Meg Ward

REVIEW: Ancient Grease

Published on March 15, 2026March 15, 2026 by Meg WardLeave a comment

This is theatre for people who unashamedly love being fun, camp and having a good time.

Ancient Grease is a concept so simple and so obviously full of potential, it’s a wonder it’s not been done before. Grease, the beloved classic musical, retold and parodied in the setting of Ancient Greece. Perfect idea, no notes. However, although a neat premise, ripe with comedic possibility, it’s also high risk. Grease itself is so ingrained in the public psyche, and the audience needs this version to hit the key beats of Grease that we know and love, while also feeling fresh and original. Well, I’m delighted to report that Ancient Grease does all that and more.

Lady Aria Grey’s script is equal parts sharp and silly – perfectly weaving in the lines of Grease that casual viewers will recognise and smile at, as well as the deep cuts Grease devotees will love to hear with her new and original material. The cast then takes this material and makes it sparkle on stage. It feels wrong to single out certain actors when the entire cast played their roles with such dedication, wit and stage presence. However, that said, Phillipa Leadbetter’s Hera (our dear Sandy Olson) is a real gem, who makes use of every moment on stage, taking small moments to new comedic heights. Lucy Penrose as Aphrodite deserves a stand out too – she takes the role of Rizzo, a fan favourite, and makes you fall in love with the character all over again.

The score is full of great moments – updating the songs of Grease (in legally different enough ways) to the new premise, and combining with some new numbers, it creates a real atmosphere in the room. The staging structure helps this. As you enter, you have traverse staging, with the main stage in the middle, and the Mount Olympus staging at the head. The audience feels so close to the action, and it creates a real party-esque feeling, as you can see each song radiating joy into the audience opposite you. There’s also a fair bit of audience interaction, which adds to making it feel like a collective experience.

This is a love letter to Grease, and you can feel the love present. All the while, it sends it up too, which is what makes this truly great. This is theatre for people who unashamedly love being fun, camp and having a good time. Ancient Grease is the word, and it has most certainly got groove and meaning.

Ancient Grease is running from 4 March to 30 May at The Vaults in Waterloo—tickets here https://www.thevaults.london/ancient-grease.

REVIEW: This Grief Thing

Published on February 21, 2026February 23, 2026 by Meg WardLeave a comment

This Grief Thing isn’t a shop. Not really. It’s a space to really sit with our grief.

Stepping into This Grief Thing, you might feel unsure about what you are walking into. A shop, about grief? The initial reaction could be to feel trepidation – pairing the complex, world-ending experience that is grief with selling you things could feel inappropriate. In the wrong hands, this is a concept that could have woefully missed the mark. But with Fevered Sleep’s caring, astutely intelligent touch, the concept becomes an experience we should all rush to take part in.

This Grief Thing isn’t a shop. Not really. It’s a space to really sit with our grief. To turn grief from an isolating, lonely feeling we all have to suffer through, into a community space where we are allowed to feel our deepest, most difficult emotions.

Grief is something we will all undergo in our lives. To be human, is to grieve. And yet, we are so bad at talking about it. We lack the words. Fevered Sleep gives them to you. Fevered Sleep gives you permission to not have the words, but to show up anyway. It provides something so important, that is lacking from society. Space to grieve.

In the shop, you can find a take on Victorian mourning broaches, which makes you consider the different ways humans have grieved across time. Grief postcards which give you words when you have none. T-shirts and other apparel with the words too. It is a pay what you want system – there’s no obligation to buy anything, or to pay the price listed. And not everything is for sale. Towards the back of the ‘shop’ you’ll find sofas, a stack of grief literature, a box of tissues. You can just sit. Sit and feel what you need to.

The sofas face on to a white wall filled with postcards, where other visitors to the shop who have shared their stories, with such candour and honesty. You’ll find it nigh on impossible to keep the tears at bay spending time here, and it will feel so cathartic to cry openly – for your own pain, and everyone else’s. We’re all grieving, aren’t we?

As part of my trip to the shop, I was lucky enough to hear from Fevered Sleep’s creative directors, Sam Butler and David Harradine, who shared how they came to put the shop together. The talked through the research they had conducted to create the space, and their own experiences, and what the shop has taught them. As they rightfully said, grief is so often silenced, hidden and ignored. In these four walls, it isn’t. What a magical thing.

This Grief Thing runs until Sunday 22nd February at the Barbican’s Level G Studio as part of Scene Change, the Centre’s season of transformative events in unexpected places.

REVIEW: The Undying at Soho Theatre

Published on February 11, 2026 by Meg WardLeave a comment

A poignant look at life – and the choices we do and don’t make to live it.

The Undying begins before you’ve found your seat. As you walk into the small black box theatre, incense burns and traditional south Asian instruments play, creating a treat for the senses and making you feel at home in the space. Photo frames hang across from the audience, baring text such as ‘Mira’s 1st birthday’, ‘Alton towers’, ‘Our wedding’. It sparks memory, nostalgia, familiarity, all of which, it becomes apparent are themes for the play.

We open on a married couple, in their 90s, who are deciding whether to take a revolutionary new medicine, which will grant them their youth, at the cost of their memories. A second chance at life. Their bodies will be 40 again, with all the memories up to that age and none past it. The wife, Amba, wants to take the pill. She wants to be young; to get the education she wasn’t able to her first time around, to live with the freedoms afforded to women now. The husband, Prav, isn’t so sure. A man of his era, stuck in his ways, unconvinced there’s anything worth experiencing a second time around.

The Undying is an exceptionally clever piece of theatre. Rea Dennhardt Patel’s script keeps the audience guessing, and it builds to an unexpected yet wholly satisfying conclusion. It deftly balances the comedic with the melancholic, the silly with the poignant. It makes you feel a pull to the women who came before, and wonder what choices our ancestors would have made, if they had choices. The play makes you question how much of ourselves we can change, the impact of our childhoods, how much time is enough time. Do we deserve second chance? What is the nature of love, and how can love change as we do? You leave this play with these questions whirring around your brain, and no doubt a tear shed for our two characters, Amba and Prav.

Vaishnavi Survaprakash, who plays Amba, and Akaash Dev Shemarboth, who plays Prav both brought incredible physicality to their roles. At every age their characters were, they used their bodies and expressions in such a way that I fully believed they were one minute 90, the next 40, and the next even younger, such is how they embodied their characters. The chemistry of the two actors elevated the script and created a captivating energy between them both. The small stage became a whole world, from their shining performances.

The Undying was a perfect piece of theatre. I’d certainly take a pill to go back and relive it again!

The Undying’s run is now concluded and ran at Soho Theatre, London.

REVIEW: The Grim

Published on December 1, 2025November 30, 2025 by Meg WardLeave a comment

A macabre comedy that leaves a confusing aftertaste

The Grim is a three person play performed with minimal set dressing and in two 30-minute halves with an interval between. It tells the story of two undertakers, one a believer of the supernatural and the other a sceptic who teases his colleague for his superstitions. They both begin to question their mindsets when today’s corpse, a supposed serial killer is on the slab, and he’s not as dead as they would have hoped…

The biggest strength of this play is the performances from the leads. Ed Morris and Louis Davison, put on a committed and passionate showing, making these somewhat stereotypical 80s characters feel life-like, well-rounded. The chemistry between their characters comes naturally, which gently pulls the audience in. Our third lead, Harry Carter, who comes to life in the second act, as the rage-filled antagonist Jackie Gallagher, deftly creates a tense and uneasy atmosphere which compels the audience further. The three are energetic on stage, bouncing off one another, and building the tension together.

Another strength lies in the simplicity of the set. The sterile, white tiles and metal undertakers table in an otherwise black room help with the claustrophobic and imposing feeling that the play wants to create. The lighting and sound is used well to ramp up the tension and feeling of a ghostly presence.

Unfortunately, while there are moments of genuine comedy and horror, at points the script doesn’t marry the genres together well, and the unexplained elements in the plot feel like there is a lack of clarity about what the show wants to be. The first half spends far too long on the jokey bantering of the two leads, which isn’t as funny as it should be for so much time spent on it, and then when we do get going with the horror, the interval after only 30 minutes means the audience isn’t kept in that uneasy tension which they worked so well to create. The break is unnecessary and makes the show feel more disjointed than it would if it was an hour straight through.

The second half is more compelling and there are moments where I laughed out loud and felt scared in my seat in equal measure. But there isn’t enough time in the script to show who the antagonist Jackie Gallagher really is – with the narrative switching rapidly between victim of a stitch-up or crazed killer, which means that the conclusion feels confused and one leaves the theatre just sort of thinking…what?

This isn’t to say that The Grim isn’t worth seeing. It will make you laugh, it will make you feel scared, and you will enjoy the acting of the performers. But sadly, there’s just something lacking, that leaves a confusing aftertaste, that lingers after the show ends.

REVIEW: The Warp and the Weft

Published on September 19, 2025September 19, 2025 by Meg WardLeave a comment

Movement, music, memory and a whole lot of fabric!

The Warp and the Weft deftly weaves together different stories about fabric into a performance that is thought-provoking and poignant. This show will make you consider the clothes on our backs in a whole new light. If you like a show which gives you something to discuss afterwards, this is the show for you!

The performance takes place in a small, intimate black box space, with the audience seated in the round, facing hanging threads and with fabric scraps at their feet. Four performers enter the space, following an audio piece which sets the thesis of the show up, allowing the audience to understand it’s namesake. The performers then take the audience on a journey through seven stories that all present a different relationship to fabric.

We begin with the Minerva and Aracne Roman myth, which shows a competitive side to making fabric, and the performers use high-energy movements and narration to present the story to the audience. It’s well acted, but unfortunately, this is probably the weakest story in the oeuvre as to those not familiar with the myth, it would be challenging to keep up with. This is a shame, as it starts the audience on the backfoot. It feels slightly out of place as a myth when the other six stories are true, and through skits, dance, acting and movement, they take us through history. The World Wars, the Aids crisis, the suffragette movement to name a few. These movements ask the audience questions – what clothing would you save if you had to flee? What clothing would remind you of a loved one? When is what we wear an act of protest?

This is where the piece feels strongest, in these real human stories, told skilfully through movement. The four performers use their bodies to portray a range of emotions, and they flow together, making the movement feel as one. There are flashes of comedy in certain skits, which brings a welcome note of levity to the performance, and helps to steady the more melancholic themes.

The piece really finds its stride in the final half hour, and the simple staging and use of props really helps to foster a feeling of intimacy between the audience and the stories. By the end of the performance, it feels as though you have seen a rich tapestry created before your eyes.

The direction of Izzy Ponsford cannot be understated, it is truly a rare thing to find a show that demands so much important conversation after viewing.