the demands of the genre and creat…
Written and performed by Agustina Dieguez Buccella, Fragile is a one-woman show of how fierce independence is also isolating and can mask loneliness.
Soho Boy, at the Drayton Arms Theatre, is a new musical, written and composed by Paul Emelion Daly.
One of the best things about theatre, and art in general, is the space it creates for difficult conversations and analysis.
In 2017, David Eldridge’s play Beginning dramatised an awkward conversation between two white, financially comfortable, urban-dwelling, adult Gen X-ers, caught in that time of em…
As a title, The Corn is Green proves the old adage about books, covers and the perils of judging thereof.
If we ever needed more proof as to why second wave or white feminism should no longer be considered relevant, here it is.
Dev’s Army, by Stuart D.
Rain and Zoe Save the World by Crystal Skillman at Jermyn Street Theatre is an action adventure story that follows two teenage friends as they embark on a journey to disrupt some o…
Throughout his life, on his birthday, Krapp records a review of his year using an old fashioned tape recorder.
Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre continues its tradition of being non-traditional this Christmas season.
There are few things worth travelling the length of the Jubilee Line for on a cold and wet rush-hour on a December night.
Luke Oldfield’s Accidental Birth of an Anarchist at The Space on the Isle of Dogs tells of two novice activists from The People’s Movement to Protect the Planet who get jobs on…
A stony silence filled the air at the end of act one of Joe & Ken at The Old Red Lion Theatre, Islington, the old stomping ground of the eponymous couple who lived just down th…
The Salem witch trials are well known, perhaps in large part due to Arthur Miller’s outstanding play The Crucible that put the Massachusetts town on the map.
How do you successfully relate the biography of a theatrical legend, tell the history of a remarkable period in the development of the arts, create portraits of the famous names of…
Alexithymia is a short play about conflicting human emotions and the disability to connect with your inner feelings.
Intricate Rituals by York DramaSoc at theSpace Triplex is a monologue with alternating actors.
What are the ingredients for a bank robbery comedy? A ragtag criminal gang, a double serving of double-crossing, a training montage, and many pairs of dark sunglasses.
One of the Gals is completely packed.
Smile.
Chalkhill Theatre Ltd currently has a double debut with the company’s first appearance at the Festival Fringe and the premiere of their new play.
If Carl Knif’s Fugue in Two Voices is a joke, then it’s a dud.
Described as a ‘wonderfully chaotic and colourful tragicomedy’ Theatre-19 Presents: John is a particularly silly devised piece at theSpace@Surgeons Hall from a group of Bristol…
Femme Ta Bouche: a gender-bending cabaret star with cancer, cooped up in rural Arkansas, wants to make a statement.
Exile at the Southwark Playhouse, by JoMac Productions Limited & Blue Heart Theatre, is an interestingly constructed piece consisting of two life-crisis monologues by individu…
An escape room style experience with a paranormal twist, Retrogression is about a ghost who scares visitors to the Brighton Toy Museum and needs to be released.
Period music greets loyal subjects as they enter the Friends Meeting House to attend Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: An Audience with King Henry VIII, written and directed by John Wh…
One day perhaps someone will write a play about a drag queen where, beneath the frock and below the wig, above the high heels and under the layers of slap exists a man who is happy…
If you took the E4 teen drama Skins and combined it with Disney’s Inside Out, the by-product would be something similar to that of Jerk.
Mock the Greek was a show that sent up the myths and legends of Greece.
It’s Halloween evening at the Brighton Open Air Theatre and what better time for a séance? Even if it has to be a socially distance séance – there’s no hand holding or grou…
In Nia Williams’ upcoming new musical, Lady Macbeth is a creepy life coach who takes advantage of the collective incapacity of lockdown to bring her own particular brand of… we…
The chaos of a house move.
Marketed as a comedic, feminist fairytale mashup, the concept of Lady Wank (And Other Fairytales For Adults) offered much potential.