Author: The Reviews Hub - London

Writer: Michaela Coel Director: Anthony Simpson-Pike It’s not hard to see why Chewing Gum Dreams sold out before even its first show in this revival at Theatre 503. Except for a few references to pop socks, Craig David, and So Solid Crew, Michaela Coel’s play from 2012 hasn’t aged at all in its discussions of teenage sex and friendships. In what is already an excellently written piece, Lauryn Ajufo’s incredible performance as 14-year-old Tracey lifts Chewing Gum Dreams even higher. Indeed, Ajufo is so strong in this one-woman play that it seems impossible that another actor could ever play the…

Choreographers: Medhi Walerski, Jamar Roberts, Lar Lubovitch, Judith Jamison and Alvin Ailey In New Works, five pieces pull together with a mixture of solos, duos, quintets and full ensemble pieces. Heterogeneous yet each with a strong underlying narrative, this is a showcase of Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theater’s versatility and passion. Starting with Blink of an Eye, choreographed by Medhi Walerski (premiered in 2025), eight dancers come together for group breaths before dashing off to leave space for Itzhak Perlman’s recording of the solo violin partitas and sonatas. In the first movement, the Allemande from Partita No.2, pairs of dancers…

  Creator and Arranger: Andrea Cockerton Wrap-around social media, mobile technology, live streaming and 24-hour consumerism mean we now live in a constantly wired world. Our senses, bombarded with information, make it harder to switch off, except perhaps when we sleep. In The Dark, started by Andrea Cockerton in Cambridge in 2017, provides the perfect antidote.  This unique live music experience is back in London for the first time in two years and promises to shut out the pesky noise and wrap you in a place of peace, beauty and human connection. For music lovers, this live concert is like no…

Writer: Titas Halder Director: Matthew Xia Linnea Berthelsen is a tour de force in Titas Halder’s 90-minute dramatic monologue Darkling about the Bhopal disaster of 1984. A catastrophic industrial accident at a huge American-built pesticide plant led to a leak of toxic gas that killed thousands of people. Thousands more survived but developed serious health conditions, including blindness, respiratory diseases and cancer. Berthelsen is simply billed as ‘She’. We first see her as a very young girl contendedly playing in the mud under the blue skies of home, happy in the companionship of her father and older sister. The lighting…

Writer: Anna Ticehurst Director: Lilly Butcher 20-something Bea was doing okay until her girlfriend, Talia, dumped her, and she smashed her phone against the wall in a fit of rage. Now she is definitely not doing okay. She is grieving, her flat is a complete mess, and the neighbour upstairs keeps banging on the ceiling. She has not showered or been out in days, and the relaxation tapes and rock songs she sings along to are not helping. Worse, the lights keep flickering ominously, usually a theatrical cypher for some kind of supernatural influence at work. Into Bea’s (Anna Ticehurst,…

Writer: Clifford Odets Director: Sam Yates American playwright Clifford Odets honed his craft at the height of the Great Depression, in the mid-1930s. The opulence of the 1920s had long since faded into memory, and alongside economic hardship at every turn, the dread of another world war loomed on the horizon. Odets funded his stage plays by writing Hollywood film scripts, in an era when, alongside the classics fondly remembered today, countless other fair-to-middling melodramas were churned out and then forgotten. Golden Boy does feel like it could fit into that category, though it’s easy to see why it succeeded when…

Writer and Director: Lilwen Faulkner How much do you really judge your friends, especially the ones who have chosen an entirely different lifestyle to your own? Lilwen Faulkner’s new play Scar Tissue analyses 25 years of male friendship in just 55 minutes as two very different friends unpick their shared history and whether anything but habit keeps them together. Performed at the Old Red Lion Playhouse, Faulkner has an ear for ordinary conversation that skims between topics and offers some interesting thoughts on the social glues that bind people together, which could be further developed. Arriving on his doorstep at…

Seven Deadly Sins Music: Kurt Weill  Libretto: Bertolt Brecht  English translation: W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman  Director: Alejandro Bonatto  Musical Director: Adrian Salinero The Human Voice Music: Francis Poulenc  Libretto: Jean Cocteau  English language translation: Joseph Machlis  Director: Alejandro Bonatto  Musical Director: Elspeth Wilkes Brecht and Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins is rather less fun than it sounds. The sins are more against the Great American Dream of getting rich quick than the Ten Commandments. There’s a strong whiff of grim earnestness and the desire to ensure the bourgeoisie doesn’t have a good time that gives Brechtian alienation a bad name.…