Genre: Verbatim Theatre
Review: Stuffed
Entertaining and impactful physical clowning about important topic of food poverty and food banks
Review: Geneva Convention
As this gets quieter, it shouts more loudly. Exciting as this is, it will devastate when it finds its arc. This might ascend into something crucial.
Review: J’ai un Bleu
J’ai un Bleu manages to covey through movement what words simply cannot express. The objectification of the female form.
Review: Men Talking
The end, as it inevitably must be, is a way of recollecting emotion with emotion. An inspiring act of witness, before others, and beyond ourselves.
Review: Jock Night
With one-liners and wit in nearly every exchange, it’s a beautifully-scripted, scream-out affirmation of love, lust, loss and forever’s time being. And built to last.
Review: Joe & Ken
Most of all, this couple capture the feel of the Orton/Halliwell exchange, the chemistry, the aromatic stink of sex from Craig Myles’ Orton, the sweat and self-disgust of Tino Orsini’s Halliwell. John Dunne’s created an Ortonesque, almost What the Dramatist Saw version of events. Orton might have liked that best. And Halliwell, narrating his own death in Orsini’s delivery, been appeased.
Review: When Winston Went to War With the Wireless
An absorbing, layered, superbly entertaining two-and-a-half hours that couldn’t be more relevant. Set against The Motive and the Cue, it also proves how history allows Jack Thorne to be even more versatile than we imagined.
Review: Grenfell: in the words of survivors
Grenfell isn’t quite like any verbatim theatre, and the result’s groundbreaking. If the Dorfman could stage at least one such play a year, verbatim or imaginative, then that’s one legacy of Rufus Norris’ tenure that mustn’t be lost. Outstanding.
Review: Tony!
There’s no doubt this is an offbeat, brilliant, rude, absolutely necessary musical. Its acid test will come from younger Millennials and Zoomers. But then that’s the point: the winners rewrite history. History has just struck back, and it’s a blast.
Review: Wagatha Christie
The brilliance of movement, lighting, script-editing and strong performances, with physical jokes make this a greater thing than it might be, and this production’s gained a notch of humanity in its tour. But to wish for something more human falls into the very intrusiveness that gave rise to the trial. It’s a tribute to Wagatha Christie – and Liv Hennessy – that it raises that paradox.
Review: Tony!
There’s no doubt this is an offbeat, brilliant, rude, absolutely necessary musical. Its acid test will come from younger Millennials and Zoomers. But then that’s the point: the winners rewrite history. History has just struck back, and it’s a blast.
Review: Wagatha Christie
The brilliance of movement, lighting, script-editing and strong performances, with physical jokes make this a greater thing than it might be. But to wish for something more human falls into the very intrusiveness that gave rise to the trial. It’s a tribute to Wagatha Christie – and Liv Hennessy – that it raises that paradox.
Review: Quality Street
Don’t miss this exquisite confection. After this production, there’s possibly no return to the original. It’s a rethinking paying homage to both the sentiment, which it never upstages, and the brand and its factory-workers the comedy gave its name to.
Review: Sound of the Underground
It’ll remain one of the break-out, breakthrough, certainly ground-breaking shows this year.
Review: Jews. In Their Own Words.
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.
Review: Silence
More of a scattering of earth, ashes and love than simply groundbreaking. But caveats aside, groundbreaking it is.
Review: How to Be Lost
A wonderful piece of theatre which uses the considerable abilities of the performers onstage to ironically direct us into how to be lost!
Review: Delicious Fruit
A challenging piece of physical theatre based upon the views of the many queer voices heard by our two guides who asked all the questions.
Review: Cardboard Citizens: Bystanders
Powerful real stories told with phenomenal theatrical flair that will have you thinking 'what would I do?'
Review: The Archive of Educated Hearts
A glimpse into the lives of four women, through photographs, stories, and voice overs which catalogue their personal reflections along the path to living fully and letting go.
Review: Notes From the Field
What makes this harrowing selection work is how Smith varies, gradates and paces her interviews; and builds a climax. It renders the experience a memorial; it’s what such artistry’s for. You will experience nothing like this and leave reeling.
Review: Minefield
Minefield is for its unique and singularly consummate exploration of its themes, outstanding, in a class apart from any show you’ll see, perhaps even of Arias. Her work must be acknowledged here now.
Review: Old Boy
Entrancing, delightful and honest portrayal of manly relationships and their value in a world where cynicism holds sway.
Review: One Mississippi
Four men explore their mental wellbeing in a challenging verbatim performance that is never less than honest
Review: Cathy
Challenging theatre that asks big questions about the current state of housing and homelessness in the UK
Review: Prison Psychologist
A dark, intense and intimate story of love and tragedy. Worth getting up early for...
Review: Bella Freak
A verbatim condemnation of how you disappear once you are pronounced as special.
Review: Committee
This edgy new development, faithful to one incident, marks a more than worthwhile variation on such larger works as London Road. It’s more illuminating than the history it sheds music on.
Review: Motherhood:(Un)speakable, (Un)spoken
Ninety seconds into this newly-revised one-woman play, Joanna Rosenfeld - emerging in a poke of fingers from a cagoule of brown paper - over-voices herself giving witness to tens of verbatim experiences we hear. This tells us the baby’s a parasite, sucks all your nutrients, calcium from your teeth for instance, causes injury, often permanent, can kill. This is - literally - epic interior theatre.
Review: Glasgow Girls
Even on fictive terms this would garner praise for its raw power, its beating passion for justice and humanity. Difficult as it might be not to come away warmed this ensemble – and original musical – make it so very easy. This needs to be everywhere and should be shown if not live, then screened.
Review: Still Here
“If you have the media - please tell to all the people of nation about my country; Is very important.”
Review: Pigs and Dogs
In a quarter-hour we’re struck with a rich and head-spinning narrative of how same-sex culture’s been oppressed first by the west and now through European language. You end up stopping in outraged disbelief at this virulent legacy of colonialism. If you can’t see it, read it.
Review: Sex, Strokes, Death, Denial
Jack Duffel's new play mixes extreme naturalism with verse in a play creatively probing death and displacement in the family
Review: Nirbhaya
A form of Witness theatre takes the audience through a powerfully emotional journey exploring rape and violence towards women; women around the world are given a voice through the fearless honesty of these performers.
Review: Three to Four Days
This was a thought provoking, heartfelt attempt, through Verbatim theatre, to articulate urgent sociological issues around current issues with NHS cuts and privatisation.
