by Zahid Fayyaz
This summer production is Billy Porter’s directorial debut, starring Omari Douglas and Alexander Lincoln. Harrison David River’s two-hander follows the story of Jessie and Neil and their tragic love story in the turbulent period of 2012-2017. The play cuts between different parts of the couple’s relationship, from the highs and lows, with a background consisting of the end of Obama’s presidency and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
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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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by Zahid Fayyaz
A massive hit at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, this new play by Julia Grogan has now come to London for a three-week engagement. It is a three-hander, following the lives of three school friends, Lucy, Zainab and Keira, over a 10 year period during their adolescence and young adulthood. Beginning from just before their GCSEs, the last scene takes place post-university. The story is staged around a striking pink ladder in the middle of the stage that signifies an ancient tree the characters climb and gather around.
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by Laura Kressly
Best friends Noa and Nina are 17 and have the world at their feet. They are bright, articulate, young women with busy, privileged lives. Despite this, they agonise over the possibility of the world passing them by and whether or not they might actually be quite boring. To manage their worries, they project them – and their queerness – onto a high-conflict romance of their own creation. Set on a contemporary American ranch, scenes from their heightened fiction intersect with the real in entertaining and touching ways.
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by Laura Kressly
Revolutions are rarely peaceful. The queer one that unfolds in Charlie Josephine’s expansive new play is no different. Yet, heaps of trans and queer joy contrast this violence. Combined, they make a well-balanced celebration and act of resistance. Set in an isolated mountain town’s saloon during the American Gold Rush, the story is immensely ambitious and imaginative in scope but would benefit from further narrative focusing and addressing a couple of the more difficult themes that arise.
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by Zahid Fayyaz
Winner of Drag Race UK this year, Lancaster’s Ginger Johnson celebrates her victory with a Christmas residency for most of December and the first week of January. Ably accompanied by the wonderful Sarah Rose on the keys, this is a technicolour riot of music, comedy and fabulous costumes.
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by Laura Kressly
It’s getting late and raining hard, so most people have settled in for the night. Instead of a quiet one, playwright Paula B Stanic’s world premiere takes us to Croydon, where an array of night shift staff are working. We meet a huge host of Deaf and hearing people, including an emergency services dispatcher, a delivery driver, a DJ, a doctor, and a train driver who keep the borough moving whilst everyone else sleeps. As the storm floods the streets, the disparate collection of characters struggle to get their work done and battle with their own demons across short scenes and movement sequences.
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by Zahid Fayyaz
Having previously created highly acclaimed solo shows in the last year, friends Frankie Thompson and Liv Ello have joined forces to produce a two-hander. Set in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse, the pair play survivors trying to determine who they are and how they fit into this new world. It is a clear nod towards Waiting for Godot. However, this narrative is very loose, and gives way to scenes that are both very funny and moving. These share the pair’s feelings towards society’s expectations on gender and the shape of bodies.
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by Luisa De la Concha Montes
Led by the Wind is a queer story that follows K (Kiki Ye), a young woman from Fuyang, China living in the United Kingdom. She has been convinced by her family back home to go on a blind date with Bryan (He Zhang), who, according to her family’s standards, is the perfect husband material. As their relationship progresses K starts zoning out, sinking deeper into beautiful dreamscapes with Windy (Vivi Wei), a mysterious woman that represents K’s deepest queer desires. In order to unveil the process of writing this piece, and to deconstruct the complexity of K’s character, I caught up with director Kiki Ye.
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by an anonymous guest critic
Hannah Maxwell is back at the Fringe with her second show after 2019’s charming I, AmDram. This one is similar. It’s about what happened next for Hannah – moving back to Luton to care for her recently bereaved grandma. A show about 30-something angst, obsession and stalking should not be charming, but Maxwell manages to make it so.
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The Play's The Thing UK 