by guest critic Jo Trainor

Nonsense. Complete and utter, glorious, nonsense. This was Brendan Murphy’s very first outing of Bagmanimous and it was an hour of brilliantly silly joy. 

Man dates, “That’s limes”, and a list of famous sharks. The Bag Man, teaches the audience how to be gracious in defeat, and magnanimous in victory by putting the room through its paces. There are magical quests, intense quiz rounds, and bag inspections, and although we don’t do tremendously well, the Bag Man tells us all we’d learnt something new which is just as important. The show is team effort so get ready to participate. 

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By guest critic Martin Pettitt

Set in a dingy nightclub office in the late 1990s, owner George is battling to save his club, Tardis, on its busiest night of the year. As the club is set to be filled with celebrities, he is stuck between his overdue rent payments and the money he owes to gangster Dave Sharky. Joined by friend and tenant Nick, they try to come up with a solution to the ever-worsening situation.

The stage set consists of a table littered with various paraphernalia: bottles of alcohol, drugs, a teddy bear and a mounted dildo. The action takes place in this space over the period of a night where everything is at stake. George is a well-travelled fraudster and neurotic and Nick is an artist obsessed with making plaster casts of ladies arseholes – the juxtaposition makes for a fun dynamic.  

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By guest critic Jo Trainor

It’s 1948. The body of a woman has been found tied to a train track, and a French manuscript has been sent to the police station investigating the crime. A little British village is still struggling with the aftermath of WW2, but in their midst is a man who’s hiding from his own war efforts.

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