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.
As Ken Tynan once said of another debut, I don’t think I could love someone who doesn’t love this play.
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.
An object lesson in comic timing; a steep cut above the ‘real’ whodunnits we’re likely to see this year or next.
McGuinness produces one of his finest works wrought from the sawdust of others and rendered it the burst of stars that irradiate the end.
For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy
Turns the bleakness of six young men into a celebration of – for now – coming through
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 major talent with a distinct voice, and the consummate assurance to express it with stamp and precision
The title role goes to Isobel Thom, making their professional debut: the greatest I’ve ever seen.
It’s Jonathan Freedland’s and Tracy-Ann Oberman’s brilliance to bring off-kilter, casual devastation to the stage; in raw unsettlings that for many keep the suitcase packed.
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.
Worth 95 minutes of anyone’s time, you come out heavier with the weight of where you’ve been.
An unnerving testing of that space between naturalism and hallucination, redemption and blank unknowing, studded with a language that flies off the page.
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
More of a scattering of earth, ashes and love than simply groundbreaking. But caveats aside, groundbreaking it is.
Danny Webb gives the performance of his life. Ralph Fiennes is coiled majesty. Two-and-a-half hours of such material have rarely been so thrilling.
Lucy Kirkwood prophesies what’s in store with savage fury, and no-one’s exempt, least of all her.
There’s no finer dramatisation of India’s internal conflicts. Shubham Saraf’s Gandhi-killer Godse stands out in this thrilling ensemble and storms it too.
The Marriage of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
Such exquisite works find their time; speak to it again and again and again.
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
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?
A Seagull for the initiated, a meditation rather than the play itself, it’s still a truthful distillation, wholly sincere, actors uniformly excellent
Perfectly freighted; each character pitched with just enough choice to make us wonder what life, not Stephen Beresford will do with them. Outstanding.
