Category ★★★★½

REVIEW: May B

Photo by Hervé Deroo

Reading Time: 3 minutesImagine yourself sitting inside Sadler's Wells, enveloped in absolute darkness and serenity. A baritone voice begins to hum Shubert’s art songs filled with suspense and sorrow. Suddenly, your hearing becomes extraordinarily sharp, almost as keen as a beast's. You hear someone coughing, someone sighing, and another zipping up their jacket. You feel a bit annoyed: is the audience always this loud and noisy? This sensation creates awareness and alienation: you belong to a group sharing the same state—the audience—yet it is you who feels that such state is disturbing, preventing you from enjoying the show. You are alone.

REVIEW: Life of Pi

Life of Pi

Reading Time: 2 minutesLife of Pi is the epic tale of seventeen-year old Pi, recounting his experience of finding himself on a small boat in the middle of the ocean as the sole survivor of a shipwreck. It’s a classic story known to many people as the book or film, and may in theory not seem the most suited to the stage, but in reality that couldn’t have been further from the truth. This show is an incredible adaptation, and has been designed so brilliantly with no illusion too difficult; the audience were captivated from start to finish.

REVIEW: Expatriated

Reading Time: 2 minutesExpatriated is a uniquely candid portrayal of what it is to move abroad. It highlights how experiences vary based on where you move to, your country of origin, or even your race. It looks at how different people are treated when they are viewed as an immigrant rather than an expat. 

REVIEW: Why I Stuck A Flare Up My Arse For England 

Reading Time: 2 minutesA little before kick-off at the Euros 2020 final between England and Italy, a young man stuck a flare up his butt. It sounds fake, like something out of a movie, but it genuinely did occur. This man went viral, was tracked down by the Sun, and stated that he regretted nothing. The man was a talked-about spectacle for a brief period, following which the world moved on to the next sensational news event. Alex Hill, however, took this event and ran with it. Thus, Why I Stuck a Flare Up My Arse for England was born. 

REVIEW: The Kite Runner

Reading Time: 2 minutesThe acting is, for all intents and purposes, stellar. There are one or two moments in the first portion of the play, where several of the main cast are playing children, where some of the “childlike” exuberance of several characters can come across as a little forced, but this is a fleeting and minor concern. There is an undeniable presence to all of the actors on stage, and it is comforting to see them take their time with their parts, allowing character to unfold parallel with plot in a way that seems natural and fitting. Of particular note as a standout performance, I found Dean Rehman’s Baba to be excellently delivered as a complicated, sympathetic character, especially in a relatively moderate role. 

REVIEW: Cassie and the Lights

Reading Time: 2 minutesCassie and The Lights is performed as a play created by the piece’s young subjects: Tin, Kit, and Cassie. The siblings directly address the audience, give verbal context to the scenes, openly coordinate the technical elements, and craft pieces of set as they go along. The stage design has the hallmarks of childhood – objects are attributed multiple functions; suitcases are bedazzled with lights and puppets to change time or place. The language is perfectly childlike, and painfully so as these children openly battle incredibly difficult and outright ‘adult’ problems. The piece flows as a perfectly chaotic child’s handywork.