Category: Reviews

  • Mario Adrion: Live a Little

    4 stars – ‘it makes you laugh but also think’ Mario Adrion has a fully sold-out Edinburgh run, and by the cheering at his entrance on stage it was pretty obvious that he has a fandom, not only an audience (pretty privilege? He’s doing it the right way). I also knew him from the socials,…

  • To Be Frank

    5 stars – funny and lovable human monster You will never see such a funny and lovable monster, I promise. And if I don’t keep my promise – well, you’ll have to let me know, because I want to check with my own eyes.

  • The Last Mad Man

    4 stars – an enthusiastic death pitch. Good news, girls [dating men], gays [dating men] and theys [dating men]! The very last Mad Man of our planet is out and about and he will be shutting the door behind him.

  • Brian Jonestown Massacre: live in Brighton

    4 stars – A tamer, trippier and slightly decadent massacre 35 years on. It’s no secret that Brian Jonestown Massacre (BJM) shows can be a bit of a gamble. In fact, the lead singer, guitarist and founder of the San Francisco psychedelic rock band, Anton Newcombe, has made his unpredictable stage behaviour a substantial part…

  • Vanya is Alive

    4 stars – clever, minimalistic drama Alya stays silent about her son Vanya: Vanya has been sent to the peace. Until one day Alya receives a message from her son’s number, reading: ‘Vanya has not been captured. He is absolutely free’.

  • Down in Colorado

    4 stars – honest and powerful storytelling Gabriel Bird, class 1995, tells the story of the years he spent in Colorado in his original musical storytelling piece. From the first song, we already have a grasp of his dark humour, when with an accelerated, jolly rhythm he describes the setting of his attempted suicide.

  • The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, by Shehan Karunatilaka

    It is 1990 and Maali Almeida (‘Photographer. Gambler. Slut.’) is new to his ghost non-body, hovering over his town, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Around his neck hangs the Nikon, now broken, that he’s been using to shoot pictures of the past years of civil war, of the bodies it left behind, often civilians, and of journalists, terrorists…

  • Liz Lawrence: Peanuts tour review

    The 34-year old London-based indie rock/ folk singer/ songwriter Liz Lawrence returns to the road with her fourth studio album, Peanuts. As experimental and genre-subversive as ever, an ‘indie rock’ label isn’t in fact sufficient to describe anymore; the bass is amped up, the rock riffs are catchy, there are elements of funk, pop, sometimes…

  • The Wondrous Conveyance of Stella Estrella 

    A one-woman show in a small black box theater above a Camden pub could hardly be a bad idea for an autumnal evening, no less so given it’s starring the multi-talented LAMDA graduate Kylie Brady. Brady takes it away as an equally talented medium Stella Estrella, as the eighth daughter (her twin sister having died)…

  • Dare la vita, by Michela Murgia

    In this essay-pamphlet, Michela Murgia enters the debate on surrogacy, which has been on the Italian political agenda over the past few years. With the hostility of the present government towards this practice, surrogacy has very recently been declared ‘Universal crime’.