Author: The Reviews Hub - London

Writer and Choreographer: Romain Rachline Borgeaud Since premiering in France in 2019, Stories has grown into an award-winning international dance hit, wowing audiences around the world. Billed as ‘The Tap Dance Sensation’, it has a lot to admire, and at its heart is creative polymath  Romain Rachline Borgeaud who, as well as writing, producing, composing, choreographing and directing, has also danced the lead in earlier productions. It blends an intoxicating mix of contemporary R&B and jazz-influenced music with film noir visuals to tell the tale of Icarus, a famous actor who falls into a murky world of underground gambling, mob…

Writers: Robert Khan and Tom Salinski Director: Kirsty Patrick Ward Witty, cerebral and nostalgic, Gang of Three dwells on the shifting relationships between heavyweight Prime Ministerial hopefuls Roy Jenkins, Denis Healey and Tony Crosland from the early 1970s to mid ’80s, and the consequences of their divisive, ideologically driven actions. All were from modest backgrounds but bright and ambitious, self-propelling into Oxford University, where they met, sparred and became friends. Shaped by eventful and distinguished WWII experiences, they secured numerous cabinet positions under Labour PMs Wilson and Callaghan. Sincere socialists, supporting welfare, liberty and equality for all, each had their…

Writer: Helen Edmundson Director: Blanche McIntyre When Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s Adolescence premiered on Netflix in 2025, it shone a light on the radicalisation of young boys, particularly in the light of social media influencers who reduce masculinity to an exhibition of extreme misogyny. That series saw Graham as the father of a 13-year-old boy who is arrested after a girl at his school is murdered. The focus there is on the disconnect between generations, the parents aghast that the son they love could have descended into hatred without them knowing. At first glance, Helen Edmundson’s Some Woman treads…

Directors: Maria Muñoz and Pep Ramis/Mal Pelo Composer: Pierre-François Dufour  Describing Baro d’evel is a bit like describing life itself. The company is usually billed as “circus for the twenty-first century”, and, much like life, you can make of that what you will. What it actually amounts to is storytelling through a heady mix of acting, dance, music, acrobatics, clowning and, yes, ceramics. Their latest piece, Qui Som? (Who Are We?), at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, holds a mirror up to its audience and attempts to say something about what it is to be human, or at least some of…

 As winter sets in and everything goes grey, The Photographers’ Gallery is keeping dopamine levels high with an exuberant blast of colour photography from two masters of the craft.  From the deep south of the US, William Eggleston offers small-time Americana in All That Goes Unnoticed.  Suburbs, streets and signage intersect with ordinary people doing everyday things. His work is pleasingly bookended by West African photographer, Sanlé Sory. Colour Years depicts the proud inhabitants of Burkina Faso, whose style, dignity and individuality burst through the formality and restrictions of identity and studio photography. Despite being on different continents, working in…

Writer: Henrik Ibsen (adapted by Richard Eyre) Director: Kwame Owusu Your late husband, Captain Alving, was a drunk and a womaniser whose malign influence led you to send your only son away to boarding school at the age of seven. Yet, anxious to preserve his reputation and maintain appearances, you feel obliged to dedicate an orphanage built in his memory. This is the foundation of Ibsen’s coruscating 19th-century morality tale, an unflinching exploration of sexual hypocrisy, euthanasia, incest, venereal disease and a lack of faith that retains its chilling relevance today. The widow Helene Alving (Flora Montgomery) is the central…

Writer: Georgina Collins Director: Grainne Robson Ready for Halloween, Georgina Collins brings her comedy flesh-fest to the Courtyard Theatre. A young girl discovers her appetite for sensation, stimulation, and satiation. She makes daily trips to the butchers to purchase socially acceptable offal for a houseful of mythical hounds, but the shop-bought meat ceases to be enough. Her awakened appetites lead her on to the rarer pleasures of hunted flesh. Dating sites introduce her to a range of appalling men who improve the universe by becoming snacks, and things go on from there. Discretion is an early victim. She finds a…

Writer: Michel Marc Bouchard (adapted by Armando Babaioff)   Director: Rodrigo Portella  First seen in 2017, the profoundly powerful and viscerally engrossing Brazilian stage adaptation of Michel Marc Bouchard’s Tom at the Farm, translated and produced by actor Armando Babaioff and directed by Rodrigo Portella, finally makes a long-overdue London debut. The milieu is recognisably South American: untrammelled machismo, oppressive heat, rural isolation and despair, and, in Aurora dos Campos’ stunningly rendered expressionist set, an expanse of rusty brown earth atop a vast plastic sheet that quickly churns into clinging mud. But its themes – the toxicity of lies, the…