by Christina Bulford
A long raincoat and a tricorn adorning a nearly-sea-green hat stand set a scene of Cornish domestic bliss. The walls of The Pit drip, and the trains overhead roar like an angry sea. Daniel Drench, Cornwall’s most “prolific and unstable” storyteller invites us to breathe in and forget our busy days – but it’s a false and temporary lulling of our senses before he wakes us up, like a splash of cold sea water to the face.
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.
by Louis Train
“Fuck me, these exotic birds are well shaggable!”
…is actually one of the more enlightened lines in Tom Wright’s new play, My Dad’s Gap Year, under the direction of Rikki Beadle-Blair. Part giddy romp and part failed attempt at progressive theatre, Gap Year’s greatest accomplishment is proving that – solidarity be damned! – LGBT art can be thoughtless, regressive, and ignorant.
by Gregory Forrest
A red velvet chaise-lounge is a telling symbol. Positioned in the middle of the stage, the piece of furniture manages to evokes tacky luxury, softcore porn, and casting couch culture all at once. It is just one example of how smart Tom Ratcliffe’s one man show Velvet is.
by Joanna Trainor
“Humans should fuck the men they want, move on, no hurt feelings.”
I recently went to a play written by a white man, with an entirely white, three quarters male cast and the audience was pretty reflective of that. Well, here’s a piece by a female South East Asian writer, starring three Asian women and the room looks like we’re actually sat in London.
by Louis Train
Thomas is, in the words of its creator, “a story that’s as much for those on the spectrum as it is for people who aren’t.” The spectrum in this case is the Autistic Spectrum, and Thomas is an honest, open, and confident look at what life can be like for people who experience the world a bit differently.
by Christina Bulford
Using Nabokov’s 1955 Lolita as a springboard, Hannah Nixon’s new play Lola asks questions of our era and the threats it poses to young women. This Lola however, born out of the 21st century and not the mid-twentieth, gets to answer back. And she doesn’t just answer, she roars.
by Laura Kressly
It’s no secret that the social class system in this country has marginalised the working classes, with women pushed to the absolute fringes of society. To the world outside their immediate circle, sometimes no bigger than the street they live on, they are invisible. Solo shows Opal Fruits and Dangerous Lenses, though radically different in style, seek to change that by centering the working class woman’s experiences and demanding attention for those wilfully forgotten.
by Christina Bulford
Ah, how it felt to be just 17… Given the chance would you do it again? How about with the technology we have now? Social media offers us tools to connect – but these are also tools of destruction.
by Laura Kressly
Orson Welles’ 1938 broadcast of The War of Worlds caused widespread panic with its reports of an alien invasion in New Jersey. Or did it? Did the newspapers exaggerate the reaction to sell papers, the way websites now use clickbait for hits?
The Play's The Thing UK 