by Christina Bulford
The Salem witch trials of late 17th century America are infamous. In just a little over a year, more than 200 people were accused in the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut alone. Nineteen of those were found guilty and executed by hanging, but more died in jail or under torture. The death rate could have been higher still but we’ll never know, most court records were destroyed or lost. It remains the deadliest witch hunt in US history.
by Laura Kressly
I haven’t dated since 2004. Yet despite this, I find myself sitting down with a stranger in a restaurant serving up a menu of activities, games and binaural sound prompts instead of food. These are meant to foster an intimate connection with my date, who I have just met courtesy of a cheerfully efficient stage manager/maitre d’.
by Amy Toledano
Real-life couple Amy Elliot and Scott Kettner have written a show about love and the borders that are physically and mentally between them. However this show lacks the comedy, strong narrative and emotion promised, and instead paints an image that is unrealistic, strange and miss-represented.
By an anonymous guest critic
As the audience enters the small studio space, we see a young man scribbling animatedly on a legal pad. Whether he’s mentally troubled or just in an intense creative state, we’re not sure. The mystery of this young man named Trevor (played by the play’s author Scott Howland) unravels over the course of the next hour in this new production directed by Harriet Taylor.
By Laura Kressly
What would you be willing to give up to pay a mere £800 for a spacious, 2-bedroom flat with a view of St Paul’s from one room and Westminster from another? How about your privacy? Tom and Ed love the place at first sight, but Tom is rather put off by the cameras in every room that a grinning estate agent assures are for security purposes.
by Gregory Forrest
Set against the racial tensions of the 2001 Oldham riots, Kings of Idle Land is a Romeo and Juliet reworking, in which tinnies, crisp packets, and roll-ups become a kind of love potion for two nervous young men.
by Laura Kressly
There’s a world of difference between London and the impoverished estates in Britain’s small towns. Mickey grew up on one in Hartlepool, a place famous for its historic execution of a monkey mistaken for a Frenchman, the more recent fraud case committed by John ‘Canoe Man’ Darwin, and not much else. Some of the town’s citizens maintain its xenophobic, monkey-slaughtering legacy in the form of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant protests, even though they’ve never met anyone off the estate. Micky escaped these attitudes through a successful career as a children’s entertainer – or so he thought.
by Romy Foster
Nicôle Lecky’s play is an 85-minute, one-woman emotional tornado. She rip-roars across the stage as Sasha Clayton, a typical hell-raising London girl who is 24 and feels like she’s going nowhere with her life. (Hello, did someone say relatable?) Sasha is an aspiring musician who finds herself at a loss and becomes homeless when her ‘perfect’ family kick her out and move to Kent. It’s at this point that she beings to slip into the seemingly enticing world of sex work and the luxuries that come with it.
By Meredith Jones Russell
Idiosyncratic, eccentric, fearless and alien-like are just a few of the descriptors a rudimentary Google search of Tilda Swinton will throw up. Based on these, Byron Lane’s Tilda Swinton Answers an Ad on Craigslist has absolutely captured the essence of an icon. It has undoubtedly created a new one, too.
By Meredith Jones Russell
Mancoin is a dark social satire that pokes fun at the contradictions of ‘wokeness’, and more specifically the supposedly enlightened, woke white male who harbours secret resentment for a life spent checking his own privilege.
The Play's The Thing UK 