FringeReview UK

A Doll’s House Part 2

The best Part 2 we can imagine.

---

Cancelling Socrates

Howard Brenton touching eighty is at the height of his powers. Tom Littler has assembled a pitch-perfect cast, reuniting two from his outstanding All’s Well. This too.

---

Duck

An impressively finished play. Do see it.

---

Marys Seacole

No simple swapping of heirs and originals, but a dream of the future by Seacole, or equally present dreams raking the past. Do see this.

---

Middle

Judging by the audience, its bleakness tells. Middle bears its own epiphany.

---

Orlando

A gem of a production, Taylor McClaine a soaring talent to watch.

---

Prima Facie

if Comer doesn’t receive awards for this there’s no justice at all.

---

Shake the City

A real play bursting out of its hour-plus length; with complex interaction, uncertain journeys, each character developing a crisis of isolation only resolved by sisterhood

---

That Is Not Who I Am

Lucy Kirkwood prophesies what’s in store with savage fury, and no-one’s exempt, least of all her.

---

The Anarchist

A firecracker of a first play. Expect Molotovs.

---

The Dance of Death

Highlights the truth of its bleak laughter. Humane Strindberg. Now there’s a thing.

---

The Lesson

Groundbreaking, superb, unmissable.

---

The Marriage of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

Such exquisite works find their time; speak to it again and again and again.

---

The Misfortune of the English

Pamela Carter’s schoolboys embody human connectedness, warmth, a final camaraderie before the chill of history. Unmissable.

---

The Poison Belt

So what could a Sussex-based sci-fi tale of 1913 by Conan Doyle – a space-borne poison belt of gas that hits the earth – possibly have to do with the week of the greatest temperatures known in the UK?

---

Two Billion Beats

Two Billion Beats was bursting with promise before. Now it delivers with a visceral yes.

---

When We Dead Awaken

Ibsen’s elusive masterpiece is so rarely performed seeing it is an imperative. Played with such authority as here, in Norwegian and English, it’s not a luxury but a must-see.

---