After growing up on Disney films, Chris’ aim in life is singular and simple: to live happily ever after. He thinks he achieves it when he meets Ryan as a newly qualified Drama teacher in Cambridge. For five happy years, the pair live a life akin to a fairytale. But as Chris discovers, not all fairytales end happily.
By guest critic Michaela Clement-Hayes
Rule number one: We do not ask questions about Project Mayhem.
Rule number two: We do not ask questions about Project Mayhem.
And of course, we do not talk about Project Mayhem, which makes it fairly tricky to review Secret Theatre Project. I mean I don’t want them to kill me, or my loved ones. And anyway I’m 100% committed to the cause…unlike most of the audience who stood around like gormless children getting embarrassed if anyone spoke to them.
By guest critic Nastazja Somers
Andrew Maddock, the writer behind the hugely successful IN/OUT (a feeling) has a great talent for creating fully developed and multi-layered characters that don’t come from privileged backgrounds. Not often enough do we see stories of working class people explored beyond the mundane on stage. Directed by Niall Phillips, OLYMPILADS, Maddock’s new play is set in Wembley during the 2012 Olympics. It examines the lives of three siblings, all of whom dream about running away from their fears.
We all know the world is fucked. But who can we blame? In Ontroerend Goed’s £¥€$ (LIES), they blame the global banking system.
More of an interactive gaming event than a performance, LIES splits the audience into six groups of seven. Each group sits around a semi-circular wooden gaming table helmed by a performer-cum-games master. Each table is a nation, and each person is a bank in that nation. To grow our nations’ economies, we must grow out banks.
by guest critic Simona Negretto
In 1949, George Orwell lived the final months of his life in University College Hospital due to a severe case of tuberculosis. Torn between an uncertain faith in a recovery and the consciousness of the approaching end, hoping to write again, he decided to marry Sonia Brownell, a young and beautiful magazine editor. The marriage, as the play keeps reminding us, was a sort of pragmatic contra-deal conceived more out of interests than of love.
In Duluth, Minnesota, ships, trains and buses come and go under a sweeping midwestern sky heavy with snow. It’s 1934, the height of the Great Depression. A desperate, drifting populace chase the shadows of their debtors and rumours of work in and out of the port city.
A middle-aged, gay Welshman contemplates the English class he teaches in Hong Kong. Amongst the students is Windy, the Chinese woman with whom he shares his bed. Utterly smitten with her, he refers to her as his Pocahontas. He then kisses a barbie doll with long black hair and tanned skin.
Pocahontas was a Native American woman kidnapped by the colonising English in the 1600s, forced to marry, then taken to Britain. The same woman bore her husband a child then died, aged 21, after contracting a European illness.
Women don’t always talk about men.
Women don’t always talk about men.
Women don’t always talk about men.
It bears repeating because it’s often forgotten, ignored or not believed. Popular culture is particularly deaf to the sentiment, and theatre still likes to rely on this inaccurate gender trope. Whilst this has been slowly changing for some time, particularly on the fringe, it’s still a problem.
by guest critic Maeve Campbell
In 2011 Osama Bin Laden was killed, Pope John Paul II was beautified, and Kate and Wills tied the knot. Nearly as many people watched another televised wedding that year as a new reality-TV religion swept the globe. This is where The Marriage of Kim K, a new opera penned by Leoe Mercer and Steven Hyde, begins.
Nearly two years ago, Bj McNeill’s torn apart (dissolution) premiered at Theatre N16. Aussie/Polish company No Offence have since developed the feminist show over subsequent runs. But how much have they improved since their first go?
The Play's The Thing UK 