Tag: New Writing

★★★★End of the World Camp Caper

Simon Ward reviews Stanislavski Can’t Save Me from the Apocalypse at the Barons Court Theatre Written and directed by Maggie Dickinson, Stanislavski Can’t Save Me from the Apocalypse is a dark comedy based partly on what must be Dickinson’s lived experience of Theatre Camp. That curious American obsession with spending […]

★★★Heart of the Matter

Simon Ward reviews Core Values at the Hen and Chickens Theatre Written and directed by co-star Alice Dempsey, Core Values is a series of vignettes – snapshots and brief scenes to provide insight into the lives of protagonists here known as Player A (Cécile Fayter), Player B (Alice […]

★★★★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. […]

★★★Flashback To Edinburgh

Simon Ward reviews Rowling In It at the King’s Head Theatre Written and performed by Laura Kay Bailey, and directed by Dominic Shaw, Rowling In It is a fictionalised account of what she experienced when she agreed to play the part of JK Rowling in a show at […]

★★★★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 […]

★★★The Trouble With Men

Simon Ward reviews Monologues of Men at the Old Red Lion Theatre Long time collaborators Francis Saunders and Dean Stalham have teamed up again, this time with Saunders writing and performing, and Stalham directing. I have long been an admirer of Stalham’s work (see Waiting for God and […]

★★★★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 […]

On the left, in open-necked check shirt Gary (played by Charlie Jennings), on the right, looking at sceptically, dressed in red crocheted top and blue dungarees, Sam (played by Gaby Coleman).

★★★Dystopia Revisited

Simon Ward reviews Two Strangers and a Clipboard at the Etcetera Theatre Written and directed by Maria Speight, this is a piece presented as workshop preview prior to a planned summer festival run. Set in a universe that has some overlaps with ours – Celine Dion, cassette tapes, […]