three examples of superb storytelling that for those who like to hear a good yarn being told will find plenty to enjoy

A young woman is entrusted by her dying mother with a wooden box containing all the stories and words she knows. But not prepared to listen to them again, the bereaved daughter hides the box under her bed, wanting to forget about it. As the years go past, she grows lonely and misunderstood, gradually giving in to the Shadow Man – a sly creature who lingers around her and whispers demeaning messages into her ear. An impending sense of unworthiness ...

A play that has the depth and beauty demanded

A well-written and well choreographed piece

The world isn’t short of new Sherlock Holmes stories. Several hundred have been written since Conan Doyle hung up his pen, and in the main they stick closely to the character of the original stories. So why is it that, when bringing Holmes to the stage, dramatists feel the need to give the famously asexual detective a love life? It started with the ill-fated Sherlock Holmes – The Musical, featuring a woefully miscast Ron Moody in platform heels (he was ...

Star power shines in an otherwise heavy-handed tale of aging, unrequited love and Sci-Fi.

As we walk into the theatre, set up like a dingy apartment, the lights yellow and humid, the three characters are sitting on the furniture, looking at their phones. Soph gets her sister, Dex, and brother, Sim, up, and they go to their grandmother’s funeral, where a religious figure of some sort reads a hilariously bad obituary. The siblings start to giggle and we straight away get into the extremes we will spend the next 90 minutes in: the cold ...

Superb gay drama about relationships and polygamy.

Following the beautiful Dorian Gray this famous tale of vanity and Victorian “morals” is turned on its head when we have a buffet like selection of choice. With 4 alternative versions, the four actors change roles daily in various configurations in an imaginative gender-bending take on the story. Tonight I had a gloriously complex portrayal of Dorian from Helen Reuben, providing all the joys and contrast of a female protagonist, and equally as fascinating was Augustina Seymour’s Sybil Vane. This ...

A clever and very entertaining dance through many layers of London life