Pros: Powerful physical performance Cons: The relentlessly punishing choreography feels pointless at times On a thrust stage, performer Markéta Vacovská pushes herself to her physical limits as she explores the intensity of a boxer’s experience. Whirring limbs become a blur as she punches to the point of exhaustion. At other times she appears to be receiving the blows, shaking her head from side to side repeatedly before reeling backwards and landing sprawled on the floor. Vacovská’s strength and stamina are ...

Pros: Mesmerising and unprecedented. Cons: Watching the puppeteers work in the foreground is fascinating but can also divert the attention from the main screen above their heads. Living in a caravan stationed in the middle of the desert, by a vast satellite field, Lula Del Ray lives a solitary life. Her favourite pastime is to sit on the edge of a satellite dish and look at the moon. Swinging her feet in the empty space below, she wonders about the men who ...

Pros: Nate Edmondson’s original music score is a journey in its own right. Cons: The plot’s dramatic elements aren’t properly developed. British expat Noëlle has inherited from her beloved dad a passion for cartography and, inspired by her childhood readings, she decides to embark on an enlightening journey along the Amazon river. When she comes back, though, she discovers that her father has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Recollections from her past empowering adventure merge with the chronicles of his degenerative illness, ...

A haunting piece of theatre on human behavior that will stay with you.

A solidly entertaining production that sometimes tries too hard to underline the play’s contemporary relevance.

Pros: Elegant, clever, playful choreography. Cons: Only thirty minutes long – perfect for the fringe, belongs in a joint billing elsewhere. Choreographer Roy Assaf’s open, flexible style of working has resulted in a confident collaboration with National Dance Company Wales which shimmers from within like a well-cut diamond. A brief 30 minutes long, the piece probes at our desire to create meaning, which might easily result in something vague and pretentious elsewhere but is approached here with light-hearted clarity. A ...

An entertaining night that will leave you charged with positivity and high sex appeal levels. 

An epic condensed down to its bare bones and effectively told; a good retelling.

Side holdingly, eye wipingly funny, gloriously uncut production of a rarely staged masterpiece of humour and language.

Pros: The sing-along moment that shows in practical terms the process of dopamine release that the play is all about. Cons: With its hour-long running time, this lively show left me wanting more. When we do something we like, our system produces dopamine, a substance that – as they illustrated by having us sing along during the performance – ‘rewards your brain and numbs your pain, provides the feeling you adore and keeps you coming back for more’. Fix is a ...