London Reviews

Writer: Danusia Samal Director: Tanuja Amarasuriya Reviewer: Richard Maguire Consistently championing new writing, Theatre503 is a springboard for many young playwrights and over the years the theatre has produced a number of brilliant plays. Out of Sorts, its latest offering, is one of the best for some time. Danusia Samal’s play follows two days in the life of Zara, the ...

Reviewer: Maryam Philpott Tribute acts devoted to a favourite popstar or band are fairly standard but less common is a tribute show dedicated to a particular album. Josh Turner’s latest concert, performed for only the second time at the Shepherd Bush Empire, is a homage to Paul Simon’s Graceland album written in 1986 when the artist visited apartheid South Africa ...

Writer: Miles Tredinnick Director: Barnaby Eaton-Jones Reviewer: Scott Matthewman The original television version of Up Pompeii, which after a 1969 Comedy Playhouse pilot consisted of just 13 episodes in 1970, has lasted in the British comedy psyche to this day. It s enduring appeal is down almost entirely to Frankie Howerd’s performance of Lurcio, the idle slave around whom all ...

Director: Rachel Mason Reviewer: Richard Maguire Within every family there are secrets, but rarely is that secret that your parents own a gay hard-core porn shop. Filmmaker Rachel Mason found out in school that Circus of Books, her parents’ bookshop in L.A., didn’t stock books about circuses. Later in life when she discovered that the shop was about to be ...

Writer: Jamie Hale (Not Dying) Directors: Kate O’Donnell (Not Dying), Shereen Hamilton (Showcase) Reviewer: Scott Matthewman Jamie Hale’s health is the focus of his spoken-word piece Not Dying, which forms the first half of the Barbican’s latest Pit Party, evenings of curated art and theatre. Hale’s progressive disability means they are dependent on a 170kg powered wheelchair and hoists. Their ...

Director: Olivier Meyrou Reviewer: Maryam Philpott It is unusual for a fashion film to barely focus on the clothes, but big couture houses are also a business, one with hierarchies, disagreements and terrible pressures to deliver perfection. Olivier Meyrou’s documentary Yves Saint Laurent: The Last Collections is really an examination of co-founder and business partner Pierre Bergé and his attempts ...

Writer and Director: Dictynna Hood Reviewer: Maryam Philpott A dysfunctional family gather for a birthday party to finally reveal all the dark secrets that for reasons no one can fathom have never been revealed before at any number of parties the family have previously attended together. So goes the oh so standard narrative treatment which Dictynna Hood applies to her ...

Writer and Director: Tom Cullen Reviewer: Richard Maguire British films have held their own at this year’s London Film Festival. Despite tiny budgets, British directors have made movies just as good as those boasting budgets of millions. Pink Wall, the directorial debut by actor Tom Cullen was made with £100,000 and was shot in nine days. Nevertheless, his film charting ...