REVIEW: WE WAIT IN JOYFUL HOPE (Theatre 503)
Playwright Brian Mullin was selected from over 800 applicants to join the 503Five Writer-in-Residence scheme where We Wait in Joyful Hope was commissioned. His play was inspired by the story of his own aunt, a Franciscan nun who, inspired by the reforms initiated by Pope John XXIII, took over a tenement building in Hell’s Kitchen […]
REVIEW: SQUIRM (Bread & Roses Theatre)
Squirm is a new play written by Serafina Cusack, currently working with the Royal Court on their forthcoming Open Court Season. It has a short run at the Bread & Roses Theatre in Clapham before transferring to Edinburgh in August for the Fringe Festival. The show is Rory’s confession to his ex-girlfriend. He recounts his […]
REVIEW: THIS IS LIVING (Trafalgar Studio 2)
This Is Living is a new play by Liam Borrett about love, loss and saying goodbye. It presents the relationship between the hilarious and immensely likeable Alice (Tamla Kari) and the quietly passionate Michael (Michael Socha). The play opens with the minutes immediately after Alice’s death by drowning. Michael returns to the scene of the […]
REVIEW: RUNNING WILD (Regents Park Open Air Theatre)
In the heart of Regents Park, the Open Air Theatre has been transformed into an Indonesian rainforest. We start the show in Salisbury with a simple set and props, which provides us with a heart breaking opening to the show. This is the perfect set up to juxtapose the second setting of Indonesia, where the […]
REVIEW: THE INVISIBLE HAND (Tricycle Theatre)
“There’s one thing that doesn’t change. What money does to people. When you get a taste, you want more.” The Invisible Hand, written by Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar, receives its UK premiere at the Tricycle Theatre; the final production before the theatre closes for a £5.5million capital development project. The Tricycle never shies away […]
REVIEW: The Great American Trailer Park Musical (Waterloo East Theatre)
“It will blow away your cobwebs” said my friend as we emerged from ‘The Great American Trailer Park Musical’ and I’m inclined to agree: this quirky show with music and lyrics by David Nehls and book by Betsy Kelso premiered Off-Broadway in 2005. The show follows the love triangle between agoraphobic Jeanie (Jemma Alexander), her […]
REVIEW: A WORKING TITLE (The Union Theatre)
What I love about The Union Theatre, is that it gives a voice to wonderful new theatre and promising unestablished writers. Fortunately ‘A Working Title’, was no exception to this. Original Impact Theatre Company tell the stories of the unsung twenty something Londoners, who still haven’t (if I may quote the play) ‘got their sh*t […]
TOM. A STORY OF TOM JONES. THE MUSICAL (Richmond Theatre)
They say that in Tom Jones’s home town of Pontypridd, everyone knows someone who knows Tom. One of Wales’s most famous exports, his stint as a judge on The Voice with his tales of hanging out with Elvis has brought him to the attention of a younger generation. The son of a miner who became […]
REVIEW: THE SINS OF JACK SAUL (Above The Stag)
Glenn Chandler’s new musical THE SINS OF JACK SAUL has just opened at the UK’s only full time LGBT theatre, Above The Stag, telling the true story of Dublin Jack, the Victorian gay prostitute. Following on from last years success show FANNY AND STELLA (other Victorian prostitutes whom were rumoured to have relations with Jack […]
REVIEW: STRAWBERRY STARBURST (Blue Elephant Theatre)
A poisonous concoction of body image, self-perception and warped modern ideals of beauty bubbles threateningly in the latest work from Bram Davidovich, Strawberry Starburst. Taking a swipe at the continually propagated idea that being thin is the same as being healthy, this play shows the truly damaging, and often irreversible result of how we compare […]