Yesterday I watched Skye Hallam’s excellent one-woman show, Heads or Tails, one of the headline acts at the new Living Record Festival. It’s a gently confessional monologue about the afterlife spoken by 25-year-old Steph, who has – as they say – been “taken too soon”.
‘Combines bravura acting with a battery of visual effects’: GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS – Barbican Theatre
Enda Walsh’s adaptation of Max Porter’s contemporary classic gets the big-stage treatment, starring Cillian Murphy. With mixed results.
‘Reminds us that we can handle our obstacles’: SPARK – Edinburgh Fringe
Using the word ‘strong’ to describe women and girls is redundant. Putting up with all the trash that women have to deal with as a result of their gender, on top of everything else life throws at them, makes them strong by default.
‘Who knew one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies could be funny?’: OTHELLO – Shakespeare’s Globe
Who knew one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies could be funny? Director and composer Claire van Kampen has tapped into a rare rhythm that sees Iago as a weaselly, clownish man lacking power and finesse, yet still manages to twist Othello into knots
‘You have goat to be kidding me’: GOATS – Royal Court Theatre
You have goat to be kidding me: the Royal Court’s latest experiment is a tonally-confused take on the Syrian conflict, fake news, and livestock management.
SKIN TIGHT – Hope Theatre
Skin Tight declares that all good things must end and heartbreak is inevitable – but these are the secrets to a fulfilling life. Gary Henderson’s modern classic is reflective and moving, but the production doesn’t fully serve these ends.
VICTORY CONDITION – Royal Court Theatre
Imagine a world where our inner monologues are voiced at all times. Sure, it would make the world a much louder place and we’d probably always have sore throats. But think of the things we’d hear. The mundane, the extraordinary, the intimate
JANE EYRE – National Theatre
Jane Eyre is one of those mythical stories that make their home in your imagination. Where they can chat, sing and dance through your unconscious for years and years and years.
JANE EYRE – National Theatre
Devised by the original company, this Bristol Old Vic and National co-pro has little technically wrong with it – it captures Jane’s spirit reasonably well, using physical theatre to cut through the dense length of the novel.
THE LISTENING ROOM – Theatre Royal Stratford East
Can violent criminals be rehabilitated, and can their victims ever forgive them? The Listening Room says yes. This verbatim piece tells the stories of three violent crimes, primarily from the perspective of the perpetrators. Some character background sets the scene for climactic moments where they commit their offences, but at least half of each of […]
DEADCLUB™ – The Place
Co-directors Frauke Requardt and David Rosenberg have created a piece of theatre which might be the closest I have ever felt to being in a dream whilst awake and not under the influence of psychoactive drugs.
LOOT – Park Theatre
Anniversary revival of Joe Orton’s black farce about money and death is a delight from start to finish.
LOOT – Park Theatre
To honour the 50th anniversary of his death, this is the first time we get to see Joe Orton’s original version of the Loot script before the Lord Chamberlain censored it prior to the 1966 production.
MRS ORWELL – Old Red Lion Theatre
In 1949, George Orwell lived the final months of his life in University College Hospital due to a severe case of tuberculosis. Torn between an uncertain faith in a recovery and the consciousness of the approaching end, hoping to write again, he decided to marry Sonia Brownell, a young and beautiful magazine editor.
BECHDEL TESTING LIFE – The Bunker
Bechdel Theatre’s recent initiative Bechdel Testing Life asks women to send in recorded conversations from their everyday lives that pass the test. These are then given to playwrights, who use the conversations as jumping-off points for short plays.
DIRTY WORK (THE LATE SHIFT) – Battersea Arts Centre
The performers are framed by a false, red curtained, proscenium arch that forms, like the show itself a facade: a description of something without being either of itself or the thing it describes. An hour and fifteen minutes runs with Robin Arthur and Cathy Naden taking turns to speak.
I KNOW YOU OF OLD – Hope Theatre
Paying homage to Shakespeare’s genius but not slavishly binding themselves to it, Golem! sticks up two fingers at Shakespeare purists who, with quivering voices, clutch their pearls and gasp, “But the text!”
THE CARDINAL – Southwark Playhouse
Shirley’s script, with its echoes of Hamlet, Othello and The Spanish Tragedy, is less philosophical and more action. Whilst this makes it easy to follow and immediately engaging, the characters are more generally more limited in their scope for interpretation.
NUCLEAR WAR – Royal Court Theatre
Text can sometimes be a prison. At its best, postwar British theatre is a writer’s theatre, with the great pensmiths — from Samuel Beckett, John Osborne and Harold Pinter to Caryl Churchill, Martin Crimp and Sarah Kane — carving out visions of everyday humanity in all our agonies and glee.
CUSTODY – Ovalhouse
How do we cope when we don’t get what we want? How do we beat a system that is set up to make you fail? Custody asks just these questions, as we are taken on a two-year journey of a family’s struggle for justice for their loved one, twenty-nine year old Brian, who died whilst in police custody.
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