FringeReview UK
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FringeReview UK 2022
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Howard Brenton touching eighty is at the height of his powers. Tom Littler has assembled a pitch-perfect cast, reuniting two from his outstanding All’s Well. This too.
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An object lesson in comic timing; a steep cut above the ‘real’ whodunnits we’re likely to see this year or next.
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Grabs you from the towards the close of Act One and doesn’t let go: from here to curtain we’re in heart-stopping eternity.
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Hakawatis Women of the Arabian Nights
Original, bawdy, exploratory, seductive and elegaic in equal measure. A Faberge egg, continually hatching.
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Bracing, fresh, wholly re-thought in every line, emerging with gleaming power, menace and wit. And I defy anyone not to smile at this new take on Shakespeare’s downbeat ending.
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What Richard Bean and Oliver Chris manage is homage, both to Sheridan’s shade, his early bawdy, and despite anything a memorial to those who laughed at themselves to death. A must-see.
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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.
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An unnerving testing of that space between naturalism and hallucination, redemption and blank unknowing, studded with a language that flies off the page.
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More of a scattering of earth, ashes and love than simply groundbreaking. But caveats aside, groundbreaking it is.
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Highlights the truth of its bleak laughter. Humane Strindberg. Now there’s a thing.
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The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary!
An outstanding revival, full of fierce fun, pathos and a massive tragedy for Christmas, wrapped in red bon-bons.
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So what could a Sussex-based sci-fi tale of 1913 by Conan Doyle – a space-borne poison belt of gas that hits the earth – possibly have to do with the week of the greatest temperatures known in the UK?
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A Seagull for the initiated, a meditation rather than the play itself, it’s still a truthful distillation, wholly sincere, actors uniformly excellent
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Ibsen’s elusive masterpiece is so rarely performed seeing it is an imperative. Played with such authority as here, in Norwegian and English, it’s not a luxury but a must-see.