With its quintessential Gothic setting of a remote cottage in the woods, Ali Hunter’s heavily misted lighting and unexplained things that go bump in the afternoon, Julie Tsang’s Fix is more Twilight Zone than kitchen-sink drama - despite its promise of emotional intensity and frustration in the pursuit of functioning white goods. Although we initially encounter … [Read more...]
About Mary Beer
Three Sisters by Inua Ellams at Lyttelton Theatre | Review
Blistering and apt, Inua Ellams’ re-telling of Chekhov’s 1901 drama finds renewed resonance in its Biafran War setting as well as summons the demons of colonialism, neo-colonialism and tribalism that dwell in today’s national discourse. The net effect is simultaneously energising, hypnotising and haunting as the contemporary parallels with both theatrical eras … [Read more...]
The Fairytale Revolution: Wendy’s Awfully Big Adventure
The Fairytale Revolution: Wendy’s Awfully Big Adventure has a lot going for it and, if you are a parent who starts to feel especially queasy this time of year with the onslaught of pink plastic toys and the glut of passive ‘rescue-me’ female and ‘I-must-rescue-her’ male characters who are paraded through traditional seasonal entertainment, you should definitely check … [Read more...]
Kneehigh’s Ubu! A Singalong Satire | Review
I never imagined a Venn diagram depicting interactive Christmas entertainment and soothing satire during a dystopian general election would exhibit much overlap, but somehow, in the first two weeks of December 2019, we find ourselves sitting atop these two circles so closely aligned we can barely see the edges. The first line of Alfred Jarry’s legendary riot-inducing … [Read more...]
Oi Frog and Friends! at the Lyric Theatre | Review
As my children are now in Year 3 and have graduated from The Very Hungry Caterpillar canon, I was a little nervous as to whether they’d find the hour-long stage adaptation of Kes Gray and Jim Field’s Oi Frog (and the rest of the Oi opus) too pre-school for their palette. My nerves were soothed within about 30 seconds of the curtain rising on this jointly developed … [Read more...]
Review of Cinderella at The Vaults
So how do you like your Panto? Do you want to go fully immersive? Totally subversive? Classic crass of a nostalgic time when Michael Barrymore was a housewife’s favourite and Roy Chubby Brown was just ‘cheeky’? Perhaps you want turn-of-the-century British music hall (when the thrill of a ‘principal boy’ was all about the rare sight of a woman’s silhouette revealed in … [Read more...]
Review of The Arrival at the Bush Theatre
Director and playwright Bijan Sheibani’s visceral and emotionally dense two-hander is both sensuous and cerebral. A small and short play comprised of a series of encounters and re-encounters all pregnant with years of expectation and longing, Sheibani takes us on an eventful ride that is not ‘thrills-and-spills’ but is warm, rich, painful and true. Tom (Scott … [Read more...]
Review of Hunger at the Arcola Theatre
Successful adaption of a famed ‘modernist’ novel is not an easy business. With much inner dialogue and shifts in perspective, late 19th century experiments in form can struggle to transform into pleasing drama and sometimes are better suited to make the leap to other media with, for example, the touch of new-wave filmmaking. Even with a clever theatrical conceit or … [Read more...]
Touching The Void Play at Duke of York’s Theatre
Thanks to its franchise value and comely and committed cast, it’s hard to see how Touching the Void won’t be a hit; yet this two-act dramatisation of Joe Simpson’s best-selling account of extreme man-versus-the-elements-struggle-to-survive is entirely unremarkable as drama. Despite grand and versatile production design (kudos to set and costume designer Ti Green) and … [Read more...]