Digging Deep

You enter The Cage to find a group of lads mucking about in the performance space, classic Manchester tunes blaring and apparently loving life. Amy Guyler’s Digging Deep, however, quickly snatches away this facade when Mossy (Kyle Rowe) reveals that he wants to kill himself; he’s spent a long time thinking about it, and almost gone […]

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 […]

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 […]

Most popular posts of 2018

I’m always fascinated by the stats page here – in particular, which of my posts end up attracting the most hits! It definitely can take you by surprise at times. So, here are the top 15 most viewed posts from 2018… 15. Section 2 Teamed with No One Is Coming To Save You is Paper […]

Favourite shows of 2018

As I ended up seeing more different shows than last year (and almost as many in total, thanks to some repeat visits), I decided enough was enough – it’s finally time to branch out from the weird top 12 idea. Beginning with a short list of around 40 (admittedly this doesn’t sound very short), I […]

Worst shows of 2018

As we live in a world where people appear to be increasingly defensive, and criticism (however constructive) is simply batted away, I feel I absolutely need to stress from the outset that this is just my opinion. I would write ‘Least favourite shows of 2018’ as the title, but that doesn’t really roll off the tongue […]

“Sit by my side and let the world slip”

Previously I’ve written about ‘how to be a groundling‘ at Shakespeare’s Globe (though obviously some of those tips can be universally applied to standing areas in theatres), so I thought it was high time I turned my attention to the more widely used format: seats. An element of theatregoing that can just be taken for […]