Ladyface, VAULT Festival

by guest critic Amy Toledano

Highly inventive, energetic and hilarious, Ladyface has every element that a good comedy show should. This one-woman sketch show introduces us to a range of characters, from a rich bratty child who hates poor people, to a quirky girl and her pet prawn, to a poet who performs poetry about her various ailments. Ladyface (aka Lucy Farrett) brings them all along for the ride.

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Police Cops in Space, VAULT Festival

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by guest critic Tom Brocklehurst

The Pretend Men return with a ridiculous sequel to their action-packed police parody. Don’t worry if you missed the first one – you should still get a ticket to this! Done with parodying cop shows, we now get references to The Terminator, Blade Runner and Star Wars – to name but a few of the references.

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Dietrich: Natural Duty, VAULT Festival

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by guest critic Tom Brocklehurst

A one wo(man) show by Peter Groom, Natural Duty focuses on Marlena Dietrich’s involvement with the US war effort during World War II. During the war, she spent several years at the front line in France, Belgium and Germany, improving troops’ morale by performing shows and meeting soldiers.

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The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, VAULT Festival

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by guest critic Lauren Gauge

At it’s best The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha is a one of the most ridiculously fun, liberating examples of interactive, ensemble storytelling. Though the narrative is intrinsic and the episodic adventures of Don Quixote are told with great clarity and comedy, the novel the production is based on is not the main attraction, nor is it important that one knows the original material.

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You Having Olaf?, VAULT Festival

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by guest critic Amy Toledano

A stage dressed with cardboard cut outs of Donald Trump, three members of One Direction and a children’s play house are just some of the elements that make up this monologue of a recovering children’s entertainer. Joseph Cullen, or put more plainly Joe, who enters the space in a complete Princess Leia outfit, introduces himself to us as exactly this, and then continues to surprise us from that moment on.

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Tumulus, VAULT Festival

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by guest critic Gregory Forrest

A serial murderer is killing [victim trope] and the police won’t listen. Now, a hero must find justice in his own way [he’s usually male], unaware that by digging up secrets he will soon become the killer’s next target. It is the worn-out plot of a thousand films. And it is the same tired story which is is given a jolt of electricity by Tumulus at Vault Festival.

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Alien Land, VAULT Festival

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by Laura Kressly

Saeed is a Bedouin Palestinian refugee, currently in prison. With no one to speak to, his imagination conjures all sorts of beings and memories. He tells the walls his family history and remembers an old man, a donkey, and and a faceless alien. But this disjointed piece takes too long to come together, and the chosen style confuses and disorientates rather than fully rallies the audience to his side.

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