Author: The Reviews Hub - London

Writer: Bertolt Brecht, translated by Anna Jordan Director: Ellie While When Bertolt Brecht wrote Mother Courage and Her Children, he set it within the Thirty Years’ War, which ran from 1618 to 1648. But he was writing in 1939, so a much more modern attitude to warfare must have been closer to mind. And wars have remained with us ever since. Anna Jordan’s translation, first performed in 2019 at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre, transposes the action to a nebulous world where the warring factions are the Blues and the Purples. A third force, the terrorist Oranges, makes their presence felt…

Writers: Alessia Siniscalchi and Paul Spera Director: Alessia Siniscalchi Music: Marco Cappelli and Phil St George If the Velvet Underground were ever to do Weimar cabaret in Garden City, Kansas, then this would be it. It may never be clear what is going on exactly, but Kulturscio’k Live Art Collective’s reimagining of Truman Capote’s early short story ‘Kindred Spirits’, where two women plan the murder of their husbands, and with his true-life crime book In Cold Blood casting a long shadow, Garden Party is dark, funny and mysterious. However, in another layer of delightful confusion, the audience is welcomed to…

Concept and Director: Philippe Quesne Farm Fatale is an absurdist parable about a future we are all sleepwalking into, or it’s eco-propaganda through the medium of clowning, or it’s a semi-scary kid’s show for adults, or it’s continental philosophy live. In Farm Fatale, a group of scarecrows run a radio show from a farm, or not a farm (it might be imagined by the group). Farm Fatale is the kind of show that knows what it is, even if the audience has no clue. It almost lets them in on the secret, but just as a semblance of logic feels…

Book and Lyrics: Richy Hughes Music and Lyrics: Tim Sutton Director: Lynette Linton When true events are transmuted onto the page, then into film, and finally onto the stage, there is an inherent risk that somewhere along the way, the soul of the story gets lost during the adaptation process. The risk with a musical is even greater because its set pieces should spur and elevate the narrative rather than break it up. Lynette Linton’s The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, first a memoir by William Kambwamba, Bryan Mealer and Potboiler Productions, then a film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, and now…

Writer: Beth Paterson Director: Kat Yates Shadowy family histories can be difficult to confront, and none more so than those leading back to humanity’s darkest hours. It’s with bravery then that Beth Paterson (writer and performer) digs deep into the life story of her grandmother Niusia, her struggle to survive Auschwitz and the horrors of the Holocaust, in a solo show that reaches for great heights but often fails to reach them. Core aspects of the show have plenty going for it; Paterson is a charming performer who easily pulls us into her own life story and how her views…

Writer: Sarah Ruhl  Director: Blanche McIntyre Receiving its UK premiere after opening in New York in 2011 comes Sarah Ruhl’s Stage Kiss, a play about actors, acting and theatre, those kinds of subjects that an audience loves. With its onstage and offstage shenanigans, it’s a bit like Noises Off and, in some places, The Play That Goes Wrong. It’s generally very funny, but not very deep. It begins with a female actor (the character’s name is She) turning up late and unprepared for an audition. The only thing she seems to be aware of in the script is that she…

Writer: Samuel Beckett Director: Gary Oldman In 1958, a new play by Samuel Beckett debuted at the Royal Court Theatre, as a curtain-raiser to the evening’s main event, the same writer’s Endgame. Nearly 70 years later, it is the turn of that play, Krapp’s Last Tape, to take the prime spot. This time round, the play is preceded by Leo Simpe-Asante’s Godot’s To-Do List, a Beckett-inspired piece in which a young man, Godot (Shakeel Haakim), is given a series of tasks by an unknown remote voice. Some of the tasks succeed, some fail; some trigger existential reflection, some just agitate.…

Writer and Director: Sebastian Senior For the latest gift from this year’s Peckham Fringe, Sebastian Senior writes, directs and stars in Repatriated at the Canada Water Theatre. Senior’s production is a resounding success. Repatriated starts with Bob Dylan’s Only a Pawn in Their Game before turning to UK electronic and garage music, Mass Destruction by Faithless being one of several tracks played as the audience takes their seats. Repatriated explores the concept of statelessness. Simon, after attending a protest against the government, finds himself arrested and in a cell without a solicitor, stripped of his citizenship and his rights. Given…