‘A play that keeps on pulling rabbits out of the hat’ As a card-carrying whoopsie, Soho resident, and culture writer for the paper you are perusing, The Yard’s most recent play seems to tick my every box. The Flea Circus is in town, exploring a scandal that rocked Victorian London. Gays, promiscuity, and central London? Clearly, some things never change. ...

‘I want to eat arepas and to hell with the bloat’ Photograph: courtesy Arepa & Co On an unseasonably hot day, I sludge my way to Hackney Central for a pop-up. A Venezuelan restaurant on a tropical night like this? Okay, I’ll bite. Oslo Hackney, the live music venue permanently squatting in the burrowed-out shell of the old railway station, ...

‘Ripping ride of dark comedy’ Covid ruffled many things: the concept of a staycation, my flimsy attempts at sobriety and, more glaringly, many a theatre kid’s dream. Yet hope flutters its feathered eyelashes. More than 1,200 days after its planned premiere, Matt Parvin’s new play, Gentlemen, rises from the virus-tinted gloom and returns to its rightful place at the Arcola. Studio ...

‘An evening of such delight’ Full-time country music fan, and a part-time alcoholic, the two have always been a match made in heaven for me. But Phoebe Stringer productions prove that the genre has more to it, much much more. I will explain. Picture the scene: an industrial estate, a clear autumn night, a brewery that specifies in low gluten, ...

‘Camp delightfulness’ Brunch on Old Compton Street, matching miniature dogs, or London Fashion Week are all, in their way, pretty gay. But nothing compares in magnitude of camp delightfulness to Old Friends, crafted by three grand dames of the theatre:  Stephen Sondheim himself, Cameron Mackintosh, and Mathew Bourne, and star-studded like the Orion Nebula. As the orchestra tunes up, the ...

‘Not only missing much of the film’s arch humour but also subtracts a lot of its charm and titular characters’ First, the film rocked a newly minted millennium, then the musical shook Broadway seven years later, next a revitalised production swayed the West End for another three years. Now everyone’s favourite green ogre is on the road again with a ...

‘Fusing, sci-fi and surrealism. A youthfully energetic, and kaleidoscopic experience’ Eun-Me Ahn Company Western dragons are often greedy, capricious, and warsome, think Tolkien’s Smaug. But in the East, they embody a sacred and spiritual energy, power, and longevity. Previously reserved for kings, now symbols of composition, multiculturalism, and freedom. So Eun-Me Ahn explains in an interview with Thomas Hahn, when talking about ...

‘Has a lot to say about the state of the nation in the 90s and the ongoing struggles for acceptance’ 30 years ago, in 1993 Jonathan Harvey wrote and performed something beautiful at The Bush Theatre. Now on the anniversary, the hit play turned TV movie, then big screen sensation settles into the grander of Theatre Royal Stratford East before ...

‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’ Sunday the 17th was a particularly sad day, marking the passing of a true icon. Not a celebrity, but arguably something far more important (joke), a restaurant, nay cultural phenomenon. As food writers we have a habit to flap and flutter over the new, and don’t take time to appreciate the old. ...

‘An astounding achievement’ According to the Social Care Institute for Excellence, there are 209,600 people diagnosed with dementia each year in the UK. My nan was one of them. Matthew Seager’s perceptive play, In Other Words, pulls us into a couple’s microcosm, making us willing and, at times, unwilling spectators. Arthur and Jane. Unremarkable, remarkable people. They meet at a bar ...