international theatre

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Lost Lear, Consumed, and The Beautiful Future is Coming at the Traverse Theatre

by Laura Kressly

As the population ages and continues to be threatened by underfunding and lack of adequate resources, quality care for elderly people is under threat. The acclaimed Irish play Lost Lear by Dan Colley challenges this by providing a narrative of hope. Safely tucked away in a care home, Joy (Venetia Bowe) re-lives the best moments of her life over and over again. Her care team have recreated the rehearsal process for her acclaimed turn in King Lear, which keeps her calm and content as dementia ravages her brain. Joy’s experience is both tragically beautiful and inspirational – may we all have this depth of experience as our minds slip below the horizon.

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Saria Callas, Camden People’s Theatre

by Anne-Charlotte Gerbaud

In Saria Callas, Seemia Theatre and Sara Amini deliver a powerful solo show that explores identity, memory, and freedom. This multimedia production traces the journey of Saria, who fled Iran to escape a life of restriction, only to realise that her decision may also have paved the way for her child to live freely in ways she couldn’t have imagined.

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Mette Ingvartsen’s Skatepark, Sadler’s Wells East

by Luisa De la Concha Montes

Last summer, with four years of on-and-off skateboarding experience under my belt, I keenly tuned in to watch the skateboard showcase at the 2024 Olympics. I remember feeling envious as I saw the skaters stylishly dropping from huge concrete bowls. I mentally returned to the Level in Brighton, where I spent many hours unsuccessfully trying to land a trick, surrounded by familiar faces and the intense smell of weed. There was a huge gap between my memories of skateboarding and the perfectly smooth bowl on the screen. It was numerical and structured; too polished from what I knew as skateboarding. I turned my computer off, incredibly proud of Arisa Trew, Hiraki Cocona and Sky Brown, but feeling slightly detached. How did a sport that started as a form of protest (the legend says that skaters in L.A. would break into rich people’s houses to drain their pools and use them to skate) turn into a $4.8 billion business?

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Salty Brine: These Are The Contents Of My Head (The Annie Lennox Show), Soho Theatre

by Zahid Fayyaz

The New York cabaret star returns to London after the previous success of their Smiths/Frankenstein tribute show, with this personal and sensitive show focusing on Annie Lennox, Judy Garland, as well as Kate Chopin’s groundbreaking feminist novel The Awakening. As part of his Living Record Collection project, all these elements are mixed up with autobiographical elements of his own life, in a stunning 90-minute long cabaret show of real power and sensitivity.

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Seven Drunken Nights: The Story of the Dubliners, Dominion Theatre

by Zahid Fayyaz

Taking over from The Devil Wears Prada at the Dominion Theatre is this special, one-off show in London about The Dubliners, one of Ireland’s biggest and most well-known bands. The story unfolds on a stage done up like the renowned Dublin bar O’Donoghue’s, where the band began their journey in 1962 and contributed to the revival of traditional Irish music. A five-piece band shared the history of the music group, from their early beginnings to almost 50 years later on The Late Late Show in 2008.

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Plied and Prejudice, The Vaults

by Zahid Fayyaz

A hit in Australia, this rowdy and ‘immersive’ adaptation of Pride and Prejudice has now made its way to London, playing in the atmospheric tunnels under Waterloo station. Performed by five actors doing all the parts, this is a fun romp through Jane Austen’s iconic book. There is heavy encouragement from the performers to buy drinks throughout the show to keep the mood up but it’s still plenty of fun.

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A Knock on the Roof, Royal Court

by Zahid Fayyaz

Fresh from acclaimed runs in New York and Edinburgh, the new writing power-house puts on the one-person monologue from actor and writer Khawla Ibraheem. The show relates the struggles of Miriam in her everyday life in Gaza, whilst Israel is taking military action.

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A Good House, Bristol Old Vic

by Joanna Trainor

“I am always performing.”

A tin shack has appeared on an empty patch of land in the exclusive neighbourhood of Stillwater in Cape Town. The only black couple on the cul-de-sac have been elected by the other “concerned residents” to serve an eviction notice.

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The Employees, Southbank Centre

By Luisa De la Concha Montes

What makes us human? Is it the capacity to feel? Or perhaps our experiences, and how we can sew together memories to create an identity that we can call our own? Is it how we develop relationships with other humans? The ease in which we crave proximity, or fall into patterns of desire? The Employees, a play based on the International Booker Prize-nominated novel by Olga Ravn and directed by Polish theatre artist Łukasz Twarkowski, poses these questions to the audience in quite an unconventional manner.

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Cutting the Tightrope, Arcola Theatre

by Luisa De la Concha Montes

Cutting the Tightrope hosts a series of short sketches that are united by the same topic: censorship. It was created as a direct response to the Arts Council England’s now retracted guidance that political statements made by individuals linked to an organisation can cause reputational risks. From the war in Gaza to the rise of authoritarian regimes, each sketch explores the political, social and emotional effects that the lack of freedom of expression may have.

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