Proud City A Neo-burlesque evening of naughty delight, high on talent but heavy on price.   Burlesque’s breadth and variety are commercialised with some success at Proud City, in the bowels of a Neo-gothic temple: The Minster Building: fitting that an architectural revival should be the home of this Neo-burlesque evening of naughty delight. Building from comic shows and musical hall, Burlesque ...

Kingsland Road, ‘The meat outdances the veg’ We are always told in the city history lies beneath us, that daily we are traipsing over the Victorian and Roman ruins mouldering away. But we never think that it might be above us, and no, I am not talking about the steel rooftop pleasure gardens of the 1980’s. I am talking about ...

HERE at Outernet A quantum core of flashing double-storey screens sheathed in a golden skin, and partly to blame for the aggressive modernisation of Soho’s historic Denmark Street, the Outernet building is a diverse piece of 21st-century architecture. However, Simon Phillips’ clever re-staging of a beloved musical in the custom-built glinting theatrical space seems a stroke of PR genius. If ...

Crystal Pite & Jonathon Young / Kidd Pivot Sadlers Well Raise your hand if you’ve bickered in a book club. Or battled over your child’s nativity play with the oafish costume designer. Or snarked over the coffee cooler in an alcohol/drug or cross-stitcher’s anonymous group. These bubbles of society within a society are common, but rarely fodder for experimental fusion ...

The Yard Covid rather dominated the end of 2019, starting 3 years of global upheaval that we are still paying for. However, 2019 was the year of return, marking 400 years since the first enslaved Africans touched down in Hampton Virginia, stolen from Ghana by the British. An international tragedy that dwarfs the pandemic in death toll and lasting effect. ...

The Barbican Islands are where the world pauses, takes a breath, isolated bubbles with their own rules. Yet the stamp of modernity rarely allows many to escape unaffected. Castle of Joy is another tale in a long lineage, pushing against the conforming boot of the mainland, extending in a furious but rather frantically aimed retaliation.  Det Ferösche Compagnie is a ...

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch+ Terrain Boris Charmatz Pina Bausch has caused a considerable rift in my household (from beyond the grave I might add). Our normally cohesive theatre-obsessed bubble of two, split down the middle by her infamous company’s style, fondness for repetition, and overall aura. So much so that my partner has refused flat out to join me for ...

New Wimbledon Theatre How jazz hands are you as a person? I only ask as Garry Marshall’s touring production of everyone’s favourite Hooker-Businessman romance will test even the most ardent musical theatre zealot. It was 1990, the last gasp of the 80s, a decade so dusted with cocaine and capitalism that something had to give. The late great Garry Marshal directed a ...

Three Colts Tavern Where once the Roman Empire extended its iron-clad fingers over these isles (admittedly a long time ago), a modern wave of Italian influence has swept into our culture. Pizza, my friend, is a big deal, with many pubs offering a variety, chains popping up like villas all over Britannia, and the internet awash with smug garden owners ...

The Yard As someone who has been rewatching the same four 90s sitcoms for the last ten years, I could not be called good at “endings”. So at least I have something in common with Mary Higgins and Ell Potter as they explore the phenomenon from all angles. I mean mainly from the theatrical one, but you get the idea. ...