REVIEW: Lost & Found
Reading Time: 2 minutesLost & Found presents two 30-minute shows from a company of recent LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art) graduates.
Ben Breen
Ben Breen is a teacher of Physics and Mathematics with a passion for theatre. He particularly enjoys chamber plays, drama, and comedy. His "happy place" is the National Theatre atrium.
REVIEW: Anything is possible if you think about it hard enough
Reading Time: 2 minutesAnything is Possible if you Think About it Hard Enough, nestled beneath a railway bridge in the Waterloo East Theatre, presents two such intimacies.
REVIEW: When It Happens to You
Reading Time: 2 minutesThe ‘it’ in When It Happens to You refers to a phone-call from your daughter telling you she’s just been raped. The ‘when’ is right at the start of this searing theatrical memoir. Writer Tawni O’Dell recounts her own experience receiving “the second worst” phone call you can ever receive, and the subsequent devastation it wrought on her family. The result is an intimate, gripping, and insightful portrait of the horrors of sexual assault for both its victims and those who love them.
REVIEW: BED: a one man show
Reading Time: 2 minutesYou can tell a lot about someone from what they keep in their suitcase. This premise made 2021 video-game Unpacking a smash hit, with players developing a hatred for a boyfriend they’d never even met. It’s also the jumping-off point for Bed, as an unnamed protagonist (‘Boy’, played by Ben Donaghy) goes through a suitcase of mementos, sharing their stories. His objects transport the audience across a series of bedrooms throughout Europe, gradually revealing the man on stage.
REVIEW: I Love You, Now What
Reading Time: 3 minutesI Love You, Now What? is told through a series of vignettes, whiplashing from the excitement and devotion of new love to loss, resignation and despair.
REVIEW: My Friend Travis
Reading Time: 2 minutesEvery year, James hosts a barbecue for his friends and family. Every year, Travis arrives an hour early, plays some chess, drinks a Heineken, and then slips out the back door just as the first guest arrives.
REVIEW: Sh!t Faced Shakespeare
Reading Time: 2 minutesA Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most-loved comedies, following a group of fairies meddling in the preparations for a human wedding. Sh!tfaced Shakespeare adds an additional ‘Green Fairy’ to the mix – one of its six classically trained actors gets blind drunk just before the performance, leaving them to grapple with the play’s interconnected plots and quick-witted dialogue.
REVIEW: The Children’s Inquiry
Reading Time: 2 minutesThe child care system in the UK is in crisis – a 2022 report called for urgent funding increases of £2.6bn, which are still yet to materialise – and it scarcely got a mention amidst the cacophony of failing public services in the 2024 election campaign. The Children’s Inquiry seeks to redress this balance, combining a historical tour of the UK care system with deeply personal, powerful accounts of the modern looked-after-child experience. A bang-up-to-date soundtrack and clever direction unite to produce a musical that is truly a spectacle to behold.
REVIEW: Wind/Rush Generation(s)
Reading Time: 2 minutesMojisola Adebayo’s Wind/Rush Generation(s) is incredibly ambitious in both its scope and its staging. A confronting narrative tackles racial injustice and colonialism in the UK, framed through a group of university students communicating with a ghost via Ouija board.
REVIEW: Replica @ the Connections Festival
Reading Time: 2 minutesEach year since 1995, the National Theatre’s Connections Festival has commissioned new plays for performance by youth theatre groups across the country. Titas Halder’s Replica is a fresh, urgent take on the power of misinformation, told through the story of a school trip gone wrong.