Author: The Reviews Hub - London

Writer: Helena Thompson Director: Maya Nielsen A 1600s folktale tells a story of Bluebeard, who is known for marrying and then killing his wives. In the original story, he kills six wives before the seventh is able to receive help from her family and kill him. In this production, we follow the fourth wife. She is bored, trapped in a castle with a man who no longer loves her. Instead, his aloofness is as cold as the castle. He leaves her alone, and that is where the play begins. The stage beautifully sets the scene. There is a stone castle…

Writer and Director: Ed Gamester This is a production like no other. Taking Norse mythology and combining it with professional wrestling seems like a unique recipe for chaos. Instead, this production is able to blend the two elements perfectly together. This production follows the myth surrounding Ragnarök, where Odin and Loki work together to create a new world. The first half largely revolves around the two defeating those who stand in their way, and it is filled more with laughter, though there are still amazing fight scenes. These scenes get the audience involved as the action moves from the stage…

This is one of those shows that you feel glad to have seen. A complete, precisely structured, incessantly funny 70 minutes of stand-up. What seems to begin as any other stand-up show — with funny childhood stories and tales of recent TV appearances — flows into a hyper-dense script that explores what it’s like to be an entertainer today in a climate of hyper-surveillance, cancel culture, and the idea that having an audience means having a “platform” that ought to be used to advocate for causes. The hour-long show is a staple of the stand-up genre, but it’s so hard…

Composers: John Luther Adams, Clarice Assad and Astor Piazzolla Conductor: Pablo Rus Broseta  Bold, dramatic and thought-provoking, this latest episode in the LPO’s Harmony with Nature series pays tribute to magnificent rivers and South American vitality. Blending modern classical music and Argentinian tango, it summons up the tranquillity and power of waterways, the pulsing vitality of the great outdoors and the fervent beats of city life. As an insightful prelude to proceedings, extreme angler Jeremy Wade (presenter of ITV’s Mighty Rivers) holds forth on the state of the world’s finite but critical freshwater resources, portraying characterful denizens of the deep…

Writer: Nicholas Wright Director: Georgia Green  Vincent in Brixton is simply riveting. In this new production at the Orange Tree, Nicholas Wright’s drama imagines an intriguing period early in Van Gogh’s life when he comes to London to work as an impoverished art dealer. It is known he lodged with a widow, Mrs Loyer, and her daughter Eugenie and that he lost his heart – but whether to mother or daughter has never been clear. Wright exploits the shadowy nature of this episode to create a moving and often very funny drama, and it’s one alive with nuance. We see…

Book: Caroline Slocock Music: John Cameron, Francis Rockliff and James Reader  Lyrics: Caroline Slocock and John Cameron Director:  Andy Morahan The story of Ruth Ellis has lost none of its relevance. Britain’s last executed woman, caught in a web of violence, class and misogyny, arrives at Wilton’s Music Hall in a new musical that is thoughtful, well-staged, and with a good cast. Caroline Slocock’s book frames the action around Ellis’s final hours in her cell, visited by a man she does not yet know is her executioner. From here, her recollections and admissions loop us back through the events that led her to the gallows.…

Writer: Miriam Battye Director: Osman Ozgun “It’s just some boy,” yet in Scenes with girls by Miriam Battye, boys – and predominantly sex with boys – is the only thing the women have to talk about when they get together. Returning to London at the Union Theatre following its premiere performance in 2022, this scrappy play explore whether women claiming to embody feminist narratives, the ‘stories’ they need to live up to, are really able to live the theory when the freedoms they crave are challenged by friends who have it all, a contentedness that best friends Lou and Tosh…

You couldn’t get more cabaret than a cabaret made up of performers who usually work behind a cabaret bar. Performers working behind bars and trying to break into the arts is a tradition. Singers, drag queens, and actors: The Phoenix Arts Club has an eclectic mix of staff. Having seen other shows here, the bar staff always seem as enthusiastic about what’s on stage as the paying audience; they must be itching to get up there themselves, and tonight we get to see what they’ve got. Dan Fishlock hosts the first half with easy charisma, holding the room together with…