by Zahid Fayyaz
Following on from his success run at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2023, Jason Byrne brings his one-man play to London for a few dates. On a stage set up to look like his dad’s ‘man cave’, with a Perry Como record and red lemonade prominently displayed, it certainly looks the part for what follows.
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by Laura Kressly
Zara is a fiercely intelligent sex worker who runs an Edinburgh brothel as part of a non-hierarchical cooperative. The canny business woman doesn’t seem like she’s rattled by much, until a new client turns out to be one of her former teachers. On top if this, her colleague that he requested is running late due to childcare issues. The dark comedy by Kieran Hurley examines a tangled web of contemporary issues, particularly capitalism, parenting and familial relationships, work, and aging.
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by Laura Kressly
What is love? Riham Isaac wants to know, so she turns to music, old films, interviews, and religious and secular iconography to find out. She in turn shares a collection of ideas of what love is, isn’t or what it might be. The result is a highly visual, multimedia cabaret presenting an international, era-spanning collage of love and romance.
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by Michaela Clement-Hayes
Although often deemed a ‘problem play’, All’s Well That Ends Well can also be said to be progressive. Our heroine gets a lot of stage time, soliloquies and – for want of a better word – sass.
And yet, some of the characters are lacking. We may never know why Shakespeare chose to write them as he did, but (and perhaps because we are not 100% sure of the final play) the idea that Helen and Bertram live ‘happily ever after’ because she’s carrying his child is a bit ridiculous.
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by Laura Kressly
Kate is a 30-something woman in Belfast expecting her first child with her husband, Brendy. At the same time, Northern Ireland and its political parties have announced that peace is finally coming. Though Kate and her country should be looking forward, she is troubled by recurring abdominal pain and memories from her past that threaten the peace she has made for herself.
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by Zahid Fayyaz
This is the first show in the Jermyn Street Theatre’s Encounters season, and they have certainly started it off on a high note. This is a production of one of Alan Ayckbourn’s first plays from 1965, a comedy and farce set around the misunderstandings between two couples. It begins when Greg, keen to propose to his new girlfriend Ginny, decides to travel down to ask her parents for permission, having gleaned their address from a cigarette packet in Ginny’s flat. However, the couple at the address, Phillip and Sheila, are not Ginny’s parents, but Greg fails to cotton onto this – hence the comedic miscommunications.
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by Grace Bouchard
Perhaps one of the most shocking things about Border Control by Michelle Sewell is the fact that it was written five years ago, before Brexit and at the very beginning of the European Migrant Crisis.
By Bryony Rae Taylor
She Is A Place Called Home explores how two sisters simultaneously support and frustrate each other as they prepare for their Dad’s controversial second marriage, which is not good news for his current wife, their mother.
by Amber Pathak
Sukh Ojla brings tonnes of charm to the stage as she takes us through the grievances of a single, 30-something Punjabi woman living with her parents.
by Dora Bodrogi
“But it’s getting better, right?”
This is the question I get the most often when I mention institutionalised homophobia in a country I’ve left, Hungary. And it’s not so bad there in this regard, they ‘only’ have a ban on marriage equality, same-sex joint adoption, and Gender Studies. After all, a Pride march isn’t the same without skinheads booing from the cordons, and pulling out of Eurovision because it doesn’t agree with traditional national values (read: because it’s too gay). It could be worse.
The Play's The Thing UK 