by Laura Kressly
I haven’t dated since 2004. Yet despite this, I find myself sitting down with a stranger in a restaurant serving up a menu of activities, games and binaural sound prompts instead of food. These are meant to foster an intimate connection with my date, who I have just met courtesy of a cheerfully efficient stage manager/maitre d’.
by Maeve Campbell
Cosmopolitan’s current most-read article is a feature on a $35 maternity dress worn by Megan Markle. This is, as explored in performance artist Paula Varjack’s latest work, an example of post-recession celebrity dressing. Yet mixing a Gucci top with Topshop jeans is a distant dream to those of us who will never be able to afford to wear Gucci.
by Maeve Campbell
If you only go to one Muppet’s Christmas Carol sing-a-long this year make it Sh!t Theatre’s. Goody bags, whiskey and raucous jokes are all provided as we’re escorted through the movie by the charming Biscuit and Mothersole, whose witty subtitles only enhance this festive celluloid masterpiece.
by Maeve Campbell
Leaving the Royal Court after watching Ellie Kendrick’s new play Hole, I overhear another audience member describe feeling like she has just been “hit over the head with a sledgehammer”. It’s a pretty apt description.
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 Jack Solloway
Elephant and Castle is a strange and precariously funny gig-theatre show about the lives of Lillian Henley, a musician and silent film pianist, and her teeth-grinding somnambulist husband, Tom Adams. Whilst this may sound a little far-fetched, the play is very much rooted in the performers’ own experiences. Acting out their relationship, using live music and verbatim sleep recordings, Elephant and Castle dramatizes the bizarre reality of Tom’s slow-wave sleep parasomnia and his relationship with Lillian.
by Laura Kressly
Theatremaker and performance artist Bryony Kimmings hit rock bottom a few years ago. Her relationship was breaking down, her infant son was ill and her mental health was in tatters. To recover from the trauma, her therapist recommended a technique where she replays the traumatic events in her mind like a film. What better way to regularly go through this exercise than perform it every night?
by Laura Kressly
James Rowland’s trilogy about his best mates Tom and Sarah began with Team Viking two years ago on the free fringe. A Hundred Different Words for Love followed, and the story now comes to a close with the funny and tragic process of growing up that begins with donating sperm to Sarah and her partner Emma.
by Laura Kressly
Lucy and her son Raedie have grown apart in recent years. Lucy is worried that her son lacks empathy, and Raedie thinks his mum is full of herself. Both of them love Aussie pop star Sia though, so they use her music, dance and physical theatre to explore their relationship and reconnect with each other in this real-life mother and son show.
By Laura Kressly
The #MeToo movement has proved that male-on-female abuse and assault is far reaching, both in and out of the arts. This year there about 30 shows at the fringe that respond to the movement, and often tell first-hand stories of assault and abuse.
The Play's The Thing UK 