Review by Thomas Froy

Arinze Kene’s Misty ran at the Bush Theatre to huge critical acclaim before becoming only the second black writer to have a second West End transfer at Trafalgar Studios. His lesser known earlier show, good dog premiered at Watford Palace in 2017, exploring many of the same questions. The show returns to the Bernie Grant Art’s Centre, in Tottenham. There is a sense in which Misty was Kene’s magnum opus and good dog was a kind of warm-up act. The set is largely the same: sparse except a … [Read more...]

Shelley’s 1818 classic novel, Frankenstein, is a tale for the ages. Its themes of genius, greed and godliness are pertinent across time. The dangers of unchecked research and creativity, the violence of the creations of man, Shelley’s text is ripe for reinterpretation in almost any setting; but there’s the rough: we have to ask why Frankenstein now, rather than any other time. BAC Beatbox Academy’s version of the narrative is more of a gig than a play, with audience interaction, comedy, music … [Read more...]

Oisin McKenna’s one-man show is about London, loneliness, laziness, love and more. There’s many a spoken word show about the injustices of capitalism, Thatcherite privatisation, and the difficulties of being gay in the modern world. McKenna’s show achieves the complex feat of synthesising all this in a beautiful, 55 minute, rage against the system, all the while maintaining a sing-song ‘so let me tell you about my day’ tone. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with barefaced anger against the … [Read more...]

Can I touch your hair? Can I touch your hair? Can I touch your hair? Can I touch your hair? Can I touch your hair? Lekhani Chirwa’s one-woman show is about, well, hair. That’s it, really. What’s hair got to do with anything, anyway? Everything, it seems. Though the title of the show might be a deliberate invocation of unshared experiences, the politics of natural black hair isn’t necessarily such a new topic. Afros have long been signifiers of politics, personality and pride. But the double … [Read more...]

Peter Shaffer’s 1973 classic Equus is revived by Ned Bennett’s English Touring Theatre Company, and the word out of the horse’s mouth is ‘kink’. Shaffer’s original text has a great many different allusions and suggestions and each production will interpret the emphasis differently. Bennett has read Equus to be a sexually charged look at the unconscious and the desires that lie within. This play is usually a two-man engagement between the psychiatrist Martin Dysart (Zubin Varla) and Alan … [Read more...]

‘Yes... yes... Ok... Yes... Now, Apologise... Apologise! Thank you’ In modern politics, we often wonder if it’s all made up. A big game, with different players shifting positions, and all saying the same bullshit. This is the possibility taken up by New Public’s latest show, White Noise. Isn’t politics, and perhaps wider society, just a meaningless circulation of polite lying and façade? Christopher Adams takes to the stage in a loose-fitting, expensive looking suit, and launches into a just … [Read more...]

In the era of Trump, Bolsonaro, Erdogan and Brexit, satire and quasi-political ridicule are the order of the day. But can satire cut it when comedy writes itself? Moliere’s Tartuffe is the number one most frequently performed play in France. With its themes of impostership, decadence, male entitlement, egotism and more, it more or less applies to any time or place. As such, it seems to be ‘updated’ or reinterpreted each time: The RSC relocated from 17th century Paris to 21st century … [Read more...]