Bye, bye UK City of Culture, this monologue is about the Hull that celebrations have forgotten.
‘Re-imagining a classic is a courageous act’: GREAT EXPECTATIONS – Old Red Lion Theatre
Re-imagining a classic is a courageous act. Tom Crowley’s adaptation follows the journey of a young man struggling to find his place in modern day England and it’s pervasive class system.
BAD ROADS – Royal Court Theatre
Whilst war rages in the Ukraine, a journalist goes to the front lines and falls in love. Girls sit on a park bench, waiting for their soldier boyfriends.
ALL THE LITTLE LIGHTS – Arcola Theatre
Hilarious and heart-breaking in equal measure, Jane Upton’s work is a darkly realistic shock to the system.
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.
ROAD – Royal Court Theatre
Powerful revival of Jim Cartwright’s 1986 modern classic comes alive in all its noisy, vulgar and transcendent glory.
ME & ROBIN HOOD – Royal Court Theatre
Shon Dale-Jones and Hoipolloi’s Me and Robin Hood has admirable intentions in aiming to raise awareness and money for charity ‘Street Child’.
GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY – Old Vic Theatre
The music they listen to, and that which seeps from them with aching melancholy, is by Bob Dylan – written decades after the Great Depression ended. Combined with Conor McPherson’s earthy, Celtic script of imagery-laden prose, Girl From the North Country is not a musical.
MAD MAN SAD WOMAN – The Space Arts Centre
Juan Radrigán was to Chilean literature and theatre as Maxim Gorki was to Russia under the Tsars. Writing during the Pinochet era, Radrigán’s subjects were exclusively those on the margins of society, the dispossessed and the unheard.
Buzzcut Festival: Day Two highlights include Free Lunch & Stuntman
Part of the reason I wanted to come to Buzzcut is that I find it hard to write about live art. I don’t dislike it, far from it – I have a broad but uninformed appreciation of it. But my theatrical home is built from Shakespeare, text-based narratives and the great American playwrights.
KICKED IN THE SH*TTER – Hope Theatre
5 Pounds Theatre’s presentation of Leon Fleming’s drama about two siblings manoeuvring the benefits system is a story that needs to be told but Fleming’s poor story means the issues get lost.
THE MONKEY – Theatre 503
John Stanley’s dark comedy could easily descend into poverty porn, but he avoids this pitfall with a focus on detailed characterisation and the consequences of drug addiction, both of which can translate to any social class.
POLITIC MAN – Ivy House
Alison Mead’s Politic Man chronicles the lives of Alfred and Ada Salter, an activist and political couple living and working in the Bermondsey slums of the early 1900s – I’d never encounrtered these remarkable people before. Avowed socialists committed to improving the lives of the city’s poor, Alfred moved from medicine into politics so he could help more people.
WISH LIST – Royal Court Theatre
Nineteen year old Tamsin wants to be a normal teenager. She wants to go to college, flirt with cute boys and go down the pub. She doesn’t want to be stuck in a cycle of poverty that dictates she’s either doing manual labour at a “fulfilment centre”, or caring for her younger brother with OCD so severe he can’t leave the house.
THE TRACKERS OF OXYRHYNCHUS – Finborough Theatre
In the first part of Tony Harrison’s The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, Victorian archaeologist Grenfell struts and frets around a group of silent Egyptians sifting through scraps of papyrus.
Text of the Day: Love
Random and topical thoughts and quotes gathered by My Theatre Mates contributor Aleks Sierz, first published on www.sierz.co.uk.
LOVE – National Theatre
New devised piece about poverty and temporary accommodation is extremely powerful, but also deeply flawed.
Text of the Day: Magnificence
Random and topical thoughts and quotes gathered by My Theatre Mates contributor Aleks Sierz, first published on www.sierz.co.uk.
FURY – Soho Theatre
In this discourse on social class, parenting and gaslighting, playwright Phoebe Eclair-Powell incorporates Greek tragedy and a commentating chorus to expose the perils of growing up with no support network.
SUNSET AT THE VILLA THALIA – National Theatre
Downton’s Elizabeth McGovern stars in a new play about Greece that is both intelligent and very enjoyable.
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