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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
The end of show speech to an audience.
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.
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.
Femme Ta Bouche: a gender-bending cabaret star with cancer, cooped up in rural Arkansas, wants to make a statement.
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 [email protected] Hall from a group of Bristol…
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.
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…
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…
Mock the Greek was a show that sent up the myths and legends of Greece.
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.
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.
Mrs Puntila and her Man Matti is that relatively rare thing for the Royal Lyceum Theatre—a star vehicle, rather than an ensemble production, that happens to have two audience fav…
The challenge in attempting to adapt Elena Ferrante's 10 million-selling quadrilogy, The Neapolitan Novels lies not in finding the time to read through the 1,600 pages of sourc…
As a horror fan, I approached this performance with high expectations; I wanted to be scared, disturbed or mildly agitated at the very least.
In a rare proscenium-style presentation at the Almeida Theatre, director Tinuke Craig offers Maxim Gorky’s Vassa as her debut production for the venue in a new adaptation by Mike…
To compile his one-man show, Velvet, Tom Ratcliffe combined personal experience and the disturbing revelations that emerged as the #MeToo movement gathered momentum.
Set in the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge on a shabby corner, Brooklyn The Musical is a play-within-a-play staged by a rag-tag bunch of street performers who call themselves the Ci…
It seems like a few years now that people have been saying virtual reality is the future of theatre.
Youth Without God at the Coronet Theatre is heralded as ‘a dark fable about the individual conscience in a time of social uncertainty’ and the 1937 novel by Ödön von Horváth…
As the saying goes, "The path to hell is paved with good intentions".
Written by Nicholas Wright for the Chichester Festival, Rattigan’s Nijinsky explores sexuality, privacy, autonomy and unconditional love within the central conceit of why the dyi…
Buzzing is the story of Julie, a 50-something recent divorcee who is wanting to discover herself and “find meaning”.
When so many songs written by men are condescending (Wake Up Little Susie), dangerously demeaning (Blurred Lines) or darn right creepy (Every Breath You Take) towards women, it is …
The Italia Conti Ensemble changes its membership every year as another cohort passes through the famous drama school.
The Heresy Machine, by Seth Majnoon, claims to be about Alan Turing.
At the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, there is a work by the artist Robert Montgomery, a large piece of signage that declares ‘THERE WILL BE NO MIRACLES HERE’.
Any piece of art that tackles a complicated subject like mental health is worthwhile.
Absurdism runs amok in Well That’s Oz, one of four plays in this year’s programme from CalArts at Venue 13.
If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
Seesome Theatre’s new production Parasites is presented as an issue play, getting to the heart of problems with the welfare state, domestic abuse and teenager stuck in an unforgi…
Tatwood Puppets make their Edinburgh Fringe debut with the perfectly titled Cabaret of Curiosities.
As the caffeine levels increase and you approach the final week of the Festival Fringe, it is a fair observation to make that your shock tolerance increases.
With its eclectic composition of scenes, monologues, choreography and voice-over, Landscape (1989) is a genuinely intriguing production full of interesting elements – although th…
Stepping Out, performed by Stage Avenue Performing Arts at theSpace @ Nidry Street, is a serviceable production of the British comedy originally written in 1984 by Richard Haaris.
A classic retelling of Shakespeare’s tragedy, this piece is brought to us by Guy Masterson, TTI in association with Maverick Theatre Co.
James Stuart – or Stuart James – is passed out at his desk as the audience file into the space.
Monster choreographed and performed by Yen-Cheng Liu of Dua Shin Te Production is a show about the monster within us but the trouble with alienation is that it alienates the audien…
In order for theatre to be political, it certainly does not have to make any truly profound statement on the state of the world.
The Perfect Body is a one woman show written and performed by Lavinia Savignoni.
To make a piece of gig theatre work, you need to find a musical genre or vibe that can imbue the show with energy, and you need to find a story and a storyteller that can harness t…
Rarely is a title so apt.
The Female Role Model Project is just that, a project.
Google Me is the new offering from 2018 Fringe debut comedian Eleanor Colville.
Friendsical is billed as a ‘musical parody’ of Friends and unfortunately it fails to hit the mark on both counts.
With over 4000 shows to contend with, including some of the largest exhibitions and names in the art world, it’s understandably difficult to stand out from the crowd.
The premise of Bismillah! An Isis Tragicomedy, in the Fringe guide, "a story of radicalisation, disenfranchisment and the rock band Queen" was compelling enough to want t…
Sketch You Up! bills itself as “Catherine Tate meets Little Britain”, and mostly manages to replicate the character-driven performances that made Tate, Walliams and Lucas house…
This 50-minute adaptation of Hamlet is one for Shakespeare lovers with short attention spans.
We find ourselves between a neighbourly feud in a block of flats in Seoul.
What happens when your mum abandons you at the age of 12 to join a cult and move to Canada? That’s exactly the predicament Anoushka Warden found herself in, subsequent to her par…
Perhaps the end of Romeo & Juliet wasn't quite as tragic as we remembered.
Post Popular is Lucy McCormick's attempt to follow-up her fantastic and hugely popular show Triple Threat.
One bright and sunny day, a fish jumps out of a river, and promptly meets a fellow animal with whom he will share the next 46 years of his life.
Through a series of slightly disjointed comic scenes, two actors, Pete and Kim, tell the story of three different relationships.