‘Refreshing but unfathomable Park Theatre Two years ago, in this very theatre, I reviewed Carey Crim’s weighty drama, Never Not Once, about the spiralling after effects of rape. Now her new piece, 23.5 Hours, takes a different angle on the subject of sexual misconduct. Crim builds us a happy, all-American, 21st-century family. Carla Goodman’s middle-class living room-cum-diner houses enigmatic teacher ...
‘The preciousness of youth Arcola Theatre At the age of about 30, nostalgia really starts to kick it up a gear. If you’re over that great age, I am sure you will scoff and chuckle at this naive statement. If you’re under 30, or specifically, under 20, stop reading and go and do something foolish that you can be nostalgic ...
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 ...
Dominion Theatre Whoopi Goldberg and Maggie Smith in a film about singing Nuns that grossed $231 million in 1992? Yes please said the world! Now a couple of years later we have a new interaction of the 2011 musical starring Alexandra Burke, Ruth Jones and Lemar restaged for the audiences of 2024. Grossing? I really couldn’t tell you, but I ...
Bread & Roses Theatre Like a shared advert for Spareroom and Tinder over Pride: intense chats over coffee and evenings in with a bottle of wine blur the confusing rules of sexuality, friendship, and flat sharing for two twenty-somethings. Now, I have lived with some deliciously odd humans: I think we all have, after years trapped in this renter’s ...