Reading Time: < 1 minuteTom Nemec is a brilliant storyteller. Within minutes, he makes you forget you are in a small studio theatre and instead you feel you are sitting together with the audience around a campfire, listening to a relative’s life story.
Reading Time: 2 minutesRory Marshall’s latest stand-up hour Thank You for the Opportunity adds a ripe bunch more to the list.
Reading Time: 2 minutesSappho has always been more myth than woman. The premise announces itself early on when Sappho (Charlotte Boyle), visiting us some the past, parallels trees falling in forests to lesbians going unrecorded, letting the audience know the play’s premise in ancient Greece is less of a history lesson rather than a rom-com populated with birthdays, housewarmings and the ordinary social churn of an island where everyone seems to know everyone else's business.
Reading Time: 2 minutesStepping into the Yurt, we are treated to an intimate setting that can barely contain Kitson's energy. He is wide-eyed and energetic from the get go, and this barely fades throughout the set.
This set is all about Kitson's struggles over the past year, dealing with the pressures that come from an industry that is notoriously hard to make a living from. He brings you on that journey, managing to poke fun at hard moments and reflect on where his journey has taken him, ending up at some kind of conclusion for now. But this story will no doubt continue as Kitson continues to build his career and standing.
Reading Time: 2 minutesTrying to quantify just what ASURA is is challenging. It seems to be part theatre, part ted talk, part sermon, part performance art piece. Frankly, it is something new and interesting that is maybe still figuring out exactly what it is while playing out in front of your eyes.
Reading Time: 2 minutesThis show made me feel young, being a year older than Finlay, seeing him explain what an incel was to someone in the front row must be the gen z equivalent of hearing someone explain the internet to your parents 20 years ago. Being a zoomer isn’t the only embarrassing identity Finlay flaunts on stage, he is a self admitted, posh, comfortable, trauma free comedian who in his own words “can afford to keep doing stand up even if you think I’m bad”. Finlay gets us onto his side fairly quickly, doing better than a lot of trust-fund comedians do at the fringe, mostly by telling some hilarious, embarrassing stories that paint him as the butt of the joke.
Reading Time: 2 minutesDespite multiple portraits hanging on London’s hallowed gallery walls, famous actress, celebrity and
author Mary Robinson has yet to have her contemporary cultural zeitgeist. Enter stage left, Perdita.
Written by Sophie Todd, who also plays the titular protagonist, the first half of the play deals with
Robinson’s youth as a teenager wedded to drunken gambler Thomas Robinson (played by Kevin Martin Murphy). We see her follow him all the way to debtor’s prison with their newborn child Maria where her writing is so popular it neatly pays off their debt and she returns to the stage to be mentored by bringing David Garrick out of retirement. Here she flourishes, although we never really see her on stage.
Reading Time: 3 minutesDespite multiple portraits hanging on London’s hallowed gallery walls, famous actress, celebrity and
author Mary Robinson has yet to have her contemporary cultural zeitgeist. Enter stage left, Perdita.
Written by Sophie Todd, who also plays the titular protagonist, the first half of the play deals with
Robinson’s youth as a teenager wedded to drunken gambler Thomas Robinson (played by Kevin Martin Murphy). We see her follow him all the way to debtor’s prison with their newborn child Maria where her writing is so popular it neatly pays off their debt and she returns to the stage to be mentored by bringing David Garrick out of retirement. Here she flourishes, although we never really see her on stage.
Reading Time: 2 minutesThe initial element which struck me about Mari Moriarty’s live radio hour Fempaths was the care taken to ensure this performance is as accessible as possible.
Reading Time: 2 minutesJustine Martin’s debut play is an absurdist, but recognisable comedy that heightens and parodies familiar personalities in the modern-age.