REVIEW: Little Piece of You: An Atypical Musical in Concert
Reading Time: 2 minutesDeveloped in America and currently having its European debut, Little Piece of You: An Atypical Musical in Concert has been in development since 2020.
Category ★★★☆☆
REVIEW: The Pirates of Penzance
Reading Time: 2 minutesSasha Regan’s production of "The Pirates of Penzance" is a lively, comedic take featuring an all-male cast. While some performances, particularly by Luke Garner-Greene and David McKechnie, shine, the lack of operatic prowess sometimes obscures lyrics. Though it entertains, there’s room for improvement in storytelling and clarity.
REVIEW: Here You Come Again
Reading Time: 2 minutesHere You Come Again at the Lowry, Salford offers a humorous, Dolly Parton-infused take on pandemic life, but ultimately suffers from a paper-thin plot and a sense that its use of Parton's music is more opportunistic than inspired.
REVIEW: The Farmonic Orchestra
Reading Time: 2 minutesIn The Other Palace’s studio space, a stage is bedecked in vegetables. The lighting low, Ginsters logo appears on every surface, signaling the not-so-subtle commercial facet of this production. Dan Mersh, our compere for the afternoon, bounds onto the stage to introduce himself and provide a little context to the event. This event is inspired by the apparent care Ginsters takes when it comes to sourcing their vegetables for their products. What follows is an array of musical performances, a video of Farmer Merryn’s day in the life on her farm, a surprising interval and an overarching profession of how amazing Ginsters is for taking such care in cultivating their vegetables.
REVIEW: Sinfonia Smith Square: The Orchestral Forest
Reading Time: 3 minutesCreative Director Matt Belcher’s vision for The Orchestral Forest sees the audience experiencing a classical concert from within, free to wander between the ‘trees’, our orchestra blooming from scattered podiums across Sinfonia Smith Square’s hall. The programme celebrates the hidden beauty of the UK’s ancient rainforests, with Belcher’s guide to the performance informing us that at one time, ‘as much as 20% of the UK was covered in temperate rainforest. Today, as little as 0.07% remains. Most have been replaced by conifer plantations – dense, silent monocultures that are intensively grown and felled on repeat…as a result, these forests are now among the rarest and most vulnerable in the world.’
REVIEW: The Chemistry Test
Reading Time: 2 minutesFollowing the 2022 staging of We Wrote A Show at Camden Fringe, Hannah Adams and Jack Cray have returned to the stage with a new iteration. Based on the same characters and loose plot line as their previous production, they now focus their new show on the complexities of love and dating in the digital age.
This latest production, Chemistry Test, follows the same characters (two Artificial Intelligences, Steve and Evie), as they complete the final stages of testing before being sent to Earth. Their mission? To teach humans that art of romance…without the apps.
REVIEW: French Toast
Reading Time: 2 minutesFrom the Gallic Gang - a company striving to introducing French plays to theatre goers in England - comes an Anglo-French adaptation of Poiret’s Fefe de Broadway.
REVIEW: Diana Niepce – The Other Side of Dance
Reading Time: < 1 minuteHow does it feel to fall from a trapeze, suffering a spinal cord injury that leaves you paralysed? For the ordinary, it's already unimaginable; let alone for an acrobatic dancer. Yet, having lived through this experience, dancer and choreographer Diana Niepce recounts her journey of recovery in her latest solo work, The Other Side of Dance.
REVIEW: Play On!
Reading Time: 3 minutesAlmost 30 years after its Broadway run, Sheldon Epps and Cheryl L. West’s Play On! has hit UK theatres for the first time, as a part of the Black, British Talawa Theatre Company’s 2024 Black Joy season. A fusion of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and the iconic Jazz scene of the 1940's Cotton Club, the Bard’s work has never been more accessible. With the soulful compositions of jazz legend Duke Ellington providing the musical numbers throughout this soulful romp through Harlem, Play On! is an endearing and light-hearted production that is certainly worth experiencing.
REVIEW: Pleading Stupidity
Reading Time: 3 minutesIn March 2005 two Australian young men were on their gap years working in Vail, the American ski town. One snowy day they decided to rob a bank on a whim, for reasons which have never been fully clear.