Author: The Reviews Hub - London

Choreographers: John-William Watson and Charlotte Öfverholm The Company of Elders is Sadler’s Wells’ resident performance company. With dancers over the age of 60, these performances showcase how age is only a number. Performers still have the rhythm and groove of 20-year-olds. This show is part of the Elixir Festival 2026, a three-week-long season full of events showcasing ageing and creating numerous performances, talks and workshops with the purpose of understanding and celebrating our changing body and mind. Both performances by the Company of Elders are around 20 minutes long. The first performance, They Look Like People, is choreographed by John-William…

Conductor: Krill Karabits Violinist: Nikolai Szeps-Znaider Huge, tiered forces are amassed for Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s CATAMORPHOSIS (2020) which opens this concert: Eight double basses, four percussionists with a battery of unusual instruments, big string sections and two tubas complete with mutes. And we’re in a mysterious world of hisses and sighs along with much intensity as the composer tries to evoke the fragility of nature and fear for the future, especially in her native Iceland.  Complete with urgent glassandi and many sustained chords, it must be enormously difficult to play because it’s a substantial 20 minute piece requiring enormous concentration because…

Writer and Director: Mayuresh Mishra Most people would probably agree that the purpose of theatre is to communicate something; sometimes it is a clear story, perhaps a political message or a reflection on the strangeness of human existence. Theatre doesn’t need to be linear or even necessarily make sense, but generally the theatremaker wants to communicate something to the audience. Mayuresh Mishra’s new play Stuck in Transit largely forgets this with a synopsis that bears little resemblance to the 60-minute piece playing at the Old Red Lion Theatre, in which the audience spends the vast majority of the running time…

Knocked Conscious is an hour of short-form sketch comedy written and performed by a cadre of comedians with a solid grasp of a punchline and clear comfort in front of an audience. There is nothing awkward about their performance through the numerous sketches, whether it is a solo musical number or an absurdist Olympic event. Knocked Conscious’s sketches are at their best when they lean into a theme of the absurdity of modern life. The audience, clearly feeling seen in those moments, is livelier and more engaged when this topic is given room to breathe. On the flip side of…

Writer: Jim Cartwright Director: James Haddrell The British pub has often been a staple of many a community. For the landlord and landlady of the pub in Jim Cartwright’s TWO, it is literally their whole life. They met as children outside, snuck in together while underage, and now, in adulthood, own and operate the place. With both behind the bar every night, they have no outside interests. Instead, they banter with the punters, bicker with each other and try to avoid the one issue that is overshadowing their lives. It’s all about the people, they tell us, but there is…

Writer: Henrik Ibsen Adaptor: Anya Reiss  Director: Joe Hill-Gibbons Most of us know how A Doll’s House ends, and so it’s intriguing, when Hyemi Shin’s set is revealed, that it’s unlikely that the single door on stage could be slammed by anyone, least of all Nora. And in an adaptation that is squarely set in the present world of investment bankers, WhatsApp and Insta, perhaps a slamming door doesn’t quite cut it. We are a long way from Ibsen’s 1879. While the Norwegian names are retained, the characters now reside in London, in a fancy apartment that Torvald has just…

Director: Ged Graham Musical Director: Adam Evans Seven Drunken Nights: the Story of The Dubliners, playing for one night at New Wimbledon Theatre before touring, is a tribute show. But it’s not a tribute show along the lines of, say, ones that celebrate ABBA, with performers impersonating individual band members – an impossibility given the band’s 50 years of music-making. Rather, it’s a celebration of the Dubliners’ folk-based music with a light sketching in of the events of their glory years. But the promotional material for the show admits it’s ‘not affiliated or endorsed by The Dubliners or Mr John…

Writer: Alan Bennett Director: Emily Oulton Alan Bennett’s series of monologue plays for the BBC, Talking Heads, became instant classics when first aired in 1988. They have since been rebroadcast on the radio and have occasionally made stage appearances, starting with a 1991 presentation of three of the original 12 plays, starring Bennett and Patricia Routledge. During lockdown in 2020, the BBC remounted 10 of the original monologues alongside two new plays by Bennett on the then-unused sets of EastEnders, some of which were also performed at the Bridge Theatre. Such is the nature and brilliance of Bennett’s writing that…