Category: New plays
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How much should we care about prisoners, particularly those serving sentences for serious crimes? And how much care should they receive? This is the overarching theme of Lifers at the Southwark Playhouse, a prison-set drama that follows the story of Lenny (Peter Wight), a prisoner in his 70s serving a life sentence. He uses a…
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Paul Keating in Clive, Arcola Theatre Clive is Thomas's cactus. Thomas, played by Paul Keating, talks to Clive and even has a 'Mexico' lighting and ambience setting to make him 'feel at home'. He simply says 'Mexico' to Alexa, and hey presto. Thomas works in IT but is now based at home. He lives alone…
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Max Runham (plays Simon Parkes) and Tendai Sitima (plays Johnny Lawes) in Brixton Calling, Southwark Playhouse. Photo: Danny Kaan I spent many an hour toe-tapping and sometimes jumping up and down at guitar-heavy gigs at the Brixton Academy in my younger years, but I didn't know anything about how the venue came to be an…
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Video transcript: The Estate at the National Theatre sees Adeel Akhtar play a politician who’s bidding to become the leader of the opposition. But it’s not just a political drama. It’s a family drama because there’s stuff going on in his background that threatens to derail his attempt. And it’s very meaty play, because…
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Video transcript: I really enjoyed 1536 at the Almeida Theatre. It’s a play about three women, all at various stages of relationships. One’s unrequited. One is in a relationship they shouldn’t be in, and one is about to get married. And it follows them at a time when Anne Boleyn has just been arrested for…
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Kedar Williams-Stirling and Keelan Kember in Thanks For Having Me, Riverside Studios. Photo: Oliver Kember Young love and lust and what it means to be in a relationship are the themes in actor/writer Keelan Kember's new comedy play Thanks For Having Me. Cashel (Kember) interrupts his friend Honey's (Kedar Williams-Stirling) attempts to get…
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Julia McDermott in Weather Girl. Credit: Pamela Raith Photography The character in Brian Watkins' monologue play Weather Girl is called Stacey (Julia McDermott) which was slightly disconcerting because that's my real name (Stan is a nickname), and it's not the sort of name usually used for stage characters. But, the fact that it is disconcerting…
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Jamie Bisping, Sara Hazemi, Paul Thornley and Ruby Stokes in The Habits, Hampstead Theatre. Photo: Genevieve Girling The Habits is set in a board game cafe where Jess (Ruby Stokes), Maryn (Sara Hazemi) and Milo (Jamie Bisping) meet to escape into a world of Dungeons & Dragons dwarfs, wizards and the mysterious Nightmare King. Cafe…
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Shalisha James-Davis, David Shields and Emma Pallant in Punch. Photo: Marc Brenner Jacob Dunne (David Shields) is an unruly youth from 'The Meadows' in Nottingham, an experimentally-designed, 1970s council estate that has created rat runs of dark alley for youths to play or move around undetected. It's described as like being in a live video…
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Actor and writer Jack Holden had a huge hit with Cruise in 2022, and I think he might have done it again with Kenrex, which has transferred to the Southwark Playhouse from Sheffield. Based on a true story in the small isolated town of Skidmore, Missouri, Ken Rex McElroy is a piece of work. He's…