FringeReview UK

Babette’s Feast

Maxwell’s script of Babette's Feast helps conjure Buckhurst’s cast into conjurers. They’re both dream-inducing and hyper-alert, their timing and balletic movements spellbinding and unforgettable. It’s one of the finest recent productions from a theatre raising the most consistent magic in London.

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Blood Wedding

There’s no swift way to convey duende, the spirit of flamenco, passion and tragedy so unrelentingly – and there’s not a hint of comedy here, no shading to hide in. This hugely challenging drama stamps out its soul in this courageous, literally no-prisoners production.

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Boudica

Do see this, a magnificent and largely successful attempt to revive History plays, with an energy and on occasion subtlety that with justice should bring us more large-scale Tristan Bernays.

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Come Rhyme With Me

A literary taster evening of good food and good poetry

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East

Sizzling standout revival of Berkoff's first play, revived.

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Salomé

Here’s a great divider of critical heads. Yael Farber who made a great impact last year directing Lorraine Hanbury’s Les Blancs returns with her own Salomé at the Olivier. Anyone who saw the Hanbury will recognize the ritualistic use Farber makes of the Olivier, though Susan Hilferty’s set is stripped for swoops of spectacle.

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Sand in the Sandwiches

Sand in the Sandwiches is a haunting study, given stature by Edward Fox’s conjuration of an erotically disturbed gentility mocking itself. It reminds us, now Betjeman’s faded from aural as well as visual memory, what he was, what he might yet become.

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Slooshy Wordshow

Amiable, powerful and hugely enjoyable

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