London theatre reviews written by Tori Jo Lau

London is full of millions of people, and we’re all squished together like sardines in tins on the underground. Who are these people, what are their stories? The writers of Crossing take a tube carriage of people and try to tell some of those stories. We start overhearing part of a conversation and follow the couple speaking off the tube, she’s pregnant and about … [Read more...]

Martin, a London cabbie, has a problem - he can’t make any new memories since he went to the dentist ten years ago. Every morning he wakes up he thinks it’s 2008 and the last ten years are a complete blank. He has The Knowledge but doesn’t know how to turn on the television. He went for a root canal that day, and that’s the last thing he remembers. We’ve seen this … [Read more...]

Eigengrau by Penelope Skinner is a play about two sets of 20-somethings in London living what at first seem very 20-something lives. Mark is a rich and successful young professional, living with his friend Tim who has just lost his grandmother who he used to care for. In the other flat, we have Cassie, a professional feminist, and her new flatmate Rose, who believes … [Read more...]

Dots by Annie Cheung is a solo self-revelatory performance, which she describes as “a unique genre of theatre which combines therapy for the performer and performance for the audience”. The show starts with Cheung with her hands tied and tape across her mouth, in a sparse space with two chairs and a number of grey and white balls that represent good and bad memories. … [Read more...]

Interactive theatre can be tricky. When do you participate? Is it okay to keep quiet? What if you’re shy? Is this even really a play or did a friend just trick me into a self-help group? The latter question was posed by a woman sitting a few seats away from me, and if I hadn’t had the press release, I would’ve asked the same question. I was surprised when I walked … [Read more...]

Two people in a world where communication is a limited resource. Trying to find the right words when you only have so many. How would that affect your life, your voice, your relationships? That’s the world we find ourselves in with Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons at Applecart Arts in East London. The theatre is a small space like a gym hall in a school, with a … [Read more...]

Some evenings as a theatre reviewer you have to step into a 1970s mental hospital and experience the events as they unfold, as part of the staff. Upon entering the old church in Canning Town, we were asked to go through the right or left doors, not knowing what that meant. We chose left, were given lanyards and instruction, we were now junior doctors being shown … [Read more...]

Kiki’s Delivery Service is most commonly known as a 1989 animated film produced by the acclaimed Studio Ghibli, which was an adaptation of the 1985 novel by Eiko Kadono. The novel has now been adapted again as a play by Jessica Sian at Southwark Playhouse, directed by Kate Hewitt. Having previously seen the Southwark Playhouse’s excellent production of Howl’s Moving … [Read more...]

What’s the most used tropes about people who play video games, and nerds in general? That they are overweight, socially awkward virgins who live in their parents’ basements. As a lifelong female nerd, I got really excited when I saw the poster for In Love and Warcraft, and I got even more excited when I heard it was written by a woman and with a female lead. Awesome! … [Read more...]

Life is a series of moments. Some good, some bad. Some tragically hilarious. In Possibilities, a new play written by Jamal Chong, you get to experience a wide selection of moments between a man and a woman, from meeting after years apart, zig-zagging across their past together until we, at last, see their first meeting. A man and a woman are indeed what we … [Read more...]