The Boring Room, VAULT Festival

by guest critic Joanna Trainor

Nine characters, three stories, one not-so-boring room.

Loosely linked by themes of crime and mystery, The Boring Room is made up of three unusual pieces that finish moments before a satisfying ending. A door is about to open, a decision made, a body buried and the audience are plunged into darkness.

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Othello, Unicorn Theatre

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by guest critic Hailey Bachrach

Ignace Cornelissen’s Henry the Fifth, which was at the Unicorn Theatre in 2015, remains one of my favourite versions of that play ever. Setting King Henry’s French wars in a sandbox, Cornelissen simplified without dumbing-down the central themes of Shakespeare’s play.

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The Internet Was Made for Adults, VAULT Festival

by guest critic Joanna Trainor

A cabaret, but also Tinder, and a break up, sending nudes, watching porn for the first time and embracing or fearing female sexuality. The Internet was Made for Adults squashes a few too many storylines into one 70-minute show, some of which have almost nothing to do with the internet at all. Individually they would all make interesting and important subjects for a play, but crammed together it’s too disjointed to really
enjoy.

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Boys, VAULT Festival

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by guest critic Ava Davies

Boys, the inaugural piece by physical theatre group The PappyShow, is about exactly that. It’s an exploration of manhood, of masculinity, of what it means to be a man of colour in the UK today. It’s about mess and silliness and play and pain. It’s about the complexity of selfhood – because how can one man possibly contain all these multitudes?

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