POT is Heaven Can Wait set on an inner city council estate. It’s bleak, desolate, and full of abject hopelessness. It’s also essential viewing for anyone who cares.
Read More »Drama
Love, Genius and a Walk, Drayton Arms Theatre – Review
Pros: A potted history of artistic life in early 20th century Vienna, seen through the eyes of a 21st century writer. Music, architecture, art and psychoanalysis. From Freud to Jung, Klimt to Kokoschka, they all get a look in. Cons: Words get the better of everyone, on and off Sigmund’s couch. If music is the food of love, here both are thwarted in this tale of two composers, one triumphant, the other downtrodden. Gustav Mahler and Sigmund Freud meet in Leiden and ...
Read More »The Art Of Gaman, Theatre503 – Review
Pros: The lighting director, Simeon Miller, should stand up and take a bow. The same goes for newcomer Alice Dillon. Cons: The writing lets everything else down. Gaman translates as “enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity”. Watching The Art of Gaman at Theatre503 certainly felt like an act of endurance at times, but like a good audience member I endured, politely watching as my confusion grew and my patience was severely tested. The Art of Gaman isn’t a ...
Read More »People Like Us, Union Theatre – Review
Pros: A 15 minute interval that lets you mentally prepare for the fact that there’s a second half. Cons: Shockingly bad and self-absorbed dialogues, lack of dramatism, cheap reactionary propaganda. When you hear that there’s a new play written by Julie Burchill, you obviously run to see it. She’s one of the wittiest and funniest living British journalists, even if you happen to disagree with pretty much everything she says or writes about when it comes to politics. Refreshingly unapologetic ...
Read More »Timeless, Theatre N16 – Review
A witty and sensitive script
Read More »Drip Feed, Soho Theatre – Review
Witty and truly enjoyable play about the vicissitudes of being a gay woman in an Irish town. Whereas the serious subjects are not talked about in-depth, they are hinted at and hopefully leave the audience with some food for thought
Read More »Jekyll and Hyde, Chickenshed – Review
Pros: Immersive and beautiful staging Cons: Slightly difficult to follow This musical adaptation sees Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale transplanted from its original Edinburgh setting to a smoggy, dark and dingy Victorian London. That setting is stunningly brought to life through the staging, which immerses the audience from the moment they approach the theatre door with faded notices adorning soot-covered red brick walls. The classic nineteenth-century urban street setting – worthy of Oliver or Les Mis – gives the cast a huge stage to work ...
Read More »Picasso’s Women, Gallery Different – Review
In the suggestive surroundings of the Gallery Different, three of Pablo Picasso's most influential muses offer an intimate portrayal of the man they loved and hated.
Read More »The Other Place, Park Theatre – Review
Pros: A tremendous lead performance by Karen Archer. Cons: Although billed as a psychological thriller, it’s neither surprising nor subtle enough to properly fit that bill. The Park Theatre is modern, comfortable, and only a couple minutes’ walk from Finsbury Park station. Also, they have pizza. Why don’t more theatres do pizza? It’s two of my favourite things in the world, combined. The Other Place focuses on Juliana Smithton, a high-flying neurologist whose life starts to unravel when she is diagnosed ...
Read More »Adam, Battersea Arts Centre – Review
Pros: Visual alchemy – the production design and Grand Hall setting combined to create delightful thematic echoes that enhanced the whole experience. Cons: With so much going on visually and sonically, the text felt unnecessarily wordy sometimes. At last summer’s Edinburgh Fringe, I was sad to miss Adam in its first triumphantly sold out run, but now I’m glad I had to wait. From Egypt to Glasgow, from Woman to Man – seeing this global transgender odyssey in the newly ...
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