Review: The Play That Goes Wrong
A play about amateurs no amateur company should even dare contemplate. There’s genius in the timing of all this. Outstanding.
Genre: Absurd Theatre 0
Review: There She Is
An absurd tale of dance and conversations combined into a performance that settles into a treatise on barriers and perceptions.
Review: Another One
An impressive physical theatre piece that does seem to meander round a lack of connection.
Review: Monsieur Somebody
Excellent acting, intriguing new absurdist play by Seamus Collins is provocative and entertaining!
Review: Pity
Those receptive to those energies unleashed in the Ionesco, or more fitfully in Saint George and the Dragon will readily see Mullarkey’s almost unique position. What he writes next might define him.
Review: Exit the King
We need such risk-taking theatre back. This outstanding production of Exit the King might just remind us how to get it.
Review: The Fabulous Bäckström Brothers
An operatic clown show, first performed in Helsinki in September 2014.
Review: Pigspurt’s Daughter
Guardian obituary, 2008. ‘Ken Campbell was one of the most original and unclassifiable talents in British theatre of the past half-century.’ It just happens that his daughter Daisy is both that and far more. She’s one of the most cunning crafters of comedy and storytelling in the anti-business
Review: Ken
Terry Johnson’s two-hander might seem a low-key hommage but his script’s brilliant. It’s a re-affirmation of Campbell’s comic epic theatre, and inspires you to look out for what his daughter Daisy might be bringing to us at the Brighton Festival.
Review: Die Die Die Old People Die
A stunning new work from Ridiculusmus, the multi-award winning theatre company who specialise in transforming complex mental health issues into warm, witty and accessible performance.
Review: Great Train Robbery
Through an ingenious mix of clowning, physical theatre and wonderful singing, this comic four shed new light on ‘what really happened’ and ‘how they participated.’
Review: Blindfold: The Night of the Hunt
Four actors led by writer/director Sofia Stavrakaki enact what’s clearly a prison of a circus, people forced to perform a ritual of trouping for the delectation of a whip-cracking elite. A summary hardly does justice to the atmosphere this production evokes or the meta-language burning through the glares of hallucinated prey. You’ll know whether it’s for you if you like Beckett or European theatre
Review: Good People, Bad Day
I loved this piece and so, I think, did the audience on the first night. The cast’s comic timing is second to none. Go see it and be confounded by this fine troupe who deserved all the applause they received on the first night.
Review: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Daniel Radcliffe’s Rosencrantz is the box-office draw, all bemusement, beautifully drawn out in a hollow-cheeked slow horror of his lot. But it’s as Guildenstern that Joshua McGuire’s sashay from affront to despair through bemusement encompasses the open-mouth ‘lads’ Hamlet greets both with. And David Haig’s Player knowing he’s the opposite of a person insulates his reflective volatility from extinction. On the fiftieth anniversary of its Old Vic debut, Stoppard’s early masterpiece still startles in such a first-rate revival, protesting life to the black-out.
Review: The Comedy About a Bank Robbery
The Comedy About a Bank Robbery redefines the category, by edging beyond even recent work and revealing a classic structure entering a hall of mirrors and going mad. The musical as well as general ensemble is the most remarkably timed I’ve ever seen in a theatre, and the set designs and shifts the most frantically split into milliseconds. This is an outstanding and redefining farce in every way.
Review: Blue Heart
A major Churchill season is long overdue, and her eightieth in 2018 shouldn’t be the only occasion of it. Orange Tree’s production is as good as it gets in Blue Heart.
Review: The Rise and Inevitable Fall of Lucas Petit
An off beat look at life that highlights rather than sparkles but raises a smile nonetheless
Review: Twonkey’s Drive In: Jennifer’s Robot Arm
Paul Vickers' first musical is unsettling, shambolic and very, very silly.
Review: Cosmic Fear or the Day Brad Pitt Got Paranoia
An uncomfortable time examining the environmental disaster ready to unfold
Review: Stunning The Punters
Arguably, no single person in English theatre has a better understanding and presents a fuller expression of physical theatre than George Dillon. His vocal range is phenomenal whilst his physical presence is captivating. Superlatives become redundant.
Review: Wolf Meat
Profoundly silly and farcically serious show with just the kind of anarchy that offers coke to audience members. Contains brief and ghastly nudity.
Review: The Big Stiffy
Absurd and off-the-wall, this surreal funeral party is a bizarre experiment that really does pay off
Review: The Bald Prima Donna
Spirited pacey revival of Ionesco’s first play, with one stand-out performance and superbly idiomatic one. A perfect introduction to the playwright.
Review: A Dirty Get-Away!
Brilliantly silly and profound meditation on the nature of memory loss as innocence
Review: Sound & Fury’s ‘Lord of the Thrones’
A reluctant hero, an assortment of creatures and characters, a quest and plenty of chaos!
Review: Today is my 100th birthday or the disappearance of Ubu Roi
An absurd show, based on an absurd premise filled with wonderful absurdity
Review: FEAST
A pinch of nudity, a splash of surrealism, and a dollop of the absurd. You won’t find anything else quite like it skimming through the Fringe brochure, that’s for sure.
Review: Pigmalion Zoo
An absurdist view of an apocalyptic time when a family have much to consider when structure has failed and the future is wholly uncertain
