Hamilton, Victoria Palace Theatre

https://www.standard.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_large/public/thumbnails/image/2017/12/07/09/hamilton-london-cast-3.jpg

Let’s get this out of the way first – does Hamilton live up to the hype? Yes. It’s very good. Though the revolution in the plot doesn’t influence the dramaturgy, that doesn’t mean it’s not a fantastic show that musically updates the genre and skillfully triggers a spectrum of emotions. It’s simultaneously epic and intimate, staged surprisingly simply with striking, sculptural choreography and utterly engaging throughout.

But this pro-immigration, hip-hop reinvention of the all-American musical about a country gaining independence from a distant, tyrannical overlord resonates rather differently in Brexit Britain than it does in America. Forget the NHS bus – could Hamilton be the new symbol of the Leave campaign?

Continue reading

FCUK’D, The Bunker

Will Mytum in FCUK'D. Photo: Andreas Lambis

A young man waits impatiently for his little brother Matty to finish school. Alone on a football pitch amongst piles of dead leaves, he frets over his alcoholic mum, the state of their home and the letter from social services informing them that Matty will be taken away.

Continue reading

Feature | Addiction and the Audience in People, Places & Things

https://i0.wp.com/thestagereview.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Denise-Hough-and-company-in-People-Places-Things.-Photo-by-Johan-Persson..png?fit=1234%2C819&ssl=1

by guest critic Steven Strauss

Heaps of deserved praise has been showered on Jeremy Herrin’s production of Duncan Macmillan’s People, Places & Things, with much directed at Denise Gough’s thrillingly committed performance of a struggling actor in rehab. Yet after seeing it at Wyndham’s Theatre in mid-2016 then its New York City run this year, it’s easy to see there’s more to it than Gough. A second, transatlantic viewing proves just how thoroughly the production theatricalises addicts’ experiences in order to generate audience empathy with the struggle to overcome addiction.

Continue reading

The Tin Soldier, Festival Theatre Edinburgh

http://www.heraldscotland.com/resources/images/7178408/

by guest critic Liam Rees

Birds of Paradise Theatre Company’s The Tin Soldier is a charming and inclusive alternative to the traditional pantomime. As a company specialising in making work with disabled people, it makes sense for the company to have chosen to adapt Hans Christian Andersen’s story as it’s one of the few children’s stories to feature a disabled protagonist.

Continue reading

Expat Underground, Tristan Bates Theatre

https://www.londontheatre1.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ex-pat-underground600-min.jpg

by guest critic Kudzanayi Chiwawa

Expat Underground tells the story of a modern day Italian migrant, who having ventured to London, the “Shiny Eldorado”, finds herself struggling with the metamorphosis from Italian to British, whilst still remaining Italian – a familiar journey for many who find themselves new in London.

Continue reading

How to Disappear, Traverse Theatre

https://i0.wp.com/www.heraldscotland.com/resources/images/7167662.jpg

by guest critic Liam Rees

Initially How to Disappear seems to be a new addition to the classic, British State-of- the-Nation plays in its searing critique of the government’s welfare policy. But Morna Pearson has great fun in turning the genre on its head with a twist that is so central to the play that I can’t avoid including spoilers.

Continue reading

The Acid Test, Cockpit Theatre

https://sixtwists.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/img_1796.jpg

Jess, Dana and Ruth are living it up in a London flatshare. Fresh out of uni, they’re drinking and partying like it’s their job and generally loving life. But their blissful bubble is burst when Jess comes home with her dad in tow after her mum kicked him out of the house. As the night wears on and Jim joins in with his daughter and her flatmates’ antics, ugly truths are revealed in each of the four characters and there’s no going back.

Continue reading

The Tin Drum, Shoreditch Town Hall

https://theatreweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/TAN11841.jpg

Oskar is a child of myth and legend. Or maybe he’s just bad-tempered and noisy. Either way, he comes into a fictional world of darkening shadows that’s clearly pre-WWII Europe. Born with a fully adult brain, he looks down on most people around him but has simple, childish request – that his mother buys him a tin drum.

Continue reading

Freddie, Ted, and the Death of Joe Orton, London Theatre Workshop

https://cdn.thestage.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/01170058/JoeOrton-700x455.jpg

Freddie and Ted are a couple in 1960’s Brighton. At the start of their relationship, homosexuality is illegal so the two pretend that young musician Ted is older Freddie’s lodger. As time passes, equality is recognised and Ted grows up. The progressive young man is idealistic and forward-thinking, whilst his partner is stuck in the past. As tension builds between them, rifts form that might be too deep to be repaired.

Continue reading