Author: The Reviews Hub - London

Writer: Simon Stephens Director: Rex Ryan While it’s a coup for Jermyn Street Theatre to land Simon Stephens’ new play after a short run in Dublin earlier in the year, it’s a shame that A Slow Fire is no Motortown or Sea Wall. This overlong and talky play set in a post-apocalyptic world feels very minor Stephens indeed. Taking place in a bunker, two men and then, later, a third, shelter from the outside where the sun no longer shines and where dust covers everything. They suspect that possibly there could be more survivors, but for now, they only have…

Writer and Director:  Eoin Carney  The trouble with sending up Donald Trump is that he outpaces his lampooners. Any stage parody, however creative, risks falling short of the grotesque spectacle already on offer. Writer and director Eoin Carney makes a decent fist of it in The Last Days of Trump (a liberal fantasy), though what we end up with sometimes feels like an extended skit for TV’s Saturday Night Live collided with a stage take on Hollywood’s Dr Strangelove.   It is November 2028. Pete Hegseth is dead. JD Vance has been decapitated at the Vatican. Lame-duck and apparently dementing Donald Trump (Chris Dearle in an unexpectedly quiet and meditative turn) sits alone at the White House, watching the election results to determine his successor. The problem is that there are two months before…

Writers: Kalum Wilson and Liam Bull Director: Kalum Wilson Falling out during a nuclear fallout is the premise of Kalum Wilson and Liam Bull’s new comedy playing in the final week of this year’s Camden Fringe. Focusing on the relationship between brothers Miles and Connor with just a Game Boy and a paperback of Joyce’s Ulysses, the end of the world has rarely been funnier. Their dad should be in the bunker with them, but just before the five-minute warning, he took himself off to do some last-minute shopping at Sainsbury’s. While Connor is more annoyed that he can’t find…

Director: Yu Ai Camden Fringe is a broad and vibrant church, with something to tickle all performance taste buds. Representing the conceptual and avant-garde, The Bride melds contemporary dance, song and theatre with a four-strong female tale of questing self-discovery. After her mother dies, Er’er returns to Silkworm Island, the ancestral home on Hòn Tàm Island in the bay of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she confronts her heritage, lays ghosts to rest and seeks a way forward. Memory, grief and the conflicting desires to return to the familiar and escape its oppressive forces are smoothly, sympathetically expressed by Yu Ai, Lei…

Writer: Harry Petty  Co-Creators:  Ollie Hart and Harry Warren  Stressed, hardworking film caterer Harry and his sidekick, wannabe actor Ollie, have been friends since childhood and went to drama school together. It is the last day of a three-month-long shoot for a low-concept sword and sorcery flick, directed by narcissistic Italian auteur Sebastian Conti. The boys are preparing for this evening’s wrap party and some well-deserved rest.  The complications? Harry (Harry Warren) has just been dumped by his philandering girlfriend. Meanwhile, the duo must contend with a chaotic parade of film-set eccentrics—all embodied in dizzying quick-change succession by Warren and co-star…

Writer and Director: Elena Foreman  Elena Foreman’s coming-of-age comedy monologue takes us through a series of semi-autobiographical, uncensored tales of ‘firsts’ in her younger life. The vignettes, loosely connected along the lines of ‘how naive I was’ and ‘what dicks men are’, inspire chuckles rather than belly laughs. Still, Foreman is a confident stage presence, and there is enough dark feminist bite in this piece to make for a thought-provoking 50 minutes of fringe fare.   First off comes “My First Sex”; the title here and elsewhere is helpfully provided in back projections. A voice in the 16-year-old Foreman’s head is telling her, “You’re ready to have…

Directors: Ollie Gardner and Jake Harvey The State of Us proves that a screenplay doesn’t need to be overly complicated to work. Unfolding over a single night, the film follows childhood best friends, now young adults, Frankie and Taylor as they escape from hospital for a night of debauchery, while paying close attention to even its seemingly random details (such as a necklace that serves both dramatic and comic purposes), with the film carrying its significance through to the end. The narrative rests squarely on the shoulders of its two male leads, who develop genuine chemistry across the more-often-than-not engaging…

 Renée Rossi’s explosive satire God Bomb questions the credentials of many Catholic saints. Taking pot shots at Mother Teresa, this one-woman show tackling some of the most difficult religious questions can, at its best, produce clever and biting jokes that question the very pillars of Father, Son or Holy Spirit. At other times, falling short of the mark, the sketches can be confusing or over-the-top and force an agenda rather than making a nuanced point about the big guy upstairs. With an armoury of sketches, quips and original forms of roleplay, Rossi’s comical ammunition works with various effects. Sometimes it’s…