FringeReview UK
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FringeReview UK 2021
Even more than 2019, a carnival riot of joy – with enough misdirection to evoke moonshine
Absorbing. With such an acting masterclass the play’s a bewitchingly-voiced fugue on the limits of belief and betrayal.
An Evening With Flanders and Swann
A sovereign tribute. If you know Flanders and Swann, you’ll know Bednarczyk.
Yomi Sode’s hybrid theatre is a compelling immersion of witness and poetry: we need more of it.
A pristine, heartwarming Valentine of a musical, starring a pair of real-life lovers, it deserves a real-life run
Three very fine and one outstanding work, Scratches – the best kind of play on depression, self-harm, black holes. Because it’s screamingly funny and deeply connected to why we do theatre.
Evening Conversations/Life Laundry
Engrossing, it should provoke. Sudha Bhuchar absolves us by being bloody funny.
Charlotte Emmerson and Sian Phillips make their parts indelible, and add to Beckett’s stock of pity, stoicism and a window on death. Outstanding.
Jumbo’s Hamlet strips out accretions and ghosts you into asking who or what Hamlet is. See it if you possibly can.
Don’t miss the chance to see this transcendent actor prove she possesses another dimension altogether.
Its potency lies in a fine peeling apart by Adrian Lester and Danny Sapini, and the language that bridges it.
After all the gods and their lack of choice, we come to the final instalment, the human dimension. Where we have one. A heartfelt, satisfying finish.
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.
One of the wittiest but also truthful comedies about love, identity, sexual politics and gefilte fish I’ve seen
An adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel Little Women by all-female performance art collective Figs in Wigs
Living Newspaper #3 Royal Court Theatre
Hot off Sloane Square a team of writers, actors and creatives twist the news to truth
Like all the Royal Court’s Living Newspaper series, we need this. Watch what this does with the future
Like all the Royal Court’s Living Newspaper series, we need this. Watch a group of young dramatists take on the future
Building out of Macbeth a recurring epic of structural violence not ended with one overthrow, sets the seal on this outstanding production.
Immerse yourself in Blanche McIntyre’s quizzical production. You’ll come nearer to this play.
As we saw in March, don’t be lulled by friendly colours and fluffy fonts. Queens of Cups again proves they’re a company to revel with and wait for heart-stopping reveals
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
On Arriving takes sixty minutes it seems we’ve been immersed in a Greek Tragedy of ninety. See it.
Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied Tunisia
A profound parable for co-existence and its sometime impossibility, perpetually skewed by others’ disruptions.
A terrific reinvention, bringing gods and heroines up from the death of myth to an altered world.
As with Inside, Outside not only fits us, they help us to move on, and become in their modest, unassuming and utterly transcendent way, part of how we learn to.
Pandora’s Jar/Honour Among Thebes
The most educative stand-up and a thrilling presentation. Oh and bloody funny on the tragedies.
With his new production director Robin Herford, most associated with this play, brings pace, panache, and more than a dose of Ayckbourn’s generosity of spirit
Do see this work of understated virtuosity, rich in character, substance, a shape-shifting singularity.
A fleet, brilliantly upending, wholly relevant take on the Verona-ready toxicity feeding male violence and young depression
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.
A joyous, heady and oh-so-welcome return to this intimate yet high-kicking theatre. An absolute must-see.
A first-rate revival of a play that with its ostensible shock-value in aspic, reveals subversions and a clever structure so unsettling we should all look in the mirror and wince.
Statements After an Arrest under the Immortality Act
An important, scorching revival, Statements explores the limits of love in a forcing-house of oppression and racism.
Naturally enriched by living with Shakespeare Michael Pennington unearths local habitations and names for him.
The Girl Who Was Very Good at Lying
Andrews vividly conveys what it is to be an undone thing, someone unravelling tales to live.
A dramatic sense of arrival the way the Odyssey here ended: a clash of even vaster ferocity, keening, treachery, humour, mischievousness, sacrifice and grief, joy and the agency of women.
The definitive way to experience this troublingly great, disturbingly unresolved poem
Do see this Tempest, not only subtly outstanding, but pulsing with human connectivity and warmth.
Heartstopping. There’s an absoluteness here we need. We must prove desperate for it or die ourselves.
Another sovereign tribute. Stefan Bednarczyk brings Tom Lehrer swaggering out of retirement.
Again the most educative stand-up and a thrilling presentation. Oh and bloody funny on war, male sexuality and the Bechdel Test.
With Michelle Terry as Viola, one of the most touching and truthful Twelfth Nights I’ve seen.
The glaring energy of this piece can’t disguise how it strikes profundity in its funny-bone.
Vagabonds My Phil Lynott Odyssey
An original off-kilter approach to elegy, tribute and becoming yourself.
Vespertilio marks Barry McStay’s emergence as a writer of distinction. Anything he writes now should be looked out for.
Amy Berryman’s Walden is a remarkable play where the earth itself’s at the cross-planet, and travellers in space have inner and outer choices.
Churchill’s anatomy of grief is what abides. Its emotional plangency and pulling the future open is unique.
