FringeReview UK
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FringeReview UK 2024
Don’t go expecting searing insights, but do go for a crack ensemble who will surely turn many to Shakespeare. An endearing and uplifting enterprise.
A paean to wonder and possibility, dreaming to some purpose. Like other winter growths, this should prove a hardy perennial, evergreen as the book.
Cutting the Tightrope: The Divorce of Politics from Art
An essential, raging and ranging collection of works flashing with humour and teeth, flecked with harrowing stories and above all love for a humanity the establishment wishes us to other and consign to tragedy. A must-see.
A definitive telling of that rarest thing, an uplifting Dostoevsky tale. It’s unlikely to be rendered better than this.
Ultimately, the most telling line ”We are all immigrants across time” defines what remains an extraordinary experience
Stella Powell-Jones coaxes provisional miracles from her cast and space. The medium’s playful, even fun. The message though is bleak; and love is still in the letting go.
Heart’s Desire/L’Amore Del Cuore
Anyone admiring Churchill, ferocious comedy or excited by a rare UK foray into Italian theatre must see this.
In and Out of Chekhov’s Shorts
Outstanding. After this, there’s no other way to tell Chekhov dramatically that he’s not already nailed down in a play himself. Chekhov would have loved it.
Janie Dee’s Beautiful World Cabaret
Who could object to its urgency, or its starry messenger? A gem.
It’s Klaff’s improvisatory edge, founded on absolute technique and clear-headed text, that finds an exit where none was signposted. Magnificent.
Stephen Unwin directs his own play as a sweep of storytelling, laughter and devastation.
Mnemonic is treasurable, eloquent, a rare passport. It remembers what hope, connectedness and peace smelt like. It’s worth remembering that.
An unalloyed delight, compressing the story but revealing things even those who know the novel will take back to it.
Emma Wilkinson Wright manages the narrative as an odyssey punctuated by screams. It’s a pretty phenomenal performance and the actor is so wholly immersed in Rika you know you’re in the presence of something remarkable.
Sara Farrington A Trojan Woman
An acclaimed pocket tragedy which yet carries Euripides’ weight in Farrington’s framing, it more than touches the heart: it snatches it and hands it back as a sad and angry consolation.
The mystery’s in the ensemble, the production, its bewitching leads. It’s a mighty reckoning in a little room.
Essential for anyone interested in Brecht or 20th century drama, it’s far more: starkly entrancing, then engrossing over 110 minutes.
It’s reading Beckett in flashes of lightning and laughter. Conor Lovett stuns in this cut-down stand-up Beckett-novels-for-beginners-and-enders three-hour whistlestop. A tour de force as well as a tour de farce of Beckett’s genius.
An exceptional ensemble delivering a delirious twist on a tale that truly deserves it. Unmissable.
Richard Brome’s 1637 The English Moor marks a new departure for Read Not Dead. You might say with this play it’s Read to be Dead.
An extraordinary production. Thorne’s vision is capped by a riveting performance by Gatiss, who glows with the still, sad music of Gielgud’s humanity.
Mike Poulton’s text gleams and snaps. Lucy Bailey’s production of it thrills and occasionally overwhelms, dazzling in its maze of missteps. A must-see.
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
This desperate elegy of betrayal, straight from Le Carré’s own hurt, will haunt you with the truth of its despair.
Blackeyed have kept their telling as lean as Holmes’ hawk-like face, and it pounces. If you admire 221b at all, see it this week.
This production reminds us it’s often the least theatrical, least tractable works that break boundaries, glow with an authority that changes the order of things.
First-rate youth theatre, creatives and cast excel: detailed, funny, not to be taken over-seriously, then quite a bit more so.
As fine a realisation as anyone could manage. The immediacy, cries, reveals are inherently theatrical and precious. A must-see.
