Genre: Solo Play
Review: Dream of a Ridiculous Man
A definitive telling of that rarest thing, an uplifting Dostoevsky tale. It’s unlikely to be rendered better than this.
Review: Rika’s Rooms
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.
Review: Stitches
The end’s both poignant and visionary. A show to remember long after the Bear’s imagined batteries run down.
Review: Vanya
This is the greatest one-man performance I’ve seen, said a Chekhov-immersed director of 45 years’ experience next to me. Yes.
Review: Boy In Da Korma
A necessary, engaging, original variation on finding your voice: and a theatrical coup. Acting, writing, directing, video, lighting and tech support, indeed singing are first class. A gem.
Review: Rika’s Rooms
Emma Wilkinson Wright manages the narrative as an odyssey punctuated by screams. It’s already a phenomenal performance and the actor is so wholly immersed in Rika you know you’re in the presence of something remarkable
Review: Protest Song
Tim Price’s magnificent one-man play reminds us – yells at us - how much we’re all connected, and unless we stand together, how much we lose.
Review: Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz
Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz is neither complex or fiendishly plotted. But it’s very witty, linguistically inventive and light-hearted: so its downside is highlighted.
Review: The Good Dad (A Love Story), The Mitfords
Now a superb double-bill, and makes a compelling case for these two shows to be yoked together, with their intertwining of family, sisterhood, abuse and terrible consequences.
Review: Awake, Gay and Writing a Play
Escaping from a high-control religious group is not as simple as walking away. It is a waking-up process that can take years.
Review: Nearly Lear
Mischievous charm, tragic depth, and hilarious wit, all fueled by an intense and energetic inventiveness. A Must See show
Review: When We Died
An absorbing one-woman play seamlessly blending physical theatre with a poignant, gut-wrenching narrative
Review: The Quality of Mercy: Concerning the Life and Crimes of Dr Harold Frederick Shipman
A chilling exploration of the career of a serial killer
Review: This Is Not A Play (It’s A Pathetic Cry For Help)
A stunning solo performance of an exquisitely intricate script
Review: Double Bill: Paul Robeson, Suzi of the Dress
No doubting of the power of this double-bill from Kansas. The Paul Robeson is solid gold, the Suzi of the Dress, quicksilver.
Review: Fleabag
Original, raw, brilliantly funny and devastating. This production is Fleabag neat. Its harrowing streak of genius burns like a healing scar torn.
Review: The Return of Benjamin Lay
Naomi Wallace and actor Mark Provinelli inhabit this gestural giant with wit, sympathy, rage and an agency burning up centuries between. It’s profoundly moving too, speaks to our condition of techno-serfdom, new slavery, discrimination everywhere. The packed audience are never sure who might be picked on next, but delight in the calling-out. Superb.
Review: all of it
Still the most sheerly thrilling yet intimate piece MacDowall has written, though all three pieces amplify that. A miniature classic of snatched meaning its staging too flashes by with shocking brevity. In all it lasts just 90 minutes. Catch it.
Review: Lovefool
Though it might be red-topped as a Fleabag for the abused, it’s so much more excoriating. It’s also a work profoundly moving, necessary and – particularly for Gintare Parulyte - an act of courage. Lovefool’s on till May 26th; do rush to this 55-minute must-see.
Review: My Brilliant Divorce
Like any first-rate actor, Louise Faulkner lets each eyebrow rise and fall: Quizzical, hurt, amused, they all register. A work to be savoured for its exuberant telling of one of the most painful things to hit any of us, through nightmare to laughter to loving oneself, to the hope of love. Highly recommended.
Review: Havisham
As ever with Heather Alexander, this is a masterclass in acting. It’s also a masterclass in directing and technical address. The outstanding one-person show of the Fringe so far
Review: My First Time Was in a Car Park
Compelling story telling about the First Time and its aftermath
Review: Pussycat in Memory of Darkness
Neda Nezhdana’s play is a world: not simply a map of pain and war footage. Both essential and in the mesmerising Kristin Millward’s and Polly Creed’s hands, with this team, it’s almost a compulsory visit.
Review: Graceland
Understanding traumatic narrative from the outside: seeing through a skylight, darkly. An impressive debut
Review: Irrelevant
Keith Merrill and Debbie Chazen have crafted an Everywoman (and man) for whoever’s gifted yet still never makes it. Look forward to a lot more of this kind from Merrill’s Le Gallienne.
Review: Sarah
An unnerving testing of that space between naturalism and hallucination, redemption and blank unknowing, studded with a language that flies off the page.
Review: Morning Glory
A small masterpiece of amused, unflinching reveal, which does something no-one else has done at all.
Review: The Girl Who Was Very Good At Lying
An outstanding powerful, imaginative and funny exploration of the stories we tell to escape who we are and where we are.
Review: The MP, Aunty Mandy and Me
A young gay man from a small northern village gets sucked into the heady world of working for his local MP, and faces many big dilemmas.
Review: Brother’s Keeper
A moving, harrowing and well-crafted tale of survival from childhood abuse.
Review: A Eulogy for Roman
An astonishing solo show of one man’s search for meaning within himself, with audience participation.
Review: Self Service
Original idea, well developed and crafted. Mild-mannered delivery is refreshing!
Review: Jesus, Jane, Mother & Me
A Brilliant Fringe Acting Debut in a Scintillating and Ultimately Shocking Play.
Review: The Last
Chittenden’s done a great service not only to Mary Shelley’s novel, but to the way we imagine. And Amy Kidd’s exemplary.
Review: Room
As a condensation and enactment of Woolf’s seminal text this can’t be improved on. The outstanding one-person show I’ve seen this Fringe.
Review: Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope
Ask yourself this. If there were no praise or blame – who would I be?
Review: On Arriving
On Arriving takes sixty minutes it seems we’ve been immersed in a Greek Tragedy of ninety. See it.
Review: and breathe…
Yomi Sode’s hybrid theatre is a compelling immersion of witness and poetry: we need more of it.
Review: The Girl Who Was Very Good at Lying
Andrews vividly conveys what it is to be an undone thing, someone unravelling tales to live.
Review: Leaves
This haunting 45-minute tale is a superb small gem from Jermyn Street’s Footprints Festival.
Review: There’s a Ghost in My House
Stunning. Greet the nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is.
Review: Vagabonds My Phil Lynott Odyssey
An original off-kilter approach to elegy, tribute and becoming yourself.
Review: Hole
Don’t miss the chance to see this transcendent actor prove she possesses another dimension altogether.
Review: Sacrament
A revelation, superbly written and acted. Comparisons have been made with A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing. I can think of no higher praise either. You must see this.
Review: Living Newspaper #7
Like all the Royal Court’s Living Newspaper series, we need this. Watch a group of young dramatists take on the future
Review: Illusions of Liberty
A finely-calibrated solo play of what it’s like to enter that tunnel of near-undiagnosable but very real illness. Corinne Walker’s both authoritative and quicksilver. Do catch it.
Review: Living Newspaper #6
Like all the Royal Court’s Living Newspaper series, we need this. Watch what this does with the future
Review: Scaramouche Jones
Shane Ritchie’s phenomenal energy and slidings in and out of tongues, mesmerises.
Review: New Moon Monologues March
Don’t be lulled by the friendly colours and fluffy fonts. Queen of Cups is absolutely a company to watch, and its showcase productions are literally unmissable
Review: Death of England: Delroy
Renders huge black experience into a narrative that bears it, because so well-constructed, so character-driven and so inhabited by Michael Balogun whose blaze of awakening is both benediction and clarion.
Review: 15 Heroines: 15 Monologues Adapted from Ovid
Groundbreaking. The smallest producing theatre in the West End through lockdown has become the largest.
Review: A Kiss From Back Home
A solo performance that brings effectively to the stage the soulful disappointment of a lost relationship.
Review: The New Tomorrow
There’s a generosity here, a big hug. Theatre itself affirms the value of life to those who might yet shape it for the better.
Review: Daddy Drag
Proof that whilst you cannot fit a person into a show, you can truly theatrically lift a lid on his behaviour, the effect he leaves behind and the void that others cannot fill
Review: Death of England
This work never loses its charge, its own rapturous arrival Spall gives the performance of his career so far.
Review: Fleabag
Original, raw, brilliantly funny and devastating. This production is Fleabag neat. Its harrowing streak of genius burns like a healing scar torn.
Review: My Will & My Life
Poignant play, moving, relatable and fascinating insight into a meaningful friendship.
