Review: ECHO

Ultimately, the most telling line ”We are all immigrants across time” defines what remains an extraordinary experience


Review: Mnemonic

Mnemonic is treasurable, eloquent, a rare passport. It remembers what hope, connectedness and peace smelt like. It’s worth remembering that.


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: Oh What a Lovely War

Musically directed by Ellie Verkerk the six-strong cast play instruments throughout. They’re a phenomenal team, singing beautifully a capella or in solo. With six young actors mostly fresh out of drama school absolutely at the top of their first game, we’re treated to acting both hungry to prove and yet touched by the world they’ve entered. This is an outstanding production.


Review: Rewind

Compelling physical theatre about the disappeared in Latin America


Review: AFTER ALL

Weinachter is an interchangeable chameleon: not just a dancer, but a rare performer who can do it all! Her style and execution of ideas paints a beautiful memory of her idiosyncratic talents in exploring the beginning and end of life. Stunningly poignant.


Review: SHOOT THE CAMERAMAN

Enthralling. Poignant. Unforgettable. Two cameras. One couple. A beautiful dance between the private and public world of this turbulent couple. Not to be missed!


Review: Bill’s 44th

Relatable. Joyous. Everyone needs a Bill in their life!


Review: Home

Well timed energetic action with well designed sets, sound and lighting.


Review: Walking Home

A decently imagined production of a serious topic that hints strongly at the work remaining to be identified, never mind done.


Review: Happier Daze

The struggle to cope with the trials and tribulations of young adult life.


Review: Flame Up!

A storytelling feast of improvised tales oft told now given a stage.


Review: LULU

Where's Lulu? Tricks and treats - A great combination of mime and acrobatics!


Review: Django in Pain

Poignant, charming and meaningful play that is imaginative and vibrant in vision and message.


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: The Endling

Curious for the curious, entertaining, enlightening, witty, humorous and thought provoking.


Review: Done to Death, By Jove!

Traditional fare of the English murder mystery served wrapped in a conundrum of a puzzle with Marple, Poirot, Holmes and a far from elementary theatrical solution


Review: Candide

"Brimming with ideas, full-blooded and full throated performance, Candide is presented successfully in a way only Babolin theatre can achieve."


Review: Wild Onion

Cabaret with onions - a match made in heaven!


Review: Little Wimmin

An adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel Little Women by all-female performance art collective Figs in Wigs


Review: Silent

Bravura storytelling about fantasy and family from the perspective of a homeless man in Ireland


Review: Slings and Arrows

The principal reason why a stage should always be a platform for the voices unheard.


Review: We Came To Dance

A truly immersive experience where you dance to the rhythms of another world in a class that should make you spin.


Review: Madhouse

A fascinating drama around students stuck in one house that is, indeed, a bit mad.


Review: Nine Lessons and Carols

The Almeida’s another country. They do shows differently there. A bold communing of theatre stories with the fresh poignancy of what’s happened during 2020


Review: Metamorphosis

Compelling devised theatre - creative, dynamic and humourous!


Review: The Affair

A lovelorn lothario with ants in his pants meets his match in a knockabout clown play


Review: Vigil

Dramatic, moving, impactful physical storytelling


Review: The Voices We Hear

A moving and intimate exploration of life and connection after an apocalypse in a unique zero waste venue


Review: Ariadna

Exquisite movement and physical storytelling


Review: Gilgamesh and Me

A breathtaking ensemble physical piece full of inventiveness and heart


Review: Inside Bitch

Visceral and sometimes very very funny. Then not. Essential viewing.


Review: Baby Face

An uncomfortable night facing uncomfortable truths with comfort coming when you have the decency to condemn the truly indecent


Review: Jogging

Thought provoking, physical storytelling, dramatic with creative humour!


Review: Still No Idea

Laughter’s the best start to killing ignorance. See it.


Review: KillyMuck

A brilliant and brutal portrayal of the inequity and generational desperation of the Benefits Class


Review: (Even) Hotter

A hilarious expose of what is hot, in your body, for your body and with other bodies.


Review: The Way Out

An acoustic dystopian fantasy where the question becomes – is it right to unplug?


Review: Uninvited

Innovative devised expose of the refugee crisis from young voices creatively telling age old tales


Review: Sirens

Fun, inclusive and feminist


Review: Girl World

A devised exploration of what being a girl means and how to transition to womanhood.


Review: Spaces

A powerful ode to friendship relationships, and the spaces between.


Review: Feed

Creative, innovative, well-performed and directed, a complete show that entertains and informs!


Review: Handfast

A joyous celebration of relationships in all their glorious messiness


Review: Offstage

An inventive investigation of the unseen darkness behind the facade.


Review: Casting Off

Three generations of women 'Cast Off' all stereotypes of what they can, should and be able to do.


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: The Prudes

Neilson’s piece twists an unexpected root out of recent debates over power and sexual abuse the Royal Court has addressed so consistently. Uniquely Neilson’s made the faintly horrible full-on hilarious.


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: Thebes Land

It’s good to welcome the return of this cage. Franco-Uruguayan Sergio Blanco’s Thebes Land drops back into Arcola’s Studio 1 after its acclaimed run in 2016. It’s where this will go, what both prisoner Martin and writer T are left with, that begins to shine out of this extraordinary, ground-breaking work.


Review: Cathy

Challenging theatre that asks big questions about the current state of housing and homelessness in the UK


Review: Tinder Tales

Social Media stories well told episodically as a warning and celebration of liberation


Review: Seven

A stylish ensemble piece with a bold premise, that playfully explores the issues that face women in a very near future


Review: Form

Amusing!


Review: Adulting

The joys and agonies of being caught between childhood and adulthood at the tender age of 25 as told by 4 25 year olds.


Review: The Dreamer

A visual treat! Creative, inventive and visceral physical theatre.


Review: Borderline

"....saving you the need to go to Calais or any other refugee camp"


Review: Mobile

Fringe theatre at its best. A unique intimate experience with outstanding production values.


Review: Love

This devastatingly detailed play is a quiet shouter, and the more harrowing. Its terrible legacy is that with a few term-changes, it might be played in thirty, fifty years. The poor and destitute seem to be needed to calibrate, even manifest obscene wealth in their opposites. It should send people into the streets, but then it already has.


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: The Shakespeare Revue

A consummate delight in this now rarest of forms; a tight song-and-dance of words. New material sizzles, inserted towards the end, the whole box of Bards from Bernard Levin’s Quoting Shakespeare to McKee’s arrangement of Shakespeare lines for a musical lights-out dances on the edge of hilarity before falling headlong into it.


Review: Motherhood: (Un)speakable, (Un)spoken

Moments into this 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.