Hear Me Howl, Vault Festival

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by Laura Kressly

Jess’s has a comfortable life. The 29-year-old has a good job, a partner, a home (that she rents, of course – she’s not that lucky) and her mum lives nearby. She keeps busy with nights out, mate’s hen dos and watching Love Island curled up on the couch with her boyfriend Taj and a pack of Hobnobs. She’s happy.

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Juniper and Jules, Vaults Festival

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by Laura Kressly

I can’t stop smiling at the memory of the audience almost entirely composed of lesbian couples. Though not a rare thing to see a fringe theatre audience made up mainly of women, the hand holding and cuddling happening around the room indicates there’s something special about this play.

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Time is Love/Tiempo es Amor, Finborough Theatre

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by Laura Kressly

There’s so much humanity in the seedy underbellies of cities that’s easily sneered at by the white middle classes. Yet sex workers and drug dealers, corrupt cops and pterodactyls in Che Walker’s LA prevent the city from becoming a sterile, corporate hell occupied solely by the rich.

Yes, pterodactyls.

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The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale, Camden People’s Theatre

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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.

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Hadestown, National Theatre

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By Laura Kressly

How can we radically reinvent myths and classic literature? I mean, really radically – not in a box ticking way, or a modernisation the production wears like a piece of costume that doesn’t really change the thematic core of the story. I mean thoroughly, totally, completely. So all traces of horrible ‘isms’ and ‘ists’ are either reframed or criticised. 

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The Distance You Have Come, Cockpit

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by Amy Toledano

Scott Alan is a long-standing cult favourite amongst musical theatre enthusiasts and his most recent song cycle The Distance You Have Come weaves in his most popular numbers with some newer ones. But whilst this cast is stellar, the ‘story’ is a little bit of a stretch. It’s the songs and actors that make this show most enjoyable.

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The Art of Gaman, Theatre503

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by Laura Kressly

Tomomi stands on the prow of a ship with arms flung open, ready to embrace a new life as a Hollywood actress. There’s something of Kate Winslet in Titanic about her unfaltering determination and hope – and that seminal pose, of course. When an older man disturbs her quiet reflection on the fish feeding below the water’s surface and her need for acting compared to their need for water, her destiny is forever altered.

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Adam, Battersea Arts Centre

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By Laura Kressly

Adam Kashmiry is a man that was born in Egypt in a woman’s body. From a young age, he knew his soul didn’t align with the gender he was assigned at birth, but it wasn’t until he discovered the internet as a teenager that he found a word for this.

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An Adventure, Bush Theatre

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by Laura Kressly

Jyoti crouches on the floor rearranging five photographs, frowning with much consternation. A man emerges from the storm outside, awkward and in an ill-fitting suit. Jyoti must decide if this is the man whose promises of an adventure in the one who will change her life forever, or if it is to be another. But chose she must, for it’s 1954 in India and her father needs the extra income that will come from marrying off his daughter.

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