FringeReview UK
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FringeReview UK 2022
The Finborough produces marvels, though this one, without losing its dazzling, tight DNA, deserves the widest possible transfer.
McGuinness produces one of his finest works wrought from the sawdust of others and rendered it the burst of stars that irradiate the end.
Grabs you from the towards the close of Act One and doesn’t let go: from here to curtain we’re in heart-stopping eternity.
Hakawatis Women of the Arabian Nights
Original, bawdy, exploratory, seductive and elegaic in equal measure. A Faberge egg, continually hatching.
Bracing, fresh, wholly re-thought in every line, emerging with gleaming power, menace and wit. And I defy anyone not to smile at this new take on Shakespeare’s downbeat ending.
A wonderful score and musicians, above all Bea Segura’s titanic act of shrivelling, make this a must-see.
The title role goes to Isobel Thom, making their professional debut: the greatest I’ve ever seen.
What Richard Bean and Oliver Chris manage is homage, both to Sheridan’s shade, his early bawdy, and despite anything a memorial to those who laughed at themselves to death. A must-see.
This isn’t the most revelatory Much Ado, but the most consummate and complete for a while.
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
There’s many reasons to see Williams’ finest play. To realise our potential it’s not enough to have dreams, but for someone to show us what those dreams could be.
A reading of Adrian Schiller’s Shylock as probing as other great productions of the past decade; and of Sophie Melville’s nearly-rounded, brittle Portia.
Pamela Carter’s schoolboys embody human connectedness, warmth, a final camaraderie before the chill of history. Unmissable.
Not so much an event as a concentration of Errollyn Wallen’s genius celebrating the life of blind composer Maria Theresia van Paradis, in Graeae’s world-class production
A joyous production, that without its gimmicky close, could certainly furnish a way in for many
