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 to meet her father. I say father, but it is actually more like a daddy – of the sugar kind. A bit extreme perhaps, but it happens … [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 sort of plot before in movies like Groundhog Day and Memento, but on a grander scale. In Timeless, it’s smaller and more … [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 in unicorns, numerology and Signs. The play talks about what it’s like to try to connect with people in the busy metropolis that … [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. It becomes clear quite quickly that she has been imprisoned by herself, as she keeps talking back at an invisible someone who is … [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 into King’s Cross Community Centre and instead of a stage, I found an open room with a circle of chairs. I was welcomed in by Sandra, … [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 sparse staging of black blocks and a monitor that repeatedly shows countdowns from 140. If you’re a heavy internet user, you’d be … [Read more...]