by guest critic Joanna Trainor
There’s a mole in the secret service.
Neil Connolly is spymaster James Sneezy, and he’s gathered us all to find out who the double agent is. It won’t be easy for the audience though; there are high levels of security to get through, cryptic communications to decipher and definitely no running.
by guest critic Amy Toledano
Highly inventive, energetic and hilarious, Ladyface has every element that a good comedy show should. This one-woman sketch show introduces us to a range of characters, from a rich bratty child who hates poor people, to a quirky girl and her pet prawn, to a poet who performs poetry about her various ailments. Ladyface (aka Lucy Farrett) brings them all along for the ride.
by guest critic Amy Toledano
What would you do if you knew it was your last day on earth? Yeah, neither does Cat. So she walks home. Not to the place she is living. But the place she is from. Continue reading
by guest critic Amy Toledano
Everyone loves a sequel right? Well…. Even if you don’t, Jamie Saves the World 2: Save Harder will have you laughing yourself silly and soon have you forgetting whether you even saw the original.
by guest critic Amy Toledano
60 Minutes After Feeling Sad asks the question, what do you do when you are feeling incredibly sad?
Joz, who we watch in real time, spends the hour exploring the many ways in which a person can try to cheer themselves up.
by guest critic Amy Toledano
One of the more traditional plays at the festival this year, Shell and Davey at the Start and the End is a gentle narrative focusing on our long-term relationships, and the consequences, both positive and negative, of those relationships being turned upside down.
by Laura Kressly
A bird family of a Grandma, Grandpa and their granddaughter are busy waiting for eggs to hatch in their warm, welcoming treetop world. There’s plenty to do – nests to be prepared, worms to be caught and-
A human baby to look after???
Thankfully, there are plenty of children on hand to help!
by Laura Kressly
A girl in a school uniform, Steph, walks into a bar. It’s dark, and empty except for the bartender, Bell. Steph shows Bell a photo of her friend who’s missing and asks if she’s seen her.
This simple transaction, in a world plagued by blackouts in which women and girls disappear, is the start of a quest for a truth much bigger than one missing girl. As much as the standoffish bartender tries to dissuade her, the girl won’t take no for an answer.
by Laura Kressly
VAULT Festival is a place to try new things. Experiment. Develop. Succeed. And fail.
Boy, does Say Something Happened fall into the latter of these aims. This revival of Alan Bennett’s short play – an odd programming choice for such an experimental festival – is a mere 45 minutes. But it feels like I emerge from the show several days later what with how shockingly terrible the performances are.
The three-hander about an idealistic social services worker interviewing an elderly couple for the council’s new register of OAPs probably has something to say about isolation of the elderly within local communities, and the divide between generations. But that’s all but lost within a pace and delivery more akin to a badly programmed robot than human speech.
The acting is either entirely over-egged or flat. The performer playing the council worker is unable to communicate anything resembling genuine human emotion – she pulls an array of faces instead, accompanied by speech so fragmented it’s nearly impossible to follow.The performers playing the older couple are marginally better, if only because they have fewer lines and less nervous dispositions. It’s a painful experience to endure.
The festival can certainly be hit and miss, especially with 400-odd shows spanning eight weeks. But Say Something Happened has missed by so far, it feels more like a poor amdram effort than a work trying to comment on any of the themes it addresses.
Say Something Happened runs through 4 February.
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by guest critic Tom Brocklehurst
We discover H P Lovecraft, cult horror writer from Providence, Rhode Island, standing on the banks of the Providence River in 1910 threatening to drown himself. In an It’s A Wonderful Life-style intervention, the ghost of Edgar Allen Poe (Dominic Allen) arrives to try to talk him around. We then flash forwards through the rest of Lovecraft’s life in this biographical comedy, with Poe helping him along the way.
It sounds like a strange idea for a play, but it’s a suitably bonkers device for a show about a weird man who wrote very weird tales.
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