FringeReview UK

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Even more than 2019, a carnival riot of joy – with enough misdirection to evoke moonshine

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Anton Chekhov

The nearest we’ll come to meeting Chekhov. In Pennington’s masterclass.

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Aphrodite

Dazzling: wise, clever twists about choice, male determination, and consequence.

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Hamlet

Jumbo’s Hamlet strips out accretions and ghosts you into asking who or what Hamlet is. See it if you possibly can.

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Icarus

After all the gods and their lack of choice, we come to the final instalment, the human dimension. Where we have one. A heartfelt, satisfying finish.

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Macbeth

Building out of Macbeth a recurring epic of structural violence not ended with one overthrow, sets the seal on this outstanding production.

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Metamorphoses

The overriding sense, not surprisingly with these actors, is joy.

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Metaphysicals

A cross between cheerfully-spun recital and quicksilver treasury

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Orpheus

A terrific reinvention, bringing gods and heroines up from the death of myth to an altered world.

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Pandora’s Jar/Honour Among Thebes

The most educative stand-up and a thrilling presentation. Oh and bloody funny on the tragedies.

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Paradise

A sleeping classic in the making

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Persephone

Dazzling: wise, clever twists about choice, male determination, and consequence.

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Push and Pull

A quietly thrilling evening, after it goes off with a bang and a bear.

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Pygmalion

The most profound reinvention of this particular myth I’ve seen

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Romeo and Juliet

A fleet, brilliantly upending, wholly relevant take on the Verona-ready toxicity feeding male violence and young depression

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Sweet William

Naturally enriched by living with Shakespeare Michael Pennington unearths local habitations and names for him.

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The Game and Love and Chance

If you ever need a kick-start to theatre, this is it.

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The Love and War Trilogy

An enormously satisfying traversal

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The Mahabharata

A dramatic sense of arrival the way the Odyssey here ended: a clash of even vaster ferocity, keening, treachery, humour, mischievousness, sacrifice and grief, joy and the agency of women.

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The Odyssey

As spellbinding as Circe and Calypso in one

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The Rape of Lucrece

The definitive way to experience this troublingly great, disturbingly unresolved poem

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The Tempest

Do see this Tempest, not only subtly outstanding, but pulsing with human connectivity and warmth.

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Troy Story

Again the most educative stand-up and a thrilling presentation. Oh and bloody funny on war, male sexuality and the Bechdel Test.

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Twelfth Night

With Michelle Terry as Viola, one of the most touching and truthful Twelfth Nights I’ve seen.

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