Author: Isabel Richards

REVIEW: The Enigmatist

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Rating: 4.5 out of 5.


David Kwong’s The Enigmatist is a witty, puzzle-driven blend of magic, puzzles and storytelling that will delight anyone who is a lover of wordplay.

David Kwong brings his one-man show, The Enigmatist, to London’s Wilton’s Music Hall, for the first time. He opens the show by stating that magic “doesn’t exist”- and the audience is thus poised to find out if he is right. It’s a provocative beginning, one that immediately sets up a tension between scepticism and spectacle. Kwong uses the two hours to engage, delight, and challenge the audience, who are really more participants than passive onlookers. The show succeeds on this basis: that Kwong draws you in, holds your attention and then confounds your eyes. Even in its earliest moments, it becomes clear that this is not a traditional magic show but something closer to an immersive puzzle, one that unfolds both onstage and inside the minds of the audience.

David Kwong is a magician, storyteller, and veteran cruciverbalist (crossword constructor), who has created puzzles for major outlets including the Los Angelese Times, Wall Street Journal and even the New York Times. It is no wonder, then, that you can see his mind working faster and harder than the average person could think possible. His background is woven directly into the fabric of the show, informing not only the puzzles he sets but the rhythm and precision with which he delivers them. Kwong is a gifted communicator and storyteller, and the room of strangers quickly felt like a team working together to solve complicated puzzles and being awed by impossible magic. Part magic show, part history lesson, part interactive puzzle session, the show’s storytelling frames each trick and riddle, weaving personal anecdotes with linguistic and mathematical mysteries. This combination gives the evening a distinctive tone: intellectually playful, lightly educational, and consistently surprising.

Minimalistic yet intriguing staging keeps the audience’s focus on Kwong rather than on theatrical spectacle, reinforcing the idea that any magic in the show stems from human ingenuity rather than any hidden mechanisms. Wilton’s Music Hall, with its warm, intimate atmosphere, proves an ideal setting: the venue’s sense of history complements the show’s fascination with codes, secrets, and the cleverness of the human mind. Kwong talks often to the audience, involving them as co-creators and participants in the choices that are made to push the show along. Moments that seem forgotten are brought back in the latter half, reminding the audience that Kwong is two (or ten) steps ahead at any moment. The structure feels meticulously planned, yet there is an ease to his delivery that makes the experience feel spontaneous and collaborative.

The Enigmatist is strong on the basis of David Kwong’s performance: a confident, composed entertainer who seems sure of the strengths of his tricks and invites the audience to lean into the awe and wonder of his storytelling, humour and magic. As a lover of wordplay, puzzles, and crosswords, this show was both a delight and a wonderfully cerebral challenge. Kwong began the show by affirming that “magic doesn’t exist”, but anyone who has experienced The Enigmatist would be hard-pressed to agree with him. Magic may not exist, but for two hours, David Kwong certainly makes it seem like it does.

FEATURE: Part confession, part confrontation, NT Live: The Fifth Step is a sharp, intimate study of recovery, faith, and forgiveness

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“Absurd comedy and total tragedy, like being alive.” That’s how director Finn Den Hertog described The Fifth Step, David Ireland’s beautifully poised two-hander, starring Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman. It ran for just over two months at Soho Place, and is now finding a new audience through NT Live, in cinemas from 27th November.

At first glance, The Fifth Step appears simple: ninety minutes, two actors, simple staging. But beneath the surface lies a deep meditation on guilt, shame, religion, addiction, and how people support each other through the fluctuations of life.

Playwright David Ireland began writing the piece in 2021, drawing from his own experiences in Alcoholics Anonymous and the interplay between his newfound faith and recovery. The play feels deeply personal, with Ireland commenting in a post-screening Q&A that “writing the play brought [him] a lot of peace.” Jack Lowden was attached from the inset, and the play was briefly staged in Scotland in 2024, but underwent some changes in the interim, including bringing Martin Freeman into the project.

Martin Freeman and Jack Lowden play two sides of the same coin; one, younger, newly sober and desperate for connection; the other, older, wiser, and eager to dispense advice. Their rapport is evident throughout, with a shifting dynamic between them; a slow, careful descent as the balance of power alters. The play expertly balances humour and levity with raw confession, a hallmark of Ireland’s writing and his blend of the sacred and the profane.

Den Hertog, who had directed a previous production of the play, reinvented it when Freeman joined. Staging it in the round provided an opportunity to amplify the intimacy of the encounter between the characters and the audience. The space evokes both the shape of an AA meeting and the sense of a sparring match, with the audience (both in the room, and those viewing on screen) acting as active witnesses to the men’s confessions and contradictions.

The production design is understated yet striking- subtle music, minimal props, and simple lighting, used to effect at key moments of change or chaos. For NT Live audiences, Den Hertog has carefully chosen camera angles to heighten and mimic the intimacy experienced by live viewers, preserving the immediacy of the stage while expanding its emotional reach. The result is a cinematic translation that feels organic and engaging.

Viewers can anticipate a production that doesn’t rely on spectacle but instead on honesty and rhythm: the ebb and flow of two men searching for meaning. What might sound static- a series of conversations in a room- becomes a portrait of fragility and forgiveness, lifted by the authenticity of its performances and the precision of the writing and direction.

The Fifth Step offers no easy solutions, only the uneasy grace of human connection. Ireland’s words remind us that redemption rarely arrives as a moment of divine inspiration but as conversation- halting, awkward and contradictory. On stage or on screen, this is storytelling both unadorned and profound.

REVIEW: A Big Big Room Full of Everybody’s Hope

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Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

An experimental exploration of the trauma that bonds us, and the family that holds us

Amit Noy brings together three generations of his Jewish Israeli family to explore the trauma of the Holocaust through dance, tense and playful physical interactions, and parody songs. The piece asks whether the suffering of our families affects us now, and if so, how do we inhabit physical space in, through and around this?

Amit Noy, alongside his parents (Ilan and Liora Noy) and sister (Maytal Noy), appear together, separated and in pairs throughout the piece, depicting an interplay between the various relationships within the family unit. His grandmother, Belina Neuberger, appears via video to discuss her experiences of remembering or avoiding reminders of the Holocaust, while his sister uses musical theatre to explore her complex feelings about her body and womanhood. These two women are instrumental in asking a core question: whether or not our bodies hold the trauma of our ancestors, and how we can become carriers of this without allowing it to control or direct our lives. 

Amit is a gifted dancer, and utilises humour and movement to depict a range of universal human experiences. The staging, costuming and sound design juxtaposed moments of levity with those of seriousness, vulnerability and emotional gravitas.

Amit Noy uses his family’s inexperience with performance as a strength, giving them space to move and exist on the stage in ways that felt authentic and lived-in. It was clear that the less experienced family members had become comfortable in their roles, not only with each other as performers, but with the stage and audience itself. When asked in a post-show discussion if the piece felt “exposing” to the actors, they all but one agreed that it had, with Ilan (Amit’s father) matter-of-factly revealing that he felt only pressure to uphold his performance for his family, and did not in fact mind the audience reaction. In hindsight, this comment concisely highlights the strength of the show— the relationships between the family members and their palpable concern for and lightness with one another.

There were some moments throughout the piece that felt disconnected, and at these times it was difficult to connect the threads in order to make meaning from the moments occurring on stage. This was a deeply personal performance, and as an onlooker, it was both exciting and, at some points, disconcerting, to feel as if the audience were peering in on a private familial moment. 

Ultimately, Amit’s ‘A Big Big Room Full of Everybody’s Hope’ is a performance that, despite a few confusing moments, largely is effective in highlighting the importance of the body, family, and connectedness with history.