WOOD

Guest reviewer: Ellen Casey The lights come up on WOOD and we’re thrown right in; it’s the middle of a porn shoot and John is trying desperately to get it up. This involves some vigorous miming with a bicycle pump, and the first of many laughs rises up from the audience. I have to confess to […]

Lipstick: A Fairy Tale of Iran

Guest reviewer: Lola Claire Confronting the schism in feminism between the east and west is a particularly daunting subject for many British artists – and with good reason. The complex historical and cultural backgrounds make creating poignant and sensitive entertainment challenging to say the least. Luckily, Sarah Chew – writer and director of Lipstick: A […]

Portents

Guest reviewer: Ellen Casey A little disclaimer before I start with the business of the review; Portents isn’t just Portents, it’s three distinct performances, which – on the night I saw it – consisted of a spoken word performance by Chloe Mashiter, the play itself, and then an audio-visual experience by Laura Netz (which I […]

Rattled

Guest reviewer: Ellen Casey Rattled is a window into a woman unravelling. Em is standing alone (or so she thinks) on a train platform. How she got there – and what she intends to do now that she is – is never revealed to us, but whatever it was, it is interrupted in the strangest way; […]

bottled.

Guest reviewer: Kirsty Herrington Katy is a fifteen-year-old girl with her whole life ahead of her. She’s doing well at school (even if she can’t quite see the point of it), she has plenty of friends and she’s dating a boy she believes to be the love of her life. But then her mum’s boyfriend […]

The Good Landlord

Guest reviewer: Ellen Casey The Good Landlord starts with the promise of the impossible: a flat in central London for £800 pounds all in. Just the mention of this tempting offer raised a knowing chuckle from the audience, because we all know – there’s no way this doesn’t come with strings. These particular strings soon become […]

WOMANS (like Romans but with a ‘W’)

Guest reviewer: Ellen Casey WOMANS is a story within a story; Leta is just trying to pass her Module 4 History exam when she accidentally-on-purpose invokes two Muses, the goddesses of inspiration, to help her wow the examiners. However, these Muses have a story – and an agenda – of their own. Leta lives in […]

No Show

Guest reviewer: Ellen Casey The lights come up on a lone performer, clutching an accordion and baring her teeth in a grin. She stands for a moment, assessing the audience and allowing the quiet in the room to go on for a few seconds past comfortable – and then she begins to play. A few […]

Fool Britannia

Guest reviewer: Ellen Casey Fool Britannia follows in Monty Python’s slapstick humour footsteps, using the fertile ground of the British school system to teach some history, sing some songs (dinner lady and dragon inspired), and make people laugh. This is an incredibly silly show – within the first 10 minutes the audience is pelting one […]

Open

Guest reviewer: Ellen Casey Open is the real-life story of a couple – Chris and Tim – as they recreate their love story from the ground up, using old emails, voice notes from former lovers and multimedia aspects to reveal their unconventional, conventional relationship to us for scrutiny. As the name might suggest, Open is […]