by Lara Alier
Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre is a feast for all five senses. From feeling the early summer breeze in your face, to smelling the woodiness of the gigantic trees that surround the stage, it’s all a treat, really. It’s such a delight that it almost became more seductive than the play.
By Laura Kressly
Musical theatre excels at turning an otherwise serious subject into an extravaganza of high camp. Though it’s easy to dismiss such approaches as light and frivolous, SpitLip – a new company formed by members from Kill the Beast and Felix Hagen & the Family – tell the true story of a British intelligence operation with plenty of panache and satirical social commentary (and heaps of high camp) in this smashing new show.
by Meredith Jones Russell
In this post-Cumberbatch age, you can’t help but feel slightly sorry for any actor taking on the role of Sherlock Holmes. The BBC series has provided such a defining image of Holmes to a generation that one wonders why a company might take on another rehash of a Conan Doyle classic.
By an anonymous guest critic
Alix Sobler’s new play is a full-length fairy tale based on the true case of Princess Alexandra of Bavaria, born in 1826, who convinced herself that as a child she had swallowed a full-size, glass, grand piano.
By Louis Train
Reading’s Progress Theatre introduces two original plays to the world this year with their annual Progress Premieres event: The Equivocators, an historical drama by Dan Clarke, and Peter’s Wife, a new social comedy by Christine Moran.
by Laura Kressly
A man who may or may not be King Edward II finds himself on a stage, with an audience watching and waiting to see what happens next. He has no idea where he is or how he got there, but he’s in good company. Gertrude Stein, Quentin Crisp and Harvey Milk are locked in with him, and they’re none the wiser as well. They all want to get out, but something sinister wants to get in and they can’t to escape until they determine why they’re there in the first place.
by Louis Train
When I told my mother I was moving to Russia, she sighed and reminded me that to her, Eastern Europe was a cemetery. Her grandparents had fled during the Russian Civil War, and her parents had grown up watching details of the Holocaust emerge, night by night, like a dark beacon announcing the violent and final end of Jewish life in Eastern Europe.
by Laura Kressly
It’s no secret that history has been written by rich white men, and anyone not a rich white man is sidelined in textbooks and scholarship. Though institutions are starting to decolonise and de-centre the narrative that is widely taken as fact, women still aren’t getting the attention they deserve and change is slow. In 10, playwright Lizzie Milton wants to redress the balance. The potted stories of 10 women who have been largely forgotten in the passage of time unfold in choral celebration, serving to both educate and enlighten audiences.
by Hailey Bachrach
SIX knows exactly what it’s doing wrong, which is what makes it so aggravating. After an hour of catty jostling between the six ex-wives of King Henry VIII, who are competing in song to see who had the worst time of it, the show turns around and tries to scold itself for pitting the women against each other. It’s the ultimate in cheap, have-your-cake-and-eat-it moments: get the laughs, then admit they were lazy ones.
by Laura Kressly
In 2014, Mark and Marichka Marczyk met in Kyiv as protesters fighting against the Ukraine’s corrupt government. As riot police marched against citizens standing up to their rulers, the pair fell in love.
The Play's The Thing UK 