Tabacco Docks I am neither psychic nor gifted with particularly good skills of prediction. I am astounded every Wednesday by the recycling trucks’ reappearance on my street and more often than not miss it. Neither am I a vegan, or anti-smoking, although after you have read this article, you might disagree. I am simply a neurotic, hypocritical, incurably metropolitan food ...

Cadogan Hall Chelsea is decidedly not my stomping ground, Sloane Square might as well be Siberia, and the 25 minute walk from my neck of the woods the Siberian Express. Yet I will trundle along the Kings Road for the sizzling new variety act in London’s dance ecology, Ballet Nights.  Celebrating their 1st birthday and 6th show, founder, choreographer, dancer ...

Barbican Outdoor Cinema Dee Rees’s seminal 2011 queer drama finds an appropriately urban background within the Barbican’s brutalist amphitheatre in this summers 9th outdoor cinema experience.  But what a film, one of the only selected from the 2010s for the United States National Film Registry. Winner of so many awards my fingers would tire midway through typing them all out. ...

State Ballet of Georgia, London Coliseum Unseasonable although it may be for such Christmas staples as Swan Lake, all dance fans will endure the shake up of schedule for the State Ballet of Georgia’s first trip to London. Flashing their spin on the big-bird-based-bash. By now I think we all know the “plot” of pool of swans, from either the ...

Arcola Theatre ‘Simply crafted but staggering Sometimes you stumble down a flight of stairs into a basement and are gobsmacked. That wasn’t meant to sound dirty. Also, technically we didn’t stumble, as my editor organised the tickets weeks in advance, and other people were there, including The Hobbit’s Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman). I’m getting sidetracked. My point (vaguely) was that ...

Arcola Theatre ‘With a little bit of luck, we can make it through the night’ Just a little before my time, the mid-nineties UK garage scene’s pulse kept pumping. It had flooded the world of pop by the time I could walk, shake my hips and try to sneak into clubs. The period had a dark side though, wreathed in ...

Seven Dials Playhouse Miguel de Cervantes’s work Don Quixote is one of the most famous pieces of fiction, often lauded as the first modern novel, directly influencing Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers in 1844 and Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac in 1897. Cut to 2024, in a little theatre off Seven Dials actor/performer/creator Duncan Hodgkinson and director/co-creator Jamie Wood give ...

Fuerza Bruta Roundhous The handsome devils of circus, Argentina’s worst-kept theatrical secret and a personal love affair. Fuerza Bruta clatter back into the Roundhouse. This time inflated. Picture the scene, two young homosexuals exploring the Big Apple for the first time. It’s 2016, President Trump was clambering into the White House and Britain has leapt out of the European Union. ...

‘The murky world of make-believe’ Park Theatre True crime meets kitchen sink and oh-so-Hollywood in The Marilyn Conspiracy at the Park Theatre. Writer and originator Vicki McKellar and director Guy Masterson have teamed up for a ghoulish imagination exercise around the death of peroxide blonde legend Marilyn Monroe. The date is 1962 and Monroe is reeling from a flop with The Misfits, a ...

Barbican Centre Buckle up folks, the summer blockbusters are here! Unlike the more democratic European cities that shut down theatres for June and July, here things are just heating up, and in some cases too darn hot indeed. Cole Porter: master of the musical quip has provided a winning combination for the Barbican already with their 2022 production of Anything ...