Published in Time Out June 20, 2019
Really, what is the point? Why stage this? I write with weariness, not anger. Because it’s all too tiresome, and too predictable. Turns out, nope, we really didn’t need a Harvey Weinstein play, written by a man and from a male perspective. The whole thing leaves you feeling… grubby.
Continue reading “Review: Bitter Wheat, Garrick Theatre”Published by Oh Comely in June 5, 2019
A comedian and actor, Doon Mackichan has worked as a stand-up and in influential TV comedies such as The Day Today, Brass Eye and Smack the Pony.
Continue reading “A chat with Doon Mackichan”Published in the i May 29, 2019
Andrea Dunbar is back in Bradford – and back down the pub. After writing three scorchingly honest, brutal comedy-dramas – The Arbor, Rita Sue and Bob Too, and Shirley – about life on the Buttershaw estate in Bradford, the playwright died of a brain haemorrhage in a pub toilet in 1990 at the age of 29.
Continue reading “Andrea Dunbar: does the revival of interest in a working-class genius focus too much on her troubled personal life?”Published in BBC Culture May 16, 2019
A young princess in 19th-Century ringlets and a flouncy white dress creeps across the stage and eyeballs the audience warily. “I’m of a very delicate nature,” she tells us. “And it is all made far more complicated due to the fact that I have a grand piano inside me… a grand piano would be bad enough but this one happens to be made out of glass.”
Continue reading “The princess who thought she was made of glass”Published in the Financial Times April 25, 2019
The premise of Malorie Blackman’s hugely successful 2001 young adult novel works all the more effectively in the theatre. I reviewed it for the FT; read the full version here.
Published in The TLS April 16, 2019
It’s no exaggeration to claim that Felix Barrett’s theatre company Punchdrunk has changed British theatre. Founded in 2000, Punchdrunk pioneered, and came to define, immersive theatre: where members of an audience roam around a found space itself rich in atmosphere and meaning, with non-linear narrative conveyed through dance, sound, lighting, audience interaction and hyper- detailed, installation-style design. The company created a version of small-town America inspired by David Lynch and Edward Hopper inside an abandoned Wapping warehouse for Faust (2006), and built a forest inside a vast disused factory in south London for The Firebird Ball (2005). Josephine Machon’s encyclopedia, including substantial contributions from many Punchdrunk key players, is a thorough account of the company’s eighteen-year history – though a few developments are skirted over in this fascinating, and at times irksome, guide to their practice.
Subscribers can read the full review here.
Published in Time Out March 22, 2019
Transferring from the Globe, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s play about the seventeenth-century poet Emilia Bassano Lanier has already been widely heralded as ‘rousing’ – and it certainly is that. It rouses the audience right to their feet. They whoop and cheer the barnstorming feminist speeches, and literally boo the bad oppressive men.
Continue reading “Review: Emilia, Vaudeville Theatre”Published in the i March 13, 2019
The end of Jamie Lloyd’s season of Pinter plays comes crowned in stars: Tom Hiddleston, Zawe Ashton, and Charlie Cox perform Pinter’s 1978 play. It’s eye-catching casting, and they deliver in Lloyd’s diamond-sharp production.
Continue reading “Review: Betrayal, Harold Pinter Theatre”As American as, well, apple pie, this Broadway musical is adapted from the 2007 film about a small-town waitress stuck in an abusive marriage who pours her dreams into the pies she makes. Continue reading “Review: Waitress, Adelphi Theatre”
Published in The New York Times February 3, 2019
The stage filled with women in Princess Diana masks, smashing VHS cassettes with hammers. A dancer wove her way through a bar, muttering about kittens. A figure wrapped in a filthy comforter emerged from a tent, crawling among clubbers dressed in fetish gear.
I wrote about The Yard – London’s only theater-slash-nightclub – for the New York Times. You can read the full piece here.