by Laura Kressly
I contemplate a ratty t-shirt displayed on a podium alongside several other seemingly random items. I’m asked to write down how much I would pay for it. Determining it’s not something I’d wear or have any other use for, I wrote £0 on a slip of paper that I slid into a box behind it.
by Romy Foster
The Dark is an exhilarating and personal journey through the dusty backroads of Uganda in 1979. Jumping between then and present day, Michael Balogun tenderly tells author Nick Makoha’s story of how he and his mother escaped the terror of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s reign and crossed the border heading for the UK when he was four years old.
by Nastazja Somers
Born in 1913 in Koscice, Slovakia, Ján Ladislav Kalina was a man of theatre and art. He
lived the bohemian life that young people in Eastern Europe romanticise when they get lost in the works of Milan Kundera. Jan is Miriam’s grandfather, and in many ways his story, is that of my grandfather too. Miriam is a theatre-maker. Rendezvous in Bratislava is her ode to what’s lost and what’s remembered.
By Amy Toledano
Cuckoo by Lisa Carroll has all the elements of a wonderful coming-of-age story. Set in a small Irish town, this play packs many a punch, giving us a raw look at what it means to not fit in, to feel lonely in your hometown and how as a teenager, the need to be liked can seem more important than anything else.
By Laura Kressly
A woman sits at a drawing table analysing jigsaw puzzle pieces under an anglepoise lamp. On the other side of the stage, another woman rhythmically bounces on a small trampoline. What starts off as just another post-narrative, young theatre piece becomes a satisfyingly layered work questioning subjects as wide-ranging as ableism, friendship and polarising opinions.
By Laura Kressly
How can we radically reinvent myths and classic literature? I mean, really radically – not in a box ticking way, or a modernisation the production wears like a piece of costume that doesn’t really change the thematic core of the story. I mean thoroughly, totally, completely. So all traces of horrible ‘isms’ and ‘ists’ are either reframed or criticised.
by Maeve Campbell
Pinter Four continues Jamie Lloyd’s Pinter at the Pinter season with the Lyndsey Turner directed Moonlight starring Robert Glenister as ta dying patriarch who bemoans his family’s absence at his death bed to his long suffering wife (Brid Brennan). The second half play Night School, directed by Ed Stambollouian, is a totally different beast from a different Pinter era. Al Weaver plays a disgruntled ex-fraudster who discovers, on his release from prison, that his aunts have let out his bed-room to a mysterious and glamourous young school teacher (Jessica Barden).
by Meredith Jones Russell
Tamsin Greig steals the show in the star-studded third instalment of the six-month season of Harold Pinter’s short plays.
Pinter Three features 11 plays, allowing director Jamie Lloyd to vary tone, pace and style with shorter, more amusing sketches bookended by two more heavyweight works; Landscape and A Kind of Alaska.
by Amy Toledano
There have been several different mediums focusing on the story of the female prisoner, especially from the US and Gilded Butterflies, while following this same theme, pays particular attention to the prisoner herself. It gives her story a voice and allows for a deeper understanding of her perspective. This two-hander is a lovely exploration of not believing everything you hear.
by Amy Toledano
Baby by MKEC Productions follows a year in the life of three couples as they experience the world of childbirth, from their struggles with conception, to difficulties in their relationships and within themselves as individuals. This talented cast does their best with this dated book and ideas, and attempts to bring the 1983 Broadway hit into the 21st century.
The Play's The Thing UK 