Category: Performance

  • Sheol

    5 stars – powerfully unsettling Sheol is the name of the afterworld in ancient Hebrew traditions. According to different textual sources, it has either positive connotations to it, or negative, or neither. A soprano and three musicians are the characters of this performance created by the Grotowski Institute and Katowice Miasto Ogrodów.

  • Messy Friends

    4 stars – miscellaneous drag documentary Half drag show, half documentary, this performance presents the work of Messy Friends. They are a group created by Ginava with an innovative idea of drag, where dance, lip-sync, burlesque and classical drag makeup are juxtaposed to puppet-like costumes.

  • Negare

    5 stars – towards human and beyond A character is there, sat on a chair, who resembles a man in a suit. He is looking back, aware of being looked at, and this awareness shapes his movement, as he piles and drops and bites and rolls and piles and drops.

  • An Ecstatic Display

    3 stars – vulnerable, honest and ecletic. Jessie Cave, a well-versed, deadpan and brutally open comic, delivers another hour of just that: her usual dry, raw, personal, dark comedy. She’s famous for it by now, and not only for her comedy, podcasting, acting and bestselling novel, but also thanks to her public, on-off-on-again relationship with…

  • Lie With Me

    4 stars – plush feminist comedy Under a plush blanket, on plush pillows and next to a plush book, Riah Knight is sleeping. From the start, she engages the audience with great energy – even a very small and shy audience as was the case when I saw the show. Starting on a playful, amusing…

  • A Play by John

    4 stars – impeccable acting Matteo and Reggie are stuck into a loop, or straightaway in an absence of time, with the only endless task of carpentering their own coffins. Their opposite personalities lead them to small fights and to hilarious disputes. Matteo catches a grasp of their situation and looks for ways to escape,…

  • The Screen Test

    5 stars – brilliantly written and performed tale of a 1930s wannabe starlet Bebe Cave’s solo show pays homage to her favourite topic in the world: neurotic actresses (her own words). While Bebe has been performing at the Fringe and elsewhere in the UK with her sister Jessie Cave since 2014, this is her first…

  • Gunter

    5 stars – Revolutionary storytelling Despite its mysterious presentation, this show does have a plot, even if not a traditional one. In 1605, the young Anne Gunter is suspected to be bewitched, and her father Brian Gunter, the richest man in the village, points the finger against three women of the village who, to his…

  • Mirrored Metamorphosis

    3 stars – Young and intense Mirrored Metamorphosis is an intense show entirely realised by an all-female group of school students. The play rediscovers the story of Anthony and Cleopatra under the woman’s point of view. She was bestowed the power on a reign when she was still very young, and men only considered her…

  • Melody

    4 stars – Laughing into the apocalypse Aidan Sadler is an incredible performer, engaging and fun. In this new show, they seem to be looking for pure, queer, ‘unapologetic’ entertainment.