By guest critic Gregory Forrest
I swear to God the Theatre Upstairs is gonna give me an aneurism. An explosion. Pitch black. Shouts and screams and gunfire. The immediate sense of panic is all consuming, and I don’t blame one lady for having to bow out of Cordelia Lynn’s startling new play One For Sorrow.
by Laura Kressly
A woman stands on a pastel blue stage and starts at the beginning. She tells us a love story – how she met a man in an airport, fell in love and built a life with him. Great jobs, a family, a house, the full works. It’s perfect. Until it’s not.
by Laura Kressly
A newborn lamb lies on the ground. It’s dead. It’s mother will soon follow, but there are others that are still alive or yet to be born, and they need help. Bec and Anna fight for the survival of these tiny creatures as if their lives depend on it.
by NY guest critic Steven Strauss
American dramaphiles tend to view Britain as a hotbed of hyper-verbal and hyper-intellectual plays, especially in comparison to our home-bred musicals that often lack the same resonant depth. This is of course a gross over-generalization with countless exceptions, but personally, I became a card-carrying theatrical anglophile thanks to the massive transatlantic influx of Stoppardian texts in which characters talk talk talk about Serious and Important Ideas.
by guest critic Gregory Forrest
You have goat to be kidding me: the Royal Court’s latest experiment is a tonally-confused take on the Syrian conflict, fake news, and livestock management.
The bleating heart of Liwaa Yazji’s narrative is fascinating. For every son martyred in the ongoing war, local government will provide their grieving family with a goat. Children replaced by milk-laden mammals – it is a compensation scheme of twisted proportions. Local party leader Abu al-Tayyib goes as far as to declare ‘Our vision is for every house in the nation to have its own goat.’
Imagine a world where our inner monologues are voiced at all times. Sure, it would make the world a much louder place and we’d probably always have sore throats. But think of the things we’d hear. The mundane, the extraordinary, the intimate – there would be no secrets, lies or hiding.
Chile has suffered regular bombings since 2005. Unlike the current spate of terrorism the UK is experiencing, more than 80 disparate, domestic anarchist groups have claimed responsibility for these actions. Disaffected by the government and inspired by those before them, they continue to plant their homemade explosives around Santiago.
by guest critic Maeve Campbell
Shon Dale-Jones and Hoipolloi’s Me and Robin Hood has admirable intentions in aiming to raise awareness and money for charity ‘Street Child’. Dale-Jones’ one-man show is a personal narrative, part biography and part discussion on class and wealth divisions in Britain. The mythical medieval do-gooder is a central figure in the piece, an inspiration and obsession for the socially conflicted Dale-Jones.
by guest critic Simona Negretto
When a trauma shatters the crystalline equilibrium and accepted dynamics of a family, is the tendency for the generations that follow to repeat it inescapably or can a single individual react against that?
Alice Birch’s new work, Anatomy of a Suicide, courageously investigates how the suicide of a mother affects the lives of a daughter and a granddaughter, haunts their own motherhood (or causing the lack of it) and their relationships. Simultaneously staging the three intertwined stories of Carol, Anna and Bonnie during three different eras – the 70s, the 90s and the near future – the play ambitiously creates a multidimensional and multi-level world engaging the audience and the actors in an extraordinary and overwhelming tour de force.
Nearly a decade after Jerusalem opened to universal acclaim at The Royal Court, Jez Butterworth finally gives us another masterpiece. A sprawling family/political drama taking place over one day in 1981 rural Armagh, The Ferryman barrels towards a predicable end. But the genius lies in the final scene, where the plot shoots off in a different direction like a rogue firework before exploding. Laden with familial craic, rebel spirit, the complexities of colonialism and rounded off with phenomenal performances, The Ferryman encapsulates the best of contemporary British playwriting.
The Play's The Thing UK 