My festive Dickens habit took a slight detour this year with The Signalman at the Drayton Arms Theatre – a brief, atmospheric ghost story I hadn’t encountered before. The Signalman I’m always up for a Dickens ghost story at Christmas. A Christmas Carol is my perennial favourite, and I’ve written about it here before. But […]
Beauty and the Beast at the Bridge House Theatre is a small-scale panto that still manages to feel generous, lively and properly Christmassy. Beauty and the Beast Beauty and the Beast at the Bridge House Theatre in Penge is a panto stripped right back to essentials. There are four performers, projections taking the place of […]
A light-hearted, musical adaptation of the classic vampire tale, Dracapella promises to be an entertaining, non-traditional seasonal show. But does it deliver? Dracapella Dracula, in its original form by Bram Stoker, is an intriguing work. It’s late for Gothic horror, first published in 1897. It has modern flourishes that seem somehow out of place: a […]
The tale of the Snow Queen and its lessons of friendship and understanding takes shape for young audiences at The Albany in Deptford. A great Christmas theatre pick for families. The Snow Queen Icon Theatre’s The Snow Queen is a charming family production, full of the warm glow that people look for at this time […]
Carlotta and Cecilia dream of life as Broadway stars in La Bella Bimba! Will they make it, or will 1920s New York be too harsh a place for these two Italian girls? La Bella Bimba! I wrote when I saw Crownless last week that it was my last Voila! Theatre Festival outing for the year. […]
Townsend Theatre Productions revive We Are The Lions, Mr Manager! ahead of the 50th anniversary of the Grunwick dispute in Willesden, North London. The Story of the Grunwick Strike Last night’s theatre outing was a double discovery – of Sands Films Studio as a venue, and of the story of Jayaben Desai and the Grunwick […]
Crownless puts a new spin on Hamlet, incorporating text from the original and from feminist writers. Clever and fast-paced, this is a worthwhile watch. Crownless I’ve written previously about how I feel I’ve seen enough Hamlets now. He is paralysed by inaction. He’s not nice to Ophelia (or pretty much anyone). We get it.* This […]
Duccio Baldasseroni invites us right into the psyche of a “professional actor and writer” in SOLO. SOLO SOLO is a somewhat idiosyncratic piece, but I found myself drawn to it. On now at the Barons Court Theatre as part of Voila! Theatre Festival, it sits in a space between theatre and exercise, where the performer […]
Precipice is an ambitious, musically inventive new musical that, despite some limitations, tackles the end of the world with more honesty, humour and humanity than you’d expect from a two-hour show set in a Greenwich tower block. Precipice Precipice is a bold and heartfelt new musical from Timelapse, supported by New Diorama Theatre. One of […]
Threepenny Collective mine a dark story from history in L’Indiscipline, making its English-language debut as part of Voila! Theatre Festival. Content warning: discusses historic treatment of mental illness, including outdated practices and terms. L’Indiscipline Sometimes you don’t have to depart too far from reality to conjure up a story that seems stranger than fiction. That’s […]
