Vers @ Hen & Chickens Theatre Bar

Vers is a double bill of short plays performed by the same exceptional trio of actors. 

The Dinner Scene is first; centred around a couple having dinner (who are interjected by a hilarious Chloe Taplin as the restaurant employee) whose conversation begins surface level, and as they dine dives deeper and deeper until they are having a deep-seeded argument about the fundamentals of respecting one another and the planet. The argument is funny and relatable as each demonstrates the extremes of contemporary middle class concerns, from the vegan offended that the boyfriend ordered pepperoni to the boyfriend offended that the partner would try to police their eating as someone recovering from an eating disorder. As the argument gets more subterranean, the play is interspersed with surreal moments of heightened text-free movement, signifying their underlying emotions and frustrations. While exceptionally well performed and rehearsed (the whip smart and rapid fire dialogue in particular, coupled with some brilliant comic timing) the play as a whole feels like a not quite finished idea. It begs for another round of dramaturgy, as there is really something in there. 

The second play, Poofs with Guns, is a highly campy take on 50’s crime dramas set around the gay community in East London. The text is part silly crime drama, part reflective history, part mash up of audio clips, and is overall quite engaging. Again the performers are really strong; you can see in the design and direction the vision for what the “bigger” version of this production is. In particular, by positioning the story around 50’s gay culture, and using Polari in the dialogue, the production brings to light a piece of history not known by many in contemporary circles. I would have liked to see them go even further with the camp; rather than the light makeup we got for the 2 criminals, give us a full beat face, or even clown (as was in the promotional materials!) — because the moments when the production really leaned into the camp, it was fabulous. 

Manhunt @ Royal Court Theatre

Note - I saw this in early previews ahead of press night.

Robert Icke’s first original commission, and first appearance at the Royal Court, is a violent investigation of the true life story of a man in the North of England who was wanted for assault and murder, resulting in the longest manhunt in UK history.

In spite of its ties to real life, Icke’s production exists initially in a no-space; there is concrete and sliding doors reminiscent of a prison, but the space is stark white, wide open, and containing only collapsible furniture. It evokes feelings of a world you can’t trust, wherein characters and timelines overlap, move in and out of space, and even the furniture isn’t solid enough to trust. This quickly becomes potent when the central character Raoul (a brilliant Samuel Edward-Cook) loses control of his temper, throwing furniture across the space. The eruption of violence from this man is what we’re meant to expect — but Icke’s clever creation of an uncertain and untrustworthy physical space causes us to question the conditions that created this man.

That isn’t to say that the misogyny and violence of the central character is excused - indeed it is on display like a zoo animal at feeding time, ready for us to consumer and consider, but from a safe distance. Icke has Edward-Cook address the audience directly at times, quite surprisingly and as an affront, a consistent reminder that we’re watching this play out. We all know how it ends, yet are here to watch. Simple yet effective use of camera footage on specific heightened moments remind us of how our experience of these events is normally mediated, through a screen.

In a time when the conversation is ever more focussed on how society is failing young men by allowing them unfettered access to the dreaded “manosphere” and a dearth of positive role models and relationships, in the face of increasingly positive outcomes for their female counterparts, this play is necessary, it is urgent. While Netflix’ adolescence interrogates the knock on effects on those around a young boy who commits such an act, Manhunt holds more than the immediate family accountable — it is society as a whole who need to improve, yet Manhunt suggests no simple solutions. This play does not sit back and safely assess, but rather dives into the deepest end, without a life jacket. Well worth watching, but more importantly, worth reckoning with as individuals and as a wider society.

Container @ New Diorama Theatre

Container is a new polyphonic performance, leaning heavily on the audio experience with the performers creating a beautiful soundscape that layers voices, effects, and musical instruments. The script is interesting; the idea being that these voices overlap and bombard, at times only one, but at times sounds and voices overwhelming the listener, much in the manner that information in the digital ages bombards us during our waking moments. As a piece of theatre, it is at times highly effective, but at times lacking specificity in the direction and purpose, resulting in moments that shine, weighed down by moments that feel indulgent. This is in no part due to the performances of the 5 company members, each of which are quite interesting to watch, and demonstrate exceptional range and skill in their vocal performance.  Their outstanding vocal performances were truly something to behold. The idea of performing sounds in such an onslaught while not new (this was the central concept of my own MA dissertation over 10 years ago in response to Great Reckonings in Little Rooms’ central argument) is executed in an interesting manner, leveraging technology and music to create the cacaphony aligned with our own day to day experiences, bringing voice to the loneliness, and the simultaneous feeling of being overwhelmed.  

Sisyphean Quick Fix @ Riverside Studios

This new script centres on two sisters grappling with their father’s alcoholism, coming to terms with how it affected their lives in ways they didn’t realise growing up, and how this is now crashing down on them and the family. The early moments of the script and performance build the relationship of the sisters well, and sets the convention for their video chats to be played out to the crowd. The sound design is a bit over engineered to create a realistic world, and this begins to get tired as the play enters into the more serious aspects of the script. The text and performances follow this same trajectory, which is too bad; there was an opportunity for a lovely tragicomic denouement but it was missed. There is nothing wrong with the production per se, there just isn’t anything new. Bettina Paris is immensely watchable, and I look forward to seeing her working in stronger material, or at least under stronger direction. 

A Knock On The Roof @ Royal Court Theatre

“Why do you warn us before you kill us?”
Khawla Ibrahim’s solo show at The Royal Court explores a woman’s life, restrained by the realities of living in a war zone with a small child. Told through direct address, engaging the audience, the protagonist, Mariam, shares her anxieties. When the knock on the roof — a smaller bomb intended to warn residents of a bigger bombing incoming — happens, she has 5 minutes. How far can you run in 5 minutes? This isn’t a question of competition but of survival; she trains through the night, running, carrying heavy objects to prepare herself, timing how far she can get, her increasing strength. Thinking about the practicalities; what if the knock comes while she is in the shower? or while she is asleep? or going to the bathroom?

The production’s pacing creates this tension for the audience, contrasting relaxed, calm, chat, interaction with the audience and stories of her life with panicked moments of preparatory timed runs, and eventually the real thing.

It is a sobering watch. One which reminds the audience that the people in Gaza are people just like us, with anxieties and worries, hopes and regrets. Ibrahim’s performance is beautifully nuanced, calm and physically expressive.

This is a thoughtful production and well worth seeing.

Jordan Brookes Fontanelle @ Soho Theatre

Jordan Brookes’ Fontanelle is a stand up show and a musical at the same time; it centres around the question of masculinity and what it means to be masculine, explored around the premise of The Titanic, and the fact that women and children were rescued first. Playing with the form of a standup comedy show, the production also has a chorus of 5 musical theatre performers who interject throughout. At times the interjections are funny and clever, and at times they feel like the concept is being shoehorned into the standup. The show works best when Brookes interacts with the audience, however in order to stay with the convention some of these seem to be rushed, rather than living in a chaotic performance space. Beyond this, the production is uneven — it plays with pacing, but unconvincingly. It plays with the edges of comedy, but without payoff. And it plays with performance, dipping a toe into failed performance, but without properly achieving this — and perhaps even unintentionally demonstrating failure in performance.

This all sounds like it was awful — it wasn’t. There were definitely moments of humour and clever insight about the bind between equality and chivalry....but it all felt undercooked, which meant that it veered into undertones of misogyny to get its laughs.

My Mother's Funeral @ The Yard Theatre

My Mother’s Funeral is a play about grief, but moreso it is a play about class, particularly about the relationships ambitious young people from working class backgrounds have with their families, and with the middle class environments they find themselves in. Abigail is a young playwright whose mother has just died; a working class woman who raised her two children on benefits, her mum did not have any money to leave her, so Abigail is faced with the financial burden of a funeral and the social burden of her feelings of inadequacy around her inability to provide one, and the anxiety around a council funded funeral and the lack of dignity that may hold. She chooses to cave, to make the art that is demanded of her as a working class artist — poverty porn — to hopefully earn the money to pay for her mother’s funeral. 

The play weaves between spaces and times in a really clever way, with the 3 actors shifting between characters. With only 3 actors a host of places, times, and characters are shown, and the structure mirrors the overlapping worlds Abigail is facing, as she unsuccessfully attempts to simultaneously sell her personal story, but keep her personal life and the shame she feels about it separated. What really struck me (as an artist from a working class background) was the explorations around love — what does it mean to love your children and express that love when money isn’t an option? One scene in particular was stark in its criticism of both the middle class inability to understand love without finances, and the working class inability to fund love. The friction between these two points of view was present and really thoughtfully articulated through Abigail’s struggle. It is refreshing to see such an honest examination of the working class experience, and in particular the experience of the children of working class parents entering middle class spaces, where despite their intelligence and passion, they will always feel like outsiders. 

The staging is simple yet layered, using the play about a play within a play (how meta) to create additional meaning in the spaces and relationships of objects. Simple moments are both hyper real and clearly theatricalised. At times the performances are a bit shouty where they would benefit from nuance, but overall the pacing and staging were very good as were the performances — in particular the physical work of the performers. 

Small Forward - Belarus Free Theatre @ Barbican Pit

Working with famous Belarusian basketball player Katya Snetsyna, Belarus Free Theatre’s latest production, KS6: Small Forward, focusses on Katya’s experience of coming to the realisation of the atrocities her government commits against its citizens, and being ostracised and outcast herself after standing up against the dictatorship, speaking out, and coming out as homosexual. 

The production deploys Belarus Free Theatre’s trademark playful stagecraft, this time framing the production around a basketball game, including a kiss cam, live DJ, and half time basket competition. While it is fun and engaging, the production as a whole doesn’t quite hang together — which is unfortunate, as the story is compelling, and important to raise awareness. 

The use of music was clever, with the live DJ Blanka Barbara not only hyping up the crowd as if at a basketball game, but then also live mixing the underscoring for the entire play. The design used the tools of a gym and basketball game to create multiple spaces and evoke feelings which were at times really powerful, but also at times didn’t quite have the desired impact. 

All in all not a bad production, just not their best — which is unfortunate as the subject matter deserves attention. While led by Snetsyna who is an engaging person (she lit up in the pre-show chat) most moments of her as an actor fell flat — which is fair for a first time actor leading such a huge story. Additionally, I really liked the touch of sharing images and QR to write to prisoners, but although it did tie in to an element of the story (when she speaks of her friend who was imprisoned) the link feels tenuous — and again here I just wanted it to connect a little more deeply. 

... blackbird hour @ Bush Theatre

...blackbird hour is told primarily through Eshe, a young woman battling demons. We see her primarily anchored to her bed, a place of comfort but also one of enablement. Voiceover haunts and interacts with her heavily at first, and then with a lighter touch as she is visited by two lovers, each of whom represent a connection to one of the sides of her. The text is delightfully poetic; sharp and soft at the same time, moving through the story with intense reality, heightened through the language to align with Eshe’s heightened state, her struggle. As it shifts further into Eshe’s mind, reality shifts. Where in earlier scenes Eshe is the one who is outside normality, while Ella and Michael are grounded, later on the tone shifts so that we experience from Eshe’s point of view, Ella and Michael becoming exaggerated and robotic, and the experience of time expanded yet contracted. 

While this is not babiyre bukilwa’s first production, it was their first play — which makes the quality of the language and layers of the story all the more astounding. This is a masterful piece of writing that gets inside mental illness in a truly unique way. 

Evlyne Oyedokun is powerful as Eshe. She moves through rippling emotional shifts effortlessly, shaping the manic and depressive moments with care. Despite rarely leaving the bed for a significant period of the play, she is physically dynamic and engaging, embodying Eshe with every ounce of her being. This is a thoughtful, nuanced, and challenging performance of difficult content and text. 

One element that will stick with me, however, is the inclusion of surtitles. Where many productions will include these, projected across the top in plain colours, never moving...this production made them a part of the experience of the play. Words appeared in different fonts, colours, and positions in alignment with who was speaking them, which was ingenious to create the different voices visually. But most importantly, the pace of words appearing and disappearing had a powerful effect; at times the delay versus what was spoken aided in tense moments, creating the effect of feeling the character’s mouth was racing ahead of their thoughts as we often do in arguments....or conversely, when a word or phrase remained projected during a pause, it quite literally hung in the silence, echoing at us through the visual representation. This was an incredibly powerful choice to not only make accessibility a part of the production, but arguably a part of the storytelling itself. 

The Devil Wears Prada @ Dominion Theatre

One expects high camp from an adaptation of a cult classic film about fashion, with music by Elton John and starting Vanessa Williams. And to a large extent, the production delivers. It is silly and delightful and funny — at times it takes a serious turn to tackle subjects like impostor syndrome and growing up gay, but a chuckle is never far away.

Adapting a cult classic movie for the stage is tricky; you have to contend with the ghosts of a production not just that people saw or read about, but have watched repeatedly, memorising not only the script and snappy one liners, but the cadence and delivery of each beat. The West End production does a decent job at balancing this, giving faithful audience members the lines they want, while also trying to get new life out of the material.

The music is very good, enhanced by incredible performers. The lyrics and script, however, let the production down; attempts at new text fall flat, and often the rhymes in the songs feel shoehorned. The choreography and design (particularly the costumes). Where some scenes choreography is cleverly pedestrian, using runway struts and campy drag style movements to enhance the story, some scenes feel almost as if the choreo was thrown together on a lunch break, eliciting no meaning from the text or moment in the play. Similarly the costumes are uneven, some opulent, some Primark.

On the whole it isn’t a bad production — and the people it is directed to will adore the campy fun of the entire experience. You enter The Dominion Theatre and feel as if you’re at an exclusive party — house music playing, backdrop for red carpet photos, beautiful flowers and RUNWAY posters abound (a beautiful foreshadow to the most exceptional scene in the play, the Met Gala style event which echoes Phantom’s Masquerade). The performances are exceptional from all leads, and they’re supported by a generally strong chorus.

So long as you go expecting camp, not commentary, you’ll have a great time.

WEER - Natalie Palamides @ SOHO Theatre

The sheer delightful chaos of Natalie Palamides show is central to its success. In a time when many shows aim to be polished and perfect, Palamides gives us rough around the edges and spiky. Centered around a couple and their downfall, with flashbacks to their meet cute, and all underscored by late 90’s music, the show has all the storyline makings of a meet-cute based rom-com from the period. However Palamides turns this on its head in many ways, most notably by playing both characters. And not in the way most solo shows do, but rather fully embodied through voice, movement and COSTUME across half of her body. The choreography to achieve this is nothing short of outstanding, and I regularly found myself marvelling at the stamina needed to perform this.

This is not the show for everyone - spiky jabs at late 90’s bro culture and the expectations on young women from a 2024 lens might be a bit much for some, but for me it is this clown-inspired means of taking the old rom-com formula to task while still revelling in its delights that make it exceptional.

This was my first of Natalie’s shows to see live, and it will not be my last.

Tender @ Bush Theatre

Eleanor Tindall’s latest play, Tender, weaves a story of two people who at first appear to be disconnected, each working through their own trauma, who meet by happenstance, and then are drawn together. As the play progresses, we learn that in fact, they were connected all along. 

The script begins rather poetically, with a story of Ivy’s self destruction as a teen. The poeticism continues, through pulsing walls and choreographed interactions, with some truly delightful moments between the two actors. That said, the script and production don’t quiite click into place and race forward in the way you would like them to — the style of the script jumps around a little too much, and despite the efforts of the very talented cast, it is good, but just never reaches great. Frustratingly, there are glimpses of what could have been for the production - through perhaps another round of dramaturgy. 

Annabel Baldwin stands out in the highly skilled duo, with their ability to embody the text with beautiful subtlety. 

Why A Black Woman Will Never Be Prime Minister @ Camden People's Theatre

Why A Black Woman Will Never Be Prime Minister takes us through 9 months (or 3 trimesters) of a young woman’s quest to break the cycles she comes from. She is child of a single mother who works incessantly to make a better life for her daughter; her daughter who has taken that gift and translated it into acceptance to university and an internship with a candidate for prime minister, alongside a steady relationship. The text intersperses spoken word poetry with direct address monologue and two-handed scenes (with her boss at the internship). The production moves fluidly through these elements, propelling the story forward as we learn that external barriers aren’t the only forces at work against this young woman; indeed she learns she became pregnant just before uni began, so that the trimester cycle of uni and the political campaign dovetail with her own pregnancy.

The two performers do a capable job bringing the characters and world to life, and the director sets a fun stylistic tone upfront; however as the seriousness of the challenges she is facing shift, the tone of the production doesn’t quite shift to the same degree, causing those more serious and touching moments to not work as well as they could. The script was strong in parts but did have some rather expository elements which could be done without. 

Toto Kerblammo! @ Unicorn Theatre

Toto Kerblammo tells the story of a young girl and her dog, as they navigate a challenging personal situation for her. Faced with a major tragedy and her mother taken to mental hospital, Effy has to move in with her aunt and uncle, where she can’t keep her dog Toto. It centres around the idea of listening — specifically that her dog can hear things she can’t to tell how she is felling. 

The story is told through headphones, creating an intimate atmosphere and one where the mechanism of listening becomes heightened. Moving back and forth through time and in and out of reality, the story unravels for us slowly, and in a really touching way, until we realise that another tragedy has occurred for Effy to move forward from. 

All elements of the production come together to perfection, but in particular, a couple elements stand out.  Tim Crouch’s script deals with intense subject matter, and for a young audience, yet doesn’t shy away from it or simplify it. In fact, there are elements introduced throughout the story which make it beautifully complex and difficult. The way the story unravels is careful to release just the right amout of story as it goes, slowly revealing what is happening and the depths of the situation to the audience. By positioning the story of this young girl’s emotional growth around her dog and what the dog can hear, with the overwhelming theme of listening, the audience are able to achieve a psychical distance and objectivity to the story while still being emotionally impacted by it. This is a beautiful story, well told — for audiences of all ages. 

And secondly, the sound design by Helen Skiera is truly exceptional, if relentless. The audio is playful and evocative — it creates closeness, and distance, builds spaces and changes times despite next to no change in the physical space. The layers to the sound design really emphasise the elements of the story and elevate them. The elements of sound design work together to create an intimacy between the audience, actors, and story.

Go see this.

NOWHERE - Fuel Theatre @ Battersea Arts Centre

Where are we safe? Khalid Abdalla’s solo show leaves nothing untouched in its challenge to the audience. Blending personal history with the politics that overshadow it, Khalid takes us through his family’s history as it relates to revolt, colonialism, and the current imperialist ventures in the West Bank and Palestine.

If it sounds heavy, it is - at times. But at times it is also darkly funny, light, playful, and despite the darkness, filled with hope.

Director Omar Elerian uses a brilliant blend of media to bring us this story - projections of old photographs, video which is and is not live (and it hard to tell when it transitions), and perhaps most movingly, images on a phone. To give the audience a story about contemporary uprisings which are made possible in many ways by the smartphone, which we far away primarily learn about through our phones, is nothing short of genius.

The play moves at a blistering pace and yet feels gentle, thoughtful. The performance, production, and script all come together in the most beautiful way, that the audience are left a little breathless, a little teary, and completely reminded of why we make theatre. This. This is why.

Twine @ The Yard Theatre

Selina Thompson’s newest play, Twine, explores adoption, and the search of an adopted child to understand their history. Set in a magical between place, Sycamore has been split into three parts to represent her at different points in her life. Seed is her at 5 days old (when she was adopted), Sapling is her as a teen, and Bark is adult her, hardened to the realities of life.

The premise is intriguing, and there are moments where it is truly exciting, however as a whole piece there are moments that just don’t work. The first act worked better than the second, using music to engage and weave the story, although it ran a bit long and flagged toward the end of the act. The second act felt a bit disjointed from the first until the very final moments.

The music and performances were all strong, supporting a strong idea, but the script just didn’t quite have the pop it could have.

ECHO (Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen) @ Royal Court for LIFT Festival

Where does performance happen? What does it mean to be present in a space? Nassim Soleimanpour’s latest play, ECHO, digs at these questions. Using the convention of an actor who hasn’t read the script before performing live which Soleimanpour used with great success on White Rabbit, Yellow Rabbit, this play pushes that technique further. Not only is the actor contending with a script they haven’t seen, but with technology, projection, and more. This play asks big questions; about who we are, what ties us to a place or a memory, and importantly about what it means to move away from home and family, living as an immigrant in another culture divorced from your own but unable to separate yourself.

I won’t say more as to not steal the surprise — but suffice it to say that the images and questions this play ask have been looming over me since seeing it. That’s not easy.

Slave Play by Jeremy O Harris @ Noel Coward Theatre

I was more than a little excited when the London production of Jeremy O Harris’ Slave Play was announced, after hearing about the New York production and its reception. This is a play intended to make people think, and it is not easy viewing at times.

Don’t worry - I won’t give much away. Only to say that it is a searing commentary on racism in today’s society, in the context of all that came before (thanks Kamala). The play itself is structurally the love child of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls and Jean Genet’s Le Balcon (in all the right ways). It is delightfully confusing at first, then as it explains itself it challenges the viewer to examine their confusion and feelings on the earlier pieces. It is searing and raw.

This production’s cast are exquisite - every performance as exceptional as the next, a true ensemble. This is essential viewing - please, please go. Maybe you’ll be like half my row who walked out? Honestly, goals.

As You Like It (The Land Acknowledgement) by Cliff Cardinal @ Lift Festival

How do you hold an audience accountable? Cliff Cardinal’s As You Like It premiered in Toronto the day we moved to London, so I didn’t get to see it. . . but it was hard to avoid the furor it caused amongst Canadian theatregoers and critics. Some adored it; others were appalled. And in a way, that was the point. Reminding comfortable middle class audiences in Canada of the things they do and say to make themselves feel better, without actually doing anything.

So when I saw that this show was coming to London for the LIFT festival, I was excited of course, but also intrigued. In Canada, audiences are familiar with land acknowledgements as a construct, and have at least SOME knowledge of the horrific acts against indigenous people. But how would this translate to English audiences? I’ve now lived here nearly 3 years (this time around) and am reminded regularly how little Brit’s think about Canada, much less the politics of indigeneity, or indeed what the concept is at all. Furthermore, not only do they not think about Canada, but they are wildly underinformed (in the main) about their country’s role in “creating” the country, stealing the land, and the ensuing 200+ years of history.

Cardinal is an engaging performer, disarming the audience and making them feel comfortable, creating truly funny moments early on. He made some really clever adaptations to the script, providing some context to the UK audience that were necessary for the script to work, and for the accountability to have a hope of happening. He did a brilliant job in bringing this audience in — educating them while also adapting to their knowledge level, making it all the easier to turn the knife when the moment came. And you could feel this in the audience when the moment came (and came again. . . and again).

My only question is whether it could have gone further. . . did that audience really leave with a sense of what happened, continues to happen, and is in parallel with the much more publicised genocides? Or are they still sold the Canadian propaganda of nice people in a clean country with lots of trees? It is hard to tell.

Piece of Me @ Camden People's Theatre

At first, a seemingly silly exploration into childhood passions. And then, a deep dive into what it means to live in our hyper-recorded, overly monitored reality. Piece of Me frames around a young girl and her friends’ pop-star aspirations in the 90’s, but asks signficantly deeper questions about what we are giving up when we live our public lives.

Accompanied by an exceptionally interesting sound design, and some head bopping pop tunes, the play takes on some huge questions. I’m not convinced it answered all it set out to, but have to applaud the delightfully meta-theatrical exploration and play with form.