Simon Ward reviews Getaway/Runaway at The Lion & Unicorn Theatre There is always a frisson of excitement when the actors are already on stage as the audience enters the auditorium. Sometimes there is some business going on, perhaps even a bit of audience participation. But, when, as here, […]
Simon Ward reviews Where Have All Our Women Gone? at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre Elizabeth Huskisson is the driving force behind this. As writer, director, producer and performer, it is clearly a deeply personal piece. She is utterly committed to it and determined to get her message across, […]
Simon Ward reviews It’s a Motherf**king Pleasure at Soho Theatre Following a brief run as part of The Vaults Festival in February, this show comes to the Soho Theatre as a slick, well-worked production. Flawbored are a disability-led company, made up of the night’s performers, Samuel Brewer, Aarian Mehrabani […]
Simon Ward reviews The Tragedy of Macbeth at Southwark Playhouse. Flabbergast Theatre have spent years working and re-working this noisy, exuberant, muscular and unnerving version of Shakespeare’s infamous Scottish play. Entering the auditorium is like stumbling onto the enactment of an ancient pagan ritual in a woodland clearing. Characters […]
Simon Ward reviews Breathless at the Soho Theatre From the moment that Sophie (Madeleine MacMahon) bursts onto the stage accompanied by an exhalation of breath we are gripped. She is indeed breathless as she tells us her story, and she is rendered breathless and speechless more than once […]
Simon Ward reviews Chekhov’s Dildo at The Hope Theatre If you had never heard Chekhov’s famous dictum regarding the duty owed to the audience by a playwright, ie that it you introduce a gun in the first act, it must be used before the play is over, writer […]
Simon Ward reviews Pick n Mix Downstairs at The Pleasance Taking the bare bones of the plot of Kat Rose-Martin’s brilliant debut play, having its London premiere in North London’s Pleasance, could well suggest a dose of kitchen-sink Northern miserabilism. We witness period pains and problems, multiple unplanned […]
Simon Ward reviews The Wedding Speech at The Hope Theatre The Wedding Speech is a one-woman play written by Cheryl May Coward-Walker and performed with passionate intensity by Princess Donnough as Rosemary. She is the grown-up daughter who has volunteered to make a speech at her mother’s wedding, […]
Simon Ward reviews Jo and Sam Find Themselves In Woking at The Hen and Chickens Theatre A bare stage, save for a couple of chairs and a projector screen. Suddenly the screen lights up, Edmund Jolliffe’s music kicks in and we are taken through a rather good whistle […]
Simon Ward reviews Alarms and Excursions at Greenwich Theatre During rehearsals for this production of Michael Frayn’s collection of short plays and sketches, the playwright apparently wrote to the director to query whether the various technological devices which conspire to confound and torment his characters were now too […]
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