Category: 4/5 Stars

★★★★Nobody’s Heroes

Simon Ward reviews Howie The Rookie at The Cockpit Mark O’Rowe’s multi-award winning 1999 play, Howie The Rookie, is brought to the very freshly refurbished Cockpit under the direction of US-based theatre maker Jerome Davis. The piece is very firmly rooted in its working class Dublin milieu – […]

★★★★Life Imitates Artifice

Simon Ward reviews The Sequel at the King’s Head Theatre Lucas Closs’s new comedy-drama The Sequel is a hugely entertaining extended riff on what it means to be a writer and what any writer owes to the people and places where they find their inspiration. It is a […]

★★★★Small Victory, Big Heart

Simon Ward reviews The Witch and The Whistleblower at The Glitch With all due respect to modern-day followers of Wicca, we would normally associate witches with either fairytales or the distant past. By contrast, ‘whistleblower’ is a much more recent term with connotations of corporate or professional wrongdoing. […]

Ann (played by Nikol Kollars) wearing an open-necked green flowery blouse, with a red flower in her hair, a white necklace and purple sash, standing and about to sing.

★★★★A Beautiful Tribute

Simon Ward reviews Fickle Eulogy at the Circle & Star Theatre I first encountered Nikol Kollars’s solo show, directed by Javier Galitó-Cava, in August last year (The Long Goodbye). I found it deeply moving then, and, I am happy to report, a second viewing did not disappoint. The […]

★★★★An Urgent Wake-Up Call

Simon Ward reviews Lifeline at the Southwark Playhouse Elephant Fresh from a run off-Broadway, Lifeline comes to the Southwark Playhouse for the its UK premiere. In various guises it has been around for a few years – it arrives here as a slick, well-funded musical that grabs the […]

★★★★★Alive and Kicking

Simon Ward reviews Riki Lindhome: Dead Inside at the Soho Theatre Riki Lindhome brings her Edinburgh Fringe hit to Soho. She is known for her roles in the Netflix series Wednesday as well as The Big Bang Theory. She is the ‘Garfunkel’ half of the brilliantly named comedy music duo […]

★★★★Poppy Power

Simon Ward reviews Poppies at the Camden People’s Theatre Running as part of this year’s SPRINT Festival for new work at the Camden People’s Theatre, Poppies is an intensely personal piece written by the cast, Jim Spencer Broadbent and Johnjoe Irwin. They play versions of themselves ‘Jim’ who […]

Sarah McGuinness in red and gold ringmaster style jacket and black vest, gesticulating.

★★★★A Star is Reborn

Simon Ward reviews Grit, Glitter and Gaslight -The Sarah McGuinness Story at the Circle and Star Theatre The Circle and Star Theatre is the latest incarnation of one of the godfathers of London’s pub theatre scene, the Pentameters, which has been producing groundbreaking work for nearly sixty years. […]

Night scene, dimly lit. In front on the left is Ffion (played by Lucy Havard) looking up; on the right at the back is Ben (played by Andy Sellers) in a light blue cagoule, also looking up.

★★★★Howling At The Moon

Simon Ward reviews Werewolf Sighted In Port Talbot at the Old Red Lion Theatre Following a successful run as part of GrimFest in October last year, Andy Sellers’s debut dark comedy returns to the Old Red Lion. The multi-talented Mr Sellers, whose performance I thoroughly enjoyed in last […]