Ian Done a Bad Thing, VAULT Festival

by guest critic Lara Alier

Forgiveness, guilt and punishment: these words are part of our nature and yet they’re still hard to talk about. The death penalty has always granted me hours of heated arguments. I’ve found our morals are malleable depending on each situation and can stretch or shrink like copper.

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Testosterone, VAULT Festival

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by Meredith Jones Russell

Testosterone is an explosive, energetic, riotous exploration of all things male, asking what exactly it means to be a man.

Rhum and Clay Theatre Company has teamed up with Kit Redstone, who wrote the play based on his own experiences as a trans man, and stars as himself. We meet him as he prepares to walk in to that bastion of machismo – the men’s locker room at the gym – for the first time.

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Treading Water, VAULT Festival

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by Meredith Jones Russell

Carol and Sue are lifeguards sat out on an appropriately chilly-looking British beach. They make conversation, eat biscuits, and wait for something, anything, to happen. Meanwhile a dog walker scans the sand with his metal detector, pausing occasionally to ponder such issues as the nature of buried things, or which sea creature would have the nicest garden (spoiler alert: Ringo Starr-like, he reckons it’s the octopus). Will these three come together, and how? And what, if any, will the consequences be?

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The Rain God, VAULT Festival

by guest critic Joanna Trainor

Charles Mallory Hatfield made it rain – and rain and rain and rain.

This is the little-known story* of a man who went from selling sewing machines to controlling the heavens, told through the eyes of a little boy in Manchester. Hatfield would travel to drought-ridden cities with his secret mixture of chemicals and, most of the time, the weather turned.

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Ad Libido, VAULT Festival


by guest critic Amy Toledano

Part cabaret, part one woman show, part stand up, Ad Libido is the hilarious story of Fran Bushe and her journey to fixing sex. Completely honest, this show breaks the taboo around female sexuality and the way in which more often than not, it is swept under the rug and deemed unimportant.

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The Very Important Child, VAULT Festival

by guest critic Amy Toledano

It feels a little strange writing a review of this wonderfully absurd piece because I don’t think any two people could have the same opinion of it. In my case, I fell in love with this movement-driven show. The nine stages of the ego is the centre point of the entire play but we never know what direction we are going to be taken in next.

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Amy Conway’s Super Awesome World, VAULT Festival

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by guest critic Amy Toledano

Amy Conway’s Super Awesome World is an interactive whirlwind full of games, quests and phone calls. When we meet Amy she tells us about the time her Dad bought her her first gaming console, a second-hand Nintendo Entertainment System, and how it changed her life.

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I Have a Bad Feeling About This, VAULT Festival

by Laura Kressly

Alice and her husband moved house from a bustling city to sleepy Berkhamsted just 6 weeks ago. She can’t wait to make new friends and get stuck into all that village life offers, even though her new home is hardly trendy like Margate, and none of her friends are willing to visit. The only thing undermining her positivity is that faithful companion Anxiety has relocated with her and threatens to ruin everything.

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The Quantum Physics of My Heart, VAULT Festival 

by guest critic Meredith Jones Russell

The Quantum Physics of My Heart is a delightful one-woman show inviting the whole audience to take a trip down memory lane to reminisce about the 1990s-2000s, as well as the timeless and universal challenges of being a teenager.

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