by Diana Miranda
Death and The Cat, directed by Penny Gkritzapi, explores life’s ultimate and inevitable outcome – death – wrapped with absurdist humour and a surprising amount of heart. Robert Emlyn Slater’s debut play gives life (ironically) to Death. What starts as a comedy full of quirky characters slowly reveals itself as a deeper reflection on questions about what infinity means, and how the power of connection may ground our search for meaning within the immeasurable.
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by Laura Kressly
Even if our relationships with our parents aren’t fraught, they’re often complicated. In the case of the unnamed character in this solo show, his father never accepted his deafness and refused to learn sign language. He rehashes and reckons with this resentment as he ritually washes his father’s body, but other memories show he and his father loved each other. Using movement, creative captioning and projections, the production dives deep into the emotional landscape of a parent’s death to immensely moving effect.
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by Zahid Fayyaz
The Adelphi Theatre was the site of the UK-wide tour of a talk from ‘the Scottish detective,’ David Swindle. The advertising for the Back to the Future musical in the lobby made for an interesting contrast to the show that the audience was filing in for. It was a basic set for the talk, with just a desk and a bookshelf, and very few bells and whistles. Swindle mainly talks but uses some illustrations from newspaper clippings and video excerpts of murderers giving interviews, and clips of the bodies being discovered.
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by Laura Kressly
We have time, and life is short. It’s ok to make mistakes, and every choice has a consequence. Self-care is important and so is hitting milestones. These conflicting truisms living within us inform small decisions and big ones. As actor/writer Hayley McGee demonstrates, they are often the root of our greatest pleasures and most suffocating griefs. Her monologue narrating an unnamed person’s life, from age 25 through the years after the they die, hones in on key episodes that irrevocably define them and their future, as well as drawing attention to death’s inevitability. As sombre as this piece is, it also adeptly encapsulates moments of joy. As a whole, it’s deeply human and beautifully performed.
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by Laura Kressly
When one of their friends died, theatre company Ugly Bucket navigated their grief the only way they knew how – by making a show. Using clowning and physical comedy, an ensemble of five flit between a dying man and his family, an afterlife of jagged pink gravestones where they playact a life cycle, various ways people die and depictions of people dealing with death. It’s both funny and immensely sad, as well as a sophisticated reflection on how we process loss and our own mortality.
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by Diana Miranda
New Celts Productions and Oddly Ordinary Theatre Company presents their take on pool (no water), a show that delves into the drive that a group of artists find in envy and ambition after an incident with one of their friends, the successful one. Written by Mark Ravenhill, the script has no assigned parts for any specific character. This leaves freedom for each production to explore and devise the motivations behind the text, as if the lines themselves were abstract protagonists that take human shape when a show sets them in motion.
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by Laura Kressly
Women’s anger is often expected to be suppressed or contained rather than be unleashed on the world. Otherwise, we risk being labelled ‘crazy’ or ‘a bitch’, no matter what injustice we experience. But Femi can’t hold it in anymore. The night before the group of white men who killed her killed her brother Seun on Margate’s beach face charges of manslaughter, his ghost visits her to share the truth of his death. Initially baffled by her dead brother’s appearance, she is transformed into an embodied fury that cannot and will not stop until she gets revenge.
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by Evangeline Cullingworth
Molly is working things out. But grief is difficult, comedy is difficult and trying to stop your dead boyfriend’s grandma from assassinating the president is difficult.
by Laura Kressly
In a recent article, Nick Chater explains that the majority of people aren’t likely to rebel against tyrannical governments. Most of us are predisposed to follow rules, no matter how arbitrary they are. We might think that we would lead a revolution, but in all likelihood, most of us will do what we’re told.
by Isabel Becker
What starts off as a razzle-dazzle cabaret musical, full of mockery of his ever-so-gay charm, darling, and name-in-lights showbiz dreams, Simon David’s play soon becomes a deeply personal meditation on life, death and art, often jutting between extremes before we even know it.
The Play's The Thing UK 