by Brad Tutt
Just before entering the theatre, a member of the company comes out to brief the audience. He there will be a joint audience and company discussion after the performance. This evokes a feeling that we are about to be confronted with something unexpected, which is proved right – by the company performing a live cover of a Rage Against the Machine song.
by Joanna Trainor
“Call me Ishmael.”
There are storytellers, and then there’s Casey Jay Andrews. This is Moby Dick like you’ve never heard it before, but for an epic tale there’s something at the heart of The Wild Unfeeling World that is wholly relatable.
by Emma Lamond
The Archive of Educated Hearts shows a steely determination to deliver a hopeful and uplifting whirlwind tour through the lives of four women affected by breast cancer. Casey Jay Andrews presents this deeply personal, yet painfully universal, experience with the utmost kindness and calm. This provides the audience with a space to celebrate the women who make up the narrative of the piece, and also take time to reflect on their own experiences of cancer.
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by Becky Lennon
This story, based on real-life events, follows the lives of three sisters – Cassie (Alex Brain), Tin (Michaela Murphy) and Kit (Emily McGlynn) – after their mother disappears at a bowling alley. Although the piece focuses on the teenage perspective of the British care system, it also acknowledges the differences within individual families, the value of these differences, and invites us to ask, what makes a family?
by Chris Pickett
Two men on a nearly empty stage, reading aloud scripts from a sitcom first screened over fifty years ago, might not sound like the makings of a great night out. But for fans of the beloved television show, Dad’s Army Radio Show is a genuine treat.
by Grace Bouchard
As I stand to leave, my foot lands on something soft as it squashes into the ground. I pick up my shoe to see a glistening, pink strawberry, now jam, on the floor. That’s a shame, I think to myself. I could have eaten that.
by Euan Vincent
Hunchtheatre have a thing for re-inventing forgotten fiction. Their new production, The Legend of the Holy Drinker, provides a 2020 update to Joseph Roth’s 1939 novella of the same name. It mixes the time-honoured, moral fetishes of the original with the political milieu of our Brexit-addled times.
by Laura Kressly
The Yard is at the forefront of innovative theatre and performance in London, and their NOW festival aims to share some of the most cutting-edge and relevant work being made, well, right now. Week Two presents Ultimate Dancer and Julie Cunningham’s fire bird, a double bill of striking visuals and classical music, with very different moods and styles.
by Grace Bouchard
Heart-thumping music blaring, performers Ayden Brouwers and Lizzie Morris take the stage. As they dance towards each other, vibrant disco lights hitting their slow moving bodies, they ask “How do we look?” and “How do you look?”. It is at this point that we realise why we are here. We are here to look, and to observe. Simply through the act of being in the room with them, I am complicit in demonstrating the impact the cis gaze has on transgender bodies.
by Bryony Rae Taylor
[A]n age-old improvising exercise is the one where two players perform a scene in which each line begins with the next sequential letter of the alphabet.
[B]ecause my review could just be: ‘good improvisers have good nights, and good improvisers have bad nights: BattleActs, an improv group that split into two teams and battle for points, are very good and they had a very good night…’
Instead, here’s what happened on the night I saw them. In alphabetical order.
The Play's The Thing UK 