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 Zahid Fayyaz
This is a brand new venue in the West End that recently opened in Covent Garden, currently hosting a revue of Stephen Sondheim songs as its opening production. The performance space is upstairs at the Prince of Wales pub. It is a cozy venue with a supper club vibe to it, and the audience is up close and personal to the stage and its performers.
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by Laura Kressly
Best friends Noa and Nina are 17 and have the world at their feet. They are bright, articulate, young women with busy, privileged lives. Despite this, they agonise over the possibility of the world passing them by and whether or not they might actually be quite boring. To manage their worries, they project them – and their queerness – onto a high-conflict romance of their own creation. Set on a contemporary American ranch, scenes from their heightened fiction intersect with the real in entertaining and touching ways.
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by Laura Kressly
In the Stanley Arts bar, Kassi, Ali, and Daphne hype up the audience for the arrival of a group of refugees. They’ve organised a welcoming party but plans change when only one person, Zain, arrives. He’s initially unenthusiastic about being the centre of attention. With some coaxing after hiding the main performance space, he shares his journey from Sudan using puppetry, dance, and narration. The promenade family show is inclusively crafted with striking design, but doesn’t romanticise his journey or patronise family audiences.
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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 Laura Kressly
Revolutions are rarely peaceful. The queer one that unfolds in Charlie Josephine’s expansive new play is no different. Yet, heaps of trans and queer joy contrast this violence. Combined, they make a well-balanced celebration and act of resistance. Set in an isolated mountain town’s saloon during the American Gold Rush, the story is immensely ambitious and imaginative in scope but would benefit from further narrative focusing and addressing a couple of the more difficult themes that arise.
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by Diana Miranda
A darkly humorous play about influencer culture in the AI age, Racheal Ofori’s FLIP! is a witty two-hander that follows the journey of friends Carleen and Crystal, popular co-vloggers who go above and beyond for online fame. After a few hit-and-miss attempts, Carleen starts producing content with FLIP, a new social media platform that utilises advanced AI. The fun satire takes a dark turn, and what follows is an exploration of the lengths people may go to craft an identity appealing to the masses, all for the sake of fame and fortune.
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by Zahid Fayyaz
This is the premiere of an adaptation of the popular 2020 Eliza Clark novel, Boy Parts. A comic thriller, this is the story of Irina. She is a Newcastle-based photographer of young men, and is either a violent killer or a damaged fantasist. It’s never clear which one is the correct interpretation of the main character. This makes the show more fascinating, as it leaves the audience and reader without a sure footing.
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by Michaela Clement-Hayes
Real life can often be bleak, so many of us choose to escape from time to time. Perhaps we do this by reading a book, or going to the theatre. Those few hours of respite allow us to leave our world behind and be anyone we wish to be.
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by Zahid Fayyaz
Having previously created highly acclaimed solo shows in the last year, friends Frankie Thompson and Liv Ello have joined forces to produce a two-hander. Set in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse, the pair play survivors trying to determine who they are and how they fit into this new world. It is a clear nod towards Waiting for Godot. However, this narrative is very loose, and gives way to scenes that are both very funny and moving. These share the pair’s feelings towards society’s expectations on gender and the shape of bodies.
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The Play's The Thing UK 