Category Review

REVIEW: ROOMIES @ Underbelly

Image credits owed to Richie Lee Davis

Reading Time: 2 minutesROOMIES, a one-woman testimonial exploring struggles with control, identity and mental health, is the type of show I tend to treat with a little caution. I find this category of performance often at risk of glamorizing difficult experiences, and occasionally becoming a series of confessions more helpful for the performer than for their audience. However, writer and performer Julia Stephens never falls into these traps, rather, ROOMIES strikes an excellent balance between realistic portrayal and responsible storytelling. What results is an entirely believable storyline that doesn’t shy away from hard truths, but is ultimately a moving, hopeful watch. 

REVIEW: The Plot @ Summerhall Academy

Reading Time: 2 minutesGunpowder, treason and plot. This is what Guy Fawkes’ attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605 is best known for, yet two of the three are bafflingly missing from Emma Howlett’s The Plot. Fawkes is the subject of not one, but two shows at this year’s Fringe. Remember, Remember is a musical fizzing with camp energy and catchy songs; in stark contrast, The Plot is a straight-faced, humourless exploration of truth and the power of propaganda.

REVIEW: Dido and Aneas

Reading Time: 3 minutesPurcell’s Dido and Aeneas is an unmistakably odd work. Its themes — love, fate, supernatural betrayal and death — are epic, yet they unfold on an intimate scale, fusing French, Italian and English musical traditions. Then there is the plot: a whiplash-inducing concoction of classical myth, tragic love story and witchy hijinks, all culminating in a final aria that delivers a genuine gut punch. And all this takes just over an hour.

REVIEW: And That’s On Period! 

Reading Time: 3 minutesHOME Arches Manchester’s creative scene, providing a space for artists, communities and events in the railway arches beneath HOME. And That’s On Period! felt well suited to the venue, bringing people together for a free evening of poetry and discussion focused on menstrual health, period poverty and breaking some of the stigma that still surrounds periods.

REVIEW: Ben Goldscheider, Callum Smart and Richard Uttley

Reading Time: 2 minutesFour Mondays running now, Upstairs at Ronnie Scott's has now become a standing appointment for me. Classical Mondays sits a little oddly against the club's usual late-night jazz pulse but never fails to shine. 

Ben Goldscheider, Callum Smart and Richard Uttley have been playing together since 2017, almost a decade of creating an authentic and smooth dynamic. They opened with Mozart's Horn Quintet in E-flat, reworked for their line-up which almost became a quiet tribute, as we learnt Mozart himself once lodged across Firth Street during his London years.

REVIEW: Rosie Holt: The Illegal Aliens Have Landed! @ Pleasance Courtyard

Reading Time: 2 minutesRosie Holt is everything wrong with British politics, or at least she can make fun of everything wrong, while she plays everyone in British politics, simultaneously, in the same scene. It’s non stop, its clever, its stupid at times, and it has it in for everyone in a light hearted satire of what it’s like to be even vaguely wired into UK politics these days. Rosie Holt mainly plays a labour MP who upon receiving the news of an alien sighting - sets upon her plan to achieve first contact, smash question-time and improve her polling numbers. Events following over the next 24 hours play out on stage, from bumbling question time appearances, protests and even a theatre critic pondering the shows ‘deeper meaning’, with every character played by Rosie Holt.