Pros: The fresh take on the pressures entailed by an alpha male role. Cons: The narrative structure feels fragmentary. Bill (Azan Ahmed) and Frank (Jack Dillon) have been friends since childhood and know each other’s secrets and history. They both look smart and act cool, wearing blue suits and fancy silk ties. Looking impeccable, pleasing the boss and being cordial to each other are all part of their role, although, deep inside, they’re burning with mutual envy and tormented by an unreasonable pressure ...

Pros: Rats is smart and hilarious, with excellent performances and a bitingly relevant script.  Cons: The ending is predictable, and some of the emotional moments feel under-explored. In 2016, Microsoft released Tay, a chatbot that could learn by interacting with people on the internet. Sadly, the chatbot had to be shut down after it began spouting Nazi slogans and sexually explicit messages. If machines can learn from humans, they can also learn our biases, our flaws, and our cruelty. We ...

Pros: Beautiful music and singing, hilariously relatable moments. Cons: A space simply not suited to a musical. Little by Little, performed by Three Barks and a Bite theatre company, is a three handed musical about ‘mates, dates and love triangles’. As such it’s hard to see that the story is really doing anything we haven’t seen many times before. The basic plot follows three childhood friends, two girls and one guy, who, stumbling blindly into the confusing world of adolescence, complicate the friendship ...

Although brilliantly scripted, the harshly drawn characters border on caricature and the play as a whole has 1970s written all over it. Ultimately, however, the superior storytelling shines through.

Whilst Elina Alminas was always charming and engaging in the role of Laura, the story lacked real punch and begged for resolution which never really arrived.

Poe’s classic gothic tale is let down by a sketchy adaptation that strips away all semblance of drama.

Pros: I found catharsis in the beginning of the play, which shows the death of the perpetrator. Cons: With only two people in the audience, the cast had to work harder to build the necessary tension. The stage is empty, except for three folding chairs, aligned in front of the audience, and a small table against the wall. On top of it, a bottle of whisky and some glasses. Two loud gunshots break the silence before a man, wearing a ...

The complex theme is just too academic to be entertaining and fails to deliver a coherent message.

Pros: An entertaining and witty script, with energetic performances and wry political insight Cons: Too many weak political gags, and unconvincing regional localisation The English Heart is a play about love, lust, trust and relationships. But it’s also about the heart of England – Boston, Lincolnshire, the home of Brexitland and location of UKIP leader Paul Nuttall’s final bid for power. The opening scene is set just after the referendum, and Marie (in a strong performance by Anya Williams) is ...

Misses the mark on Fo’s biting, dark comedy.