Tag Archives: Review

Writer/performer: Robin Dale Boon Reviewer: James McColl In his latest show, What Does Stuff Do? Robin Dale Boon asks the all-encompassing and important titular question. Through his inventive juggling, ping pong mastery, water-bending and philosophical leanings, the Circomedia trained Boon does his best to answer his own question by exploring the relationship between objects and people in a tight hour-long ...

Writers: Gary Barlow and Tim Firth Director: Matt Ryan Designer: Robert Jones Reviewer: Julia Beasley Getting naked for charity was a cheeky move by 11 female friends in North Yorkshire over 20 years ago. Modestly poised with sunflowers, teapots and currant buns,  their Women’s Institute nude calendar started life as a local controversy. It was all quietly subversive and heaps ...

Choreographer: David Middendorp Reviewer: Richard Maguire From Britain’s Got Talent to the Peacock Theatre, Sadler’s Wells’ more populist venue, is not a bad career move. And David Middendorp’s company Another Kind of Blue certainly repeats the spectacle that saw it reach the semi-final of the talent show in 2016, and, in a different guise, the semi-final of America’s Got Talent ...

Reviewer: John Kennedy From Cape Town to Cape Cornwall - courtesy of a personal invitation and introduction by Glastonbury beard-confused guru, Michael Eavis, together with Reverend Mbuso Kubone and St Just Methodist Miners’ Chapel’s David James, Cornwall hosts the most deliriously stealth-Christian evangelism ever set in song - possibly. Or at least since the hypnotic 1958 recording of Missa Luba ...

Writer & Director: Tristan Fynn-Aidu-enu  Reviewer: James McColl London, the early Nineties. Black British culture is a dominant part of mainstream culture, with garage, jungle and soul music bubbling under the surface of the capital. Sweet Like Chocolate Boy, the latest play from writer & director Tristan Fynn-Aidu-enu, is a coming-of-age story spanning multiple decades and generations. Two young black ...

Writer: Gabriel Bisset-Smith Director: Charlotte Bennett Reviewer: Richard Maguire It’s rare that a play teems with so many ideas while still managing to remain coherent, but Whitewash is that rare play. There might be those who say that writer Gabriel Bisset-Smith has packed too many issues into his 70 minutes, but we are not one-dimensional beings with a single narrative: ...

Book, music and lyrics: Alex James Ellison and Tom Lees Director: Tom Lees Reviewer: Stephen Bates The Small space at Southwark Playhouse is turning into fertile territory for new British musicals. Just a few weeks after The Curious Case of Benjamin Button emerged as, arguably, the fringe hit of 2019, here comes a refreshing offering from a young team that ...

Director: James Welsby Reviewer: Richard Maguire In the old days, drag was challenging and subversive often coming with a political or a gender political agenda. Now as it increasingly occupies mainstream territory, drag has been tamed and its power to undermine societal expectations has been made safe. Yummy, the new drag show opening at the Southbank’s Underbelly Festival, is as ...