Author: Jessica Steans-Gail

REVIEW: Away From Home

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

Captured what is universal about the human experience of being away from home

London is a truly international city. In 2021, it was named the global city with the single highest foreign-born population. In the same year, the UK Census found that 40% of London residents were born outside of the United Kingdom, a percentage that would be even higher if it included Welsh and Scottish transplants. 

These statistics reflect the sheer number of Londoners who share a common immigrant experience. This experience, of building a home in the city in the shadow of a home left behind, was at the heart of the one-night only Away From Home Cabaret Night at the Golden Goose Theatre on Thursday, March 26th. Away From Home was dedicated to showcasing international and local musical talent. Each of the evening’s ten singers has a personal connection to at least one non-British country, and their individual acts collectively explored nostalgia, identity, and cultural diversity. Between musical numbers, performers shared personal stories about growing up abroad, understanding immigrant parents, reconnecting with distant relatives, and moving ‘away from home.’ 

The evening showcased graduates of the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts MA program and each of the cabaret’s ten performers – Eleri Edwards, Emily Doving, Guro Elvethon, Ivi Moravcová, Leonardo Stickley, Mikki Villa, Nida Savage, Sarah O’Neill, Shauna Langford Hopkin, and Shelbi Forrest – was excellent. Together, they represent the next generation of onstage talent and London’s unique ability to draw exceptional theatremakers from across the world. Livs Needham also deserves credit for wonderful accompaniment on the piano. Each individual shared two pieces honoring the place(s) and people they call home, though no two acts were the same. Shelbi Forrest sang two original songs from her new musical She’s Got Grits exploring her complicated relationship with the United States and her hope for progress in her home state of Tennessee. Ivi Moravcová, on the other hand, covered a song in her native Czech before offering a rendition of a Demi Lovato ballad, in-between jokes about her Slavic grandmother. Mikki Villa reminisced on Hong Kong counterspace; his ensuing homage to the Philippines included serenading his rice cooker. Occasional duets presented unique opportunities to blend cultures and languages. 

On the whole, the night was surprisingly emotional. It was intimate and informal – the audience was full of classmates and friends – but did not claim to be otherwise. Though Away From Home likely resonated more deeply with audience members like myself who share firsthand experience living abroad, the vulnerability of the performers was enough to inspire emotional investment from any audience. At least one of the evening’s singers was preparing to move back to her home country; another performer I spoke to may end up needing to do the same. Any Londoner without a British passport understood the real stakes behind the evening’s theme.

While it is disappointing that the performance won’t be repeated, there was something uniquely moving in its ephemeralness. That this particular night would never happen again was part of the magic. A more diverse lineup of performers and broader global representation would have strengthened the evening, but the showcase nonetheless captured what is universal about the human experience of being away from home. 

Future events may be posted to the AwayFromHomeCabaret Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/awayfromhomecabaret/.

REVIEW: Shallowspace Cryotech Feverdream

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Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

an original, insightful and distinctly queer journey into the future

Shallowspace Cryotech Feverdream, the new Trans Sci-Fi body horror play from Elastic Fantastic is an original, insightful and distinctly queer journey into the future. More specifically, Shallowspace imagines a dystopian future in which a pre-apocalyptic humanity sends twelve individual “shepherds” into the void to float endlessly into eternity in an effort to save mankind from the dreaded third death – the final death visited only after any and all record of your existence has been lost. Written and performed by Callie O’Brien, Shallowspace is a 55-minute provocation on legacy, identity, and individualism. It is also something like a live CAPTCHA test, asking its audience to consider how we recognize and identify what is human. 

Shallowspace made its London debut at Camden People’s Theatre as part of the SPRINT Festival. Despite the fantastical world of the piece, the set is surprisingly minimal. A white sheet hangs against the back wall, allowing O’Brien’s striking visuals to establish setting and tone. Shallowspace takes place aboard the starship Theseus, home to our protagonist August Shepherd, also played by O’Brien. In addition to frequent and dynamic projections, O’Brien uses just a black stool and two light rods to create the totality of the starship, from a lifelike cryo-pod to the nebulous recesses of August’s memories. Ambiance is brilliantly-achieved, likely thanks to director Mike Dorey. The set lets us know we are in a sterile, scientific environment but the striking colors and visuals add intensity and vibrance to the space, evoking emotions from melancholia to fear. 

We meet August at a time in the ambiguous future at which point society on earth has collapsed save for its twelve orbiting “contingency plans.” August introduces herself as one of said “contingency plans,” fated to float interminably through time and space, guarding herself and her starship as the sole remaining record of human existence. This existence is housed in The Archive, a single database containing the entirety of human history – mankind’s final, desperate plea to be remembered beyond the grave. Shallowspace opens as August gains consciousness, we can assume, for the hundredth to thousandth time. Her first order of business is to complete her cognition status check, which includes listing five similarities between an orange and an apple.

Categorization – of ideas, things, people – is an important throughline in Shallowspace. In order to demonstrate accurate cognitive processing and functioning, August must prove her ability to quickly sort items, identify similarities and differences, and organize ideas based on labels. The need to prove sentience by demonstrating the ability to easily categorize the other based on arbitrary definitions is a heightened reflection of our very real social norms. August’s ability to do so breaks down over the course of the play as she comes to understand more elements of her consciousness and starts to question and challenge what she knows of her own existence. In her search for truth and meaning, August discovers the only thing she can be truly sure of is what she knows because she feels it. August’s body is hers alone and knows different than her mind, which hosts the ideas of others. Shallowspace asks us, too, how we know what we know and challenges the idea that all things must be identified and organized in association with each other. It invites us to trust that which we know deep inside over that which we are told or shown about ourselves. 

As August slowly comes to terms with the nature of her existence and purpose, she comes to understand her physical body as something being used to further a goal outside of herself. She does so in conversation with the disembodied voice of the artificial intelligence controlling the ship, voiced by Ally Haughey. The significance of a physical body is underscored at a pivotal moment when the technology goes wrong and August’s physical body is implicated. The experience of physical pain stands in stark contrast to the gentle intimacy that she associates with the human form. Until this point, she has mourned the voice’s lack of accompanying body as a loss of the singular and human experience of physical touch. 

While there is no shortage of art being made at this very moment about artificial intelligence as a springboard for questioning “what is human,” Shallowspace manages to avoid the laziest and most gratuitous tropes. There is an interesting moment when August inverts a previously accepted logic. When the disembodied voice first prompts her to list five similarities between an apple and a fruit, August gives the answers we expect: they are both fruits, they are both sweet. By the end of Shallowspace, August is sure that oranges and apples share almost no similarities at all. After all, no two apples are anything alike. 

This is a play about human nature and destruction, meaning there is an unfortunate synchronicity between themes and events on and off stage. Questions about the nature and future of our species are increasingly relevant with each passing news cycle. During one of her more on-the-nose musings, August wonders how anyone who viewed The Archive could want anything to do with humanity after “seeing what we did to each other.”Luckily, the play is so engrossing that the world outside eventually starts to disappear. 

In addition to her excellent script, O’Brien delivers an incredible solo performance. Commanding attention and maintaining audience interest alone onstage is no small feat, and O’Brien manages to capture August’s humor, pathos and pain in equal measure. The script is, at times, repetitive, though some amount of monotony is necessary for maximum impact. August also remains unfortunately opaque. Although she is a clear stand-in for her species, we are given enough unique moments and insights into her prior life to want more. 

Shallowspace examines humanity at a distance – the way you might view earth from outer space. O’Brien peels back the layers of personhood to expose what truly makes something human and what it means to classify the infinitely unique versions of personhood into one collective “humanity.” The phrase WE ARE HUMANITY is repeatedly projected onstage and the play is about nothing less. Shallowspace is a thoroughly engaging directive to liberate us from the oppressive systems and structures that control and define what it is to be human. 

Shallowspace was a one-night-only engagement at Camden People’s Theatre. Information on its upcoming 2026 Europe Tour can be found at www.elasticfantastic.co.uk/shallowspace/. 

REVIEW: SUGAR DADDY

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

“Sugar Daddy is an invitation to laugh at death and life in equal measure”

Sam Morrison’s laugh-out-loud solo show Sugar Daddy has officially opened at Underbelly Boulevard Soho. Sugar Daddy, like grief, is full of contradictions. It is wholesome and edgy; sardonic and poignant; delightful and grave; intelligent and silly; thoughtful and spontaneous. Most of all, it is tragedy and comedy. With a production team including Alan Cumming and Billy Porter along with Sally™ of Drag Race UK and Olympian Gus Kenworth, Sugar Daddy promises 75-minutes of laughter with a chance of tears. 

Sugar Daddy is a meta story of finding humor in grief. Morrison began writing what would eventually become Sugar Daddy following the devastating loss of his long-term partner to COVID-19 in 2021 and a subsequent Type 1 diabetes diagnosis the same year. As a comedian, Morrison was moved to process his grief through writing and ultimately telling his story on stage. Sugar Daddy offers an emotional outlet for both him and his audience. Morrison serves as a trusted and humorous guide in a collective search for meaning in loss.

I must confess that I was uniquely predisposed to love Sugar Daddy. Sam and I, it turns out, are both Americans who spent our recent twenties in Brooklyn and have passed late nights in Provincetown. There is, admittedly, a particular intimacy with performance that reflects the world you know. That said, there is no prerequisite for loving Sugar Daddy. Morrison takes his audience through the halls of his mind and memories, pausing to give comedic context and definitions as needed. Sugar Daddy reflects elements of the human experiences far more original and meaningful than living in Brooklyn. It’s hard to imagine any audience member could exit the theatre without recognizing something of themself on stage. Morrison’s story is singular, but deeply human. Anyone who has lived with anxiety, navigated heartache, experienced loss, endured the pandemic, heard of Judaism, been gay or been to the beach can relate. Death and diabetes are integral, as are the realities of navigating sex, love, age-gap relationships, and Provincetown. The world of Sugar Daddy is honest, vivid, and expansive. 

Vulnerability is a central tension in Sugar Daddy. The performance is inherently confessional. Morrison’s choice to sit quietly on stage as the audience enters is the first acknowledgement that, despite the controlled confidence of his performance, he has located himself in a vulnerable position. The performance is punctuated by intermittent interjections from the voice in Morrison’s head. These interjections are not random; his inner-voice disrupts moments it deems inauthentic, moments when Morrison tries hardest to obfuscate his pain by transmuting it into humor. On-stage Morrison, acknowledging the voyeuristic cultural desire to mine trauma for content, responds by refusing to give his audience a coveted “death scene”. 

The ongoing argument in Morrison’s head is existential. He is at war with himself regarding the appropriate response to death. Should he confront it with sadness? Laughter? Denial? Sex? Sugar Daddy underscores the power of mind-body connection. Morrison’s inner-monologue, while hilarious, reminds him that grief will not be ignored. Sooner or later, Morrison advises, we must confront sadness before it confronts us. Trauma is a somatic experience. 

The Underbelly Boulevard Soho production marks Sugar Daddy’s return to London following a brief 2023 stint at Soho Theatre. The show returns to the UK on the heels of an off-Broadway run and performances across North America. Sugar Daddy makes its comeback with fresh direction from Amrou Al-Khadi. Al-Khadi has toured multiple solo shows internationally including From Qur’an to Queen and Drag Mother under the performance name Glamour. They are also known for their memoir Life as a Unicorn and their debut film Layla,which premiered at The Sundance Film Festival in 2024. 

Between Morrison and Al-Khadi, the audience is in excellent hands. The Sugar Daddy script includes masterful callbacks and has been updated to include British in-jokes. Despite minimal use of props, discrete scenes and moments are remarkably vivid. The set is spare, allowing Morrison to use his words and body to set scenes. Morrison indeed makes use of his entire space, coolly commanding the stage with a practiced precision while, like any good comedian, making us feel he’s sharing it all for the first time. 

Sugar Daddy is an invitation to laugh at death and life in equal measure. It’s Morrison’s story situated in the context of the human condition. It is a meditation on grief as much as it is 75-minutes of rapid-fire jokes. Despite its short run time, Sugar Daddy has something for everyone, even if it’s just a desire to laugh in dark times. 
Sugar Daddy is on at The Underbelly Boulevard Soho through 4th April. Tickets are available at sugardaddyshow.com. 

REVIEW: The Opposite of Distance

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Rating: 3 out of 5.

Made for those who enjoy the post-dramatic, abstraction, and devised work

As soon as the performers in The Opposite Of Distance at Playhouse Easthad taken their final bows, they addressed the audience directly. The show, they explained, is in development and they would be grateful for any audience feedback. Audience members received pens along with slips of paper sourcing our thoughts and opinions on the previous hour. 

With the understanding that The Opposite of Distance is a work-in-progress, it is full of magnificent potential. It begins as an exercise in patience. When the show opens, the audience is immediately asked to sit for many long minutes listening only to the sound of dripping water, after which a single hand emerges painstakingly from a pile of chairs, inch by inch, for what feels like an interminable amount of time. Forcing the audience into total, excruciating awareness of time is, of course, intentional. The importance of waiting becomes clear with the first line of dialogue; the speaker explains we are in a play about science. Specifically, a play about stalactites (rock formations that hang down from the ceiling of a cave) and stalagmites (rock formations that rise up from the floor of a cave). These two formations eventually meet to form a column but only after hundreds of thousands of years – the passage of time results in connection. Connection which is, of course, the opposite of distance. 

Though science remains one of the more salient parts of the show, The Opposite of Distance is not straightforward. Most of the play is symbolic, the literal is few and far between. It is perhaps more accurately described as a series of moments, vignettes and movements held together by threaded themes and props. Minimalist sets, costumes and props allow the performers to create their own physical world, but props are repurposed repeatedly, to great effect. There is a moment of particular brilliance using pure light and gauze to create the experience of moving deeper into a pitch-black cave. The piece could also be experienced as poetry or collage. Music is its own character. As, confusingly, is the movie Ghost. 

It is rare to see a play that is truly surprising, but when The Opposite of Distance transforms midway through into a piece about theatre and the artists living inside of it, it was genuinely unexpected. That the beating heart of the piece is theatre-making, however, comes full circle in hindsight. There are choices involving staging and technology in the play’s initial moments that have new meaning when repeated at the end. 

The Opposite of Distance is created and performed by Hannah Mook, Jake Walton and Lowri Jones, members of the Paper People Theatre company. It has the distinctly intimate feel of devised work, as though the performers spent hours physically embodying a stalagmite, playing with chairs, and sharing personal audition stories. They are deeply connected to the work, each movement, look, word, and lyric feels critically intentional. The performers are equally connected with each other, as though they are living the performance in unison. 

Audience members who prefer traditional narrative and dialogue may not be suited for the experience. It is made for those who enjoy the post-dramatic, abstraction and devised work. The Opposite of Distance is likely also not for audiences who want theatre “magic” that feels effortless and hides anything technical or laborious from view. In The Opposite of Distance, the labor is visible. We see the effort of the performers as they carry chairs and each other; we hear the thud as their bodies repeatedly hit the floor. The realities of theatre making are laid bare visibly and thematically.

The Opposite of Distance was, as the company explained, a “one and done” at Playhouse East. Paper People Theatre will incorporate feedback before their next production. I, for one, look forward to seeing what they do next. 

Check the Paper People Theatre company website for more information. 

REVIEW: Swans Are F****** Arseholes 

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Rating: 3 out of 5.

Contends with issues that are critical to our time

Swans Are F****** Arseholes at the Canal Cafe Theatre, directed by Freja Gift, begins with a strong opening monologue. The monologue, delivered by playwright Emma Zadow, establishes the fact that swans are, well, arseholes. It also establishes swans as a symbol of the dangers of associating beauty with safety. Protagonist Sarah – written and performed by Zadow – describes the dissonance between the swan’s attractive aesthetic and its violent nature, offering a perfect metaphor for appealing exteriors masking violent interiors. 

Unfortunately, the play is not interested in continuing this particular exploration from here. It instead takes an immediate and puzzling turn to focus on the nuances of consent in the digital age. Though there is a swan critically embedded into the story, any symbolism falls apart over the course of the play’s sixty-minute run time. Zadow seems less interested in the allure of beauty than the dangers of deepfake technology. Luckily, the dangers of deepfake technology is a distinctly timely subject. This introductory thematic bait-and-switch, from one interesting topic jarringly into another, is a succinct window into the experience of Swans Are F******* Arseholes – modestly confusing, somewhat unpolished, but ultimately well-performed and conceptually compelling. 

The plot of Swans Are F****** Arseholes begins when Sarah, a school receptionist, anonymously receives a pornographic video of herself. Despite her insistence to her partner and the police that the video is fake, its existence threatens to expose real secrets from her past and risks destabilising the life of security she has painstakingly built. In the script, Zadow offers many provocative questions. These questions range from ‘how does a society protect itself from technology that advances faster than the system can guardrail?’ to ‘how is identity constructed? By and for whom?’ 

The play’s greatest strength, in addition to its topicality, is its talent. All four cast members, most of whom juggle multiple roles, give excellent performances. Zadow is strong as the play’s emotional and narrative center. She is rarely offstage and seamlessly navigates the intense highs and lows of Sarah’s story. Benjamin Sumrie imbues Sarah’s partner with a three-dimensional humanity. Mary Tillett and Michael Bendib provide important support and consistent comic relief. The company does a fantastic job using physicality to embody various characters but has an unfortunately heavy lift. Their job includes holding together the entire narrative thread. Individual performers are solely responsible for establishing time and place. Costumes and props do little to no work cluing the audience into jumps in timeline and character. 

The actors make up for the weakness in the script and direction where they can, but despite their best efforts, the show remains somewhat convoluted. The plot and staging can be confusing and clunky at times. Though the play takes risks with tech and video, it occasionally feels that there are more moving parts than necessary, especially given the short run time. Zadow’s script is willing to leave questions unanswered. It does not spoonfeed its audience, which effectively creates intrigue and maintains audience engagement, but occasionally dips into obfuscation at the expense of clarity. 

Swans are F****** Arseholes is not a perfect play but is a play that contends with issues that are critical to our time. It provides, in addition to its sly title, something relevant. Zadow’s provocation is at the forefront of a collective cultural reckoning. Artists, like all of us, are grappling with the role of the internet and sex work, AI and OnlyFans. The relationship between technology, sex, safety, and consent are as integral to the story as they are to the present moment. Zadow’s script interrogates bodily autonomy online as well as within relationships. She raises questions about reality, identity, the role of the body in a partnership, what obligations we have to the people around us, and the ways we enable them and ourselves. 

Audiences who catch Zadow’s play at The Canal Cafe Theatre are guaranteed to leave with something to think about, even if it’s just, why are swans such arseholes?

Swans are F****** Arseholes is on at The Canal Cafe Theatre through Sunday 22 February, 2026.