FringeReview UK
Years: 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015
FringeReview UK 2024
A worthy successor to Never Not Once, almost from the other side of the glass, it makes Crim one of the most visible and exciting of US dramatists.
Jacob Kay and Helen Baird are both exemplary and funny – there’s explosions of laughter. At 40 minutes there’s much matter hurled at the speed of dark. See it if you can, and check out the other Bitesize plays at Riverside.
Deservedly hugely popular. With uber-smart dialogue, Dromgoole ensures that under the brittle wrap, there’s an ache and overriding desire for connection.
It’s conquered both sides of the pond. Stunning, heartwarming, heartbreaking. We need this.
Almost a play in three acts...but strangely, rivetingly not. Ridiculusmus put the shovel into Shakespeare.
Kendall Feaver’s very integrity might not satisfy those who enjoy outcomes dispelled in light. But that’s the point.
This production’s 100 minutes are so absorbing you’re not quite sure if the time’s stopped, or just your preconceptions. Stunning, a must see.
Laura Hanna is outstanding in a play that ought to establish itself and playwright Martha Loader; and should enjoy a much longer run.
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.
It’s an exciting, fragile world Sam Grabiner’s promised us in the future.
One of the very finest three-handers I’ve seen for a long time, Burnt-Up Love refuses to judge and nor will anyone left reeling after seeing this. Stunning.
Simon Stephens commented “If I could get all your numbers I would ring you all up individually and urge you to see Captain Amazing.” That can’t be improved on. It’s a must-see.
One of the finest small-scale plays to come out of Arcola’s Studio 2 recently. Do see this.
Still in her twenties but vastly experienced, it’s going to be exciting to see where Lawford breaks out to next.
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.
Frozen is far more than a thriller: it’s an interrogation into the limits of what evil-doing is, what redemption and some capacity to forgive might be, and its consequences: and above all it ends in a thaw cracking like a Russian spring.
Compelling and unanswerable, it’s more humane than recent history in several parts of the world allow. Setting it in 2016, Josh Azouz knows history itself has been overtaken. Highly recommended.
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.
Despite history’s caveats, O’Farrell’s core message isn’t about white saviours or pop stars but how ordinary people unite to change things.
This smouldering production – fast-talking or timeless - fully engages with the play. It makes almost perfect sense: and two families’ DNA ring true as rarely before.
Stephen Unwin directs his own play as a sweep of storytelling, laughter and devastation.
This is possibly Ridley’s masterpiece. Always exercised by the spectral presence of something just out of eyeshot, he never lets that intrude. Scorching and necessary, Leaves of Glass delves into family toxicity, ceaselessly dragging us back into the past.
An aching, unflinching look at what we might face. Yet few seek to live through such a pact as bestowed here. A Greek gift. Unmissable in the south east.
Mnemonic is treasurable, eloquent, a rare passport. It remembers what hope, connectedness and peace smelt like. It’s worth remembering that.
With institutional racism and trauma compounded in a feedback loop, this Othello’s a timely, and timeless broadside on everything toxic we inhale and expel as venom.
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.
A joyous revival. Though working in TV production, Hayden’s writing is too good, too well-shaped not to develop in theatre instead.
Ruari Conaghan Lies Where It Falls
Ruari Conaghan has nowhere to hide in every sense. He exudes the charismatic of 100 watts cosplaying a glowing 40, then hits you between the eyes
A superbly uncomfortable edge-of-seat revelation. Groundbreaking, it’s also definitive on something we often see far too dimly.
The end’s both poignant and visionary. A show to remember long after the Bear’s imagined batteries run down.
The writing will snare you, Phoebe Ladenburg will hold you, and you’ll lean over the fourth wall.
A superbly witty interrogation of identity, abuses many histories deep, asking questions it sets up in not too sober a fashion. Testmatch is a lightning-conductor.
The Beautiful Future is Coming
Beautiful Future engages throughout though the near future is where it beats quickest. Flora Wilson Brown’s play makes you wonder what life, not just the playwright, might do with her characters. Urgently recommended.
This extremely fine play is even more prescient than Penhall and Warchus intended, with an earlier election. The Constituent though, will survive it till August.
There’s so much to admire here that it’s a happy duty to urge you to see it, if you can, any way you can.
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.
Hall, following Nottage in particular, emerges as one of the most exciting US dramatists.
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.
Even this early, it’s safe to predict we’ll look back at the end of 2024 and proclaim it as one of the year’s finest.
This is the greatest one-man performance I’ve seen, said a Chekhov-immersed director of 45 years’ experience next to me. Yes.
As fine a realisation as anyone could manage. The immediacy, cries, reveals are inherently theatrical and precious. A must-see.
Delicious, certainly, truly witty and fast-moving, never indulgent about self-indulgence, this is a sure-fired soufflé
