by guest critic Maeve Campbell
Scouring Broadway forums and Twitter feeds after seeing Pippin at the Southwark Playhouse did not illuminate meaning or clarify an overwhelmingly strange plot. I did, however, find a large cult following for the 1972 American musical, all positing and debating different plot theories. It made me wonder whether Stephen Schwartz’s Pippin is the theatrical equivalent of David Lynch’s Mullholland Drive, and whether this assessment makes it cooler? I’m not so sure.
by guest critic Joanna Trainor
There’s political theatre, and then there’s Stardust.
Arguably the most visually stunning piece to come to the VAULT Festival this year, Blackboard Theatre combine movement, out-of-this-world animations and the power of words to expose the dark world of the Columbian cocaine industry.
by Laura Kressly
Surrounded by darkness, The lower part of Jess Thom’s face is lit by a black hoodie with built-in lights. ‘Cats – biscuit – hedgehog’ frequently punctuate her rapid-fire, stream-of-conscious speech.
by Maeve Ryan
Bismillah! An ISIS Tragicomedy is a consummate two-hander played out entirely in one location: a cell in Iraq, which houses an ‘infidel’ British soldier held by Islamic State. The twist is that the captor in the story is also English, or, as the character says, ‘born in England’. Tension is sustained by the captor/hostage dynamic and the sense of very real violence.
by guest critic Lara Alier
Even though I grew up in Catalonia, my reference of weddings come from watching American romcoms and attending two weddings in England. Despite the fact that I am a hopeless romantic, I feel this tradition is closer to resembling a funfair than a spiritual ceremony and frankly, makes me cringe. Maybe this play was trying to raise this issue. Maybe not.
by guest critic Lara Alier
Forgiveness, guilt and punishment: these words are part of our nature and yet they’re still hard to talk about. The death penalty has always granted me hours of heated arguments. I’ve found our morals are malleable depending on each situation and can stretch or shrink like copper.
by Meredith Jones Russell
Testosterone is an explosive, energetic, riotous exploration of all things male, asking what exactly it means to be a man.
Rhum and Clay Theatre Company has teamed up with Kit Redstone, who wrote the play based on his own experiences as a trans man, and stars as himself. We meet him as he prepares to walk in to that bastion of machismo – the men’s locker room at the gym – for the first time.
by Meredith Jones Russell
Carol and Sue are lifeguards sat out on an appropriately chilly-looking British beach. They make conversation, eat biscuits, and wait for something, anything, to happen. Meanwhile a dog walker scans the sand with his metal detector, pausing occasionally to ponder such issues as the nature of buried things, or which sea creature would have the nicest garden (spoiler alert: Ringo Starr-like, he reckons it’s the octopus). Will these three come together, and how? And what, if any, will the consequences be?
by Laura Kressly
A couple who have been together for either 14 years or 3 weeks argues as the world around them threatens to collapse. Or maybe it’s collapsed already. An Uber driver writes a book about the fall of civilisation. A lonely woman in a hotel room surveys her destructive work in the financial sector.
Time passes and bends and flips. Personal and global crises unfold in an endless cycle of pain and rage.
by guest critic Joanna Trainor
Charles Mallory Hatfield made it rain – and rain and rain and rain.
This is the little-known story* of a man who went from selling sewing machines to controlling the heavens, told through the eyes of a little boy in Manchester. Hatfield would travel to drought-ridden cities with his secret mixture of chemicals and, most of the time, the weather turned.
The Play's The Thing UK 