Category: New plays
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A happy childhood in a play is like having a Chekhov’s gun: you are waiting for it to go off, for something to go wrong and Darkling at the Bush Theatre is no different. I confess I knew nothing of Bhopal, where the play is set, and so my thoughts were going in all different…
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What is in your heart that you would really like to say to your partner but don’t? That’s the premise of Rhiannon Ella Tomes’ play Best Wishes, Kind Regards at the Bread and Roses Theatre. Her (Danielle Horton) and Him (George Wright) are in a relationship that is slowly going south. They don’t argue, there…
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Beige is a powerful play but not an easy one to describe. Joy (Jessica Nlabu) is instructed in how to be and behave. Initially, it feels like an audition or interview conducted by a sharp-suited, stiletto-wearing Shannon Kurlander. But as the play progresses, Kurlander starts to feel more like the personified voice of a general…
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Sick Dog is the second play I’ve seen this summer about a young person with a terminal illness, and while Before I’m Dead focused on a relationship with a therapist, this centres on a relationship with a care robot. Scientist Winnie’s (Cara Crofts) illness is not revealed, but what is clear is that she is…
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Lulla, presumably short for lullabies, which weave through this play, centres on 16-year-old Marin (Anna Marks Pryce), a queer 16-year-old who has bunked off school to get to know Dolores (Meg Wallis) more intimately The two are having a lovely time when her mum (Madeleine MacMahon) comes home early and catches them in a compromising…
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Ben Ockrent’s play Relics reminded me of Nachtland at the Young Vic from a couple of years ago. • Siblings reunite to divvy up their dead parents’ belongings. Tick. • A painting is found with a suspected dodgy history. Tick. • Said painting divides the siblings, causing arguments. Tick. Relics has a different comic tone,…
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REVIEW: It’s 1994, and Muhammad (Bhasker Patel) runs the Camden Monitoring Project, an organisation that supports victims of racist attacks. If someone from the local Bangladeshi community is feeling threatened or under attack, they can call the service, and a man in a van will come and collect them and take them home or somewhere…
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There is a veil of death hanging over the theatres around The Cut in London. Care at the Young Vic is set in a nursing home and about the end of life, and a few minutes’ walk away at The Glitch is Before I’m Dead, a play about a terminally ill teen. But the two…
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I’m Not Being Funny at the Bush Theatre is a play which at one point has you laughing at Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On and then later crying during the same song. It is a bittersweet story of a young couple with a 3-year-old child, forced to face a future no one wants…
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Brief Play About Rage at the Omnibus Theatre is a funny one. You’ll either get it or you won’t. You’ll either find it hilarious and daring or OTT and irritating. It’s set in the flat of Val (Samantha Begeman) and Hugh (Jad Sayegh), and tensions are running high as they await the arrival of Val’s…