By Dora Bodrogi
Hop on the saddle for this ride around the world with Annie Londonderry, a trailblazer on two wheels. Bottle Cap Theatre give us an hour of superb musical theatre detailing the journey of this overlooked pioneer.
women
She Is a Place Called Home, VAULT Festival
By Bryony Rae Taylor
She Is A Place Called Home explores how two sisters simultaneously support and frustrate each other as they prepare for their Dad’s controversial second marriage, which is not good news for his current wife, their mother.
V&V, Vault Festival
By Evangeline Cullingworth
Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West’s relationship is memorialized in their letters. Lifted from the heady Edwardian drawing rooms, phrases like, “throw over your man, I say, and come” or “I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia” are stretched out and poured over. We ache for their magnetic rapport and searing wit. We savour the sweetness of their intimacy, captured with their skill and made more beautiful as generations pass.
Girl Code, VAULT Festival
by Amber Pathak
Is money everything? This is the topic of this Girl Code, a stand-up panel show hosted by the amazing Sikisa. Each show features hilarious up-and-coming women comedians, doing a warm-up set and then moving straight on to the debate. It’s like the Wright stuff, except it has jokes. All of the acts on the bill absolutely smashed their sets; the thin midday crowd roar with laughter at every other line.
Alice, VAULT Festival
by Amber Pathak
Smoke fills the room, we’re all sitting upright in stiff wooden pews, and in the distance a steady drip echoes off the walls. Is this part of the show or is there a leak in the roof? I wonder. Either way it’s very atmospheric.
A spotlight pierces the darkness, illuminating her. As she goes on, it feels more like a sermon. There is a holiness about the whole effect that is totally compelling.
Zoo, VAULT Festival
by Maxine Smiles
As reporters all over the country zip themselves into their waterproofs to stand in front of wheelie bins that have fallen over in the wake of Storm Jorge, down in the Vaults it’s Hurricane Jonas that is clogging up the airwaves. CNN are filming in the Cherokee Valley Zoo, and have picked the animal handler Bonnie (Lily Bevan) to guide them her day as she prepares the animals for a troubled night.
Meat, Theatre 503
by Laura Kressly
Two mouldering animal carcasses dangle from butchers hooks at the back of the stage. Glistening fat and muscle clinging to white bone waits to be turned into an expensive meal, then served at the high-concept restaurant’s table for two in the foreground. But fuzzy, green patches around the edge of the larger, more exposed dead body exude an unsettling energy – this meat is old, with the mould indicating a deeper, more insidious rot that’s not so easy to cut out.
Angels, VAULT Festival
by Stephanie Hartland
“Maybe I’m not built this way. Am I too sensitive?”
Sex workers and stripping is a prominent and controversial topic in feminism and modern society as a whole. Given this context, it is no surprise that the subject has made it on stage in the form of Angels by She’s Diverse Theatre Company.
Dual, VAULT Festival
by Laura Kressly
Peyvand Sadeghian was born in Canning Town, and East London runs through her veins. Yet, there’s also the scent of something else, from somewhere far away – rose water and pomegranate, from an ancient civilisation the western world loves to demonise. She doesn’t give this much thought until she is 10 years old and first travels to Iran with her father. This is a turning point in her life; it’s when she finds she is not just one person, but two. As well as Peyvand the Londoner, she’s also Parisa the Persian girl. These two identities are set in opposition in this deliberately messy collage about having multiple citizenships and identities, and embedded with a spirit of revolution.
The Place’s Young Critics review: Sexy Lamp at VAULT Festival
by Cara Lee
Much like Bicycles and Fish, the first show Katie Arnstein performed at the festival, Sexy Lamp is a perfect mix of wit, emotion and more serious points, that reflect both her own experiences and the experiences of the majority of women with misogyny, perfectly. In this show, the second of her trilogy It’s A Girl!, she moves on to her first experiences trying to make it in London in the world of acting, once again discussing her struggles against misogyny.
