Penny Arcade (Susana Ventura) is a queer performance art legend and an endlessly fascinating performer.  Having left small-town America for adventures in New York City, she self identifies in her first few breaths as the Evil Queen, an antidote to Snow White’s dull conformity, and defies easy definition. Sliding easily between cabaret, poetry, and performance art, she riffs on her chosen themes with a passion that is absolute. This distinctly alternative show fits the underground-style space within the Underbelly perfectly, evocative as it is of the New York warehouse parties referenced by the piece, an atmosphere reinforced by its rock’n’roll soundtrack.

Unapologetic about both her search for pleasure and her radical values, she begins by launching into an amusing critique of the gentrification of NYC, the now clean streets symbolising a repugnant sanitisation of thoughts and ideas : a development of some of the central themes  explored in The Girl Who Knew Too Much). This takes us into an extended exploration of the city’s nouveau ‘cupcake culture’, now that there’s a café on every street corner and personalities can be reduced to flavours. This analogy is intriguing and comedic, and Penny’s powerful opinions in this heartfelt, lambasting monologue sweep us along in their wake.  It makes for charismatic and heartfelt performance, but its polemic can also feel frustrating as well as provocative.

Penny goes on to interrogate the subjects of the mass hypnosis inherent in advertising techniques and our consumer culture, placing herself as part of ‘the control group’: someone who hasn’t watched television and seems outside of these influences. She also explores youth culture in detail, making some sweeping statements about today’s twenty-somethings, characterised as fragile, fearful of youth fading, and averse to risk, and sets out the notion that we are all victims of our own biology and the animal brain. These are not opinions everyone would agree with, and indeed can at times seem quite reductive, but presented with such verve and conviction, they prompt a warm audience reaction.

The most intriguing part of the performance for me was hearing more about Penny’s own background. She explains that she once took drugs every day for five years and charts her lifestyle as she grew up in New York, a city as brutal as it is exciting. She is also very clear on her definitions of the ‘longing’ of the title, which is not passive like nostalgia, but rather a permanent sense of life’s losses. Yet ultimately the message is positive, and if it is messy or a little flawed in part, so too are the elements of human nature that Penny explores; we are urged to remain individual and authentic at all costs.  Now that’s a radical, rock’n’ roll message for these commercialised times.

Presented by Soho Theatre and London Artists Projects

This deeply affecting ensemble production made me think about female prisoners in a significantly different light. After learning the characters’ stories, based as they are on real testimonies, I understood that the women’s eventual incarceration was as inevitable as it was beyond their control. Yet these women are very clearly presented not as victims but as survivors, well-rounded characters who have largely been treated appallingly by external, and often male, forces. Abusive fathers, violent husbands, and drug-pushing acquaintances all feature heavily in their fates. That they face these experiences with strength and in many cases good humour is testament to the ‘survival’ instinct inherent within them.

This is not to say that the characters are presented as blameless; indeed it is the very human and believable flaws in them that make them so engaging. Angie for example seems bent on self-destruction, with a passionate and all-consuming need for ‘gear’. Physicalized with stunning energy and raw edginess by Jessica Johnson, we see that the experiences that have shaped her have included sexual abuse and the death of her own baby at the tender age of just seventeen. In a heartrending monologue, she explains how heroin is the only thing that numbs her pain, flowing through her like ‘warm custard’ and giving her a sense of safety that she has never found elsewhere. For her, the future is uncertain.

We also see the stories of three other women, all imprisoned for varying lengths and varying reasons, and all equally absorbing. Effective theatrical devices help to flesh out these stories, including the imaginative use of masking tape to help give the audience a very specific idea of the design of the prison and particularly its limited cell space. The piece has been devised by women from HMP YOI Low Newton who have also brought the great level of detail and information that underpins the production throughout.

Under Laura Lindow’s precise and captivating direction, Catrina McHugh’s hard-hitting script highlights the shared experiences of these vulnerable women, often in highly amusing and unexpected ways. Key Change was commissioned by Dilly Arts, a North East England based arts development company who work with women in prison, with a clear aim to emphasise the need for ‘an alternative approach to female offending which prioritises the needs of vulnerable women’. With the shocking statistic that currently 40% of women will leave prison homeless, this need seems more pressing than ever, and is skilfully addressed in what is a vital and important production.

At the very top of C Nova, up flights of increasingly dusty and ancient-looking stairs, is the tiny atmospheric room used for Sirenia, a piece designed for a maximum of sixteen audience members. Unlike Jethro Compton’s Bunker Trilogy, where the attic staging in C venues initially demanded some suspension of disbelief, here the set-up immerses us immediately in the world of the play, as if I really were seated directly in a cramped and sparse room within a lonely lighthouse. A revolving beam of light, representing the lighthouse’s beacon, reveals a basic set, a few of the keeper’s personal artefacts, and a bashed-up radio and communication system. Sound effects and radio broadcasts further set the scene as in pitch darkness we hear about a missing lighthouse keeper, before the never-ending rain takes over once again.

Rob Pomfret plays keeper Isaac Dyer with a gruff and wholly believable persona, giving the impression that he is always on the edge of giving in to some deep, barely repressed emotion. We see Isaac go about his duties, preparing for a storm that seems bound to be metaphorical as well as literal. As he rushes in and out, water droplets fly from his raincoat and the failing radio and intermittently working communication system all help to skilfully build tension and to signal impending doom. Within the turmoil, Isaac hears the wail of a siren song and rushes outside to rescue a drowning girl from the rocks, played with an excellent veneer of vulnerability by Evie Tyler. The stakes are heightened as it becomes clear that she will die without medical assistance, yet the weather and the lack of technology make this impossible. And then, finally, in this combustible scenario, when the unnamed girl comes to, fortified by rum and Isaac’s clumsy attempts to warm her with blankets, there is something decidedly strange and otherworldly about her.

‘The girl’ seems to have no recollection of who she is or how she ended up washed up in such a remote spot. She does, however, seem to have a knack for encouraging Isaac to talk, and he eventually opens up about his heartbreaking reason for living out at sea.  His confession is framed with some beautiful imagery in a lyrical script by Cornish writer/producer Jethro Compton, which, along with Isaac’s melodic singing, the dim lighting, and the howling wind creates a visceral sense of being lost at sea. The eventual denouement is very well executed by the actors, but, compared to what had gone before, felt a little clunky. Drawing strongly from Celtic myth, to relate the girl to Isaac’s own past necessitated substantial exposition, which for me diluted the feel of the piece. However, this was remedied by a haunting final image as Isaac’s resonant bass tones flow out of him and he slowly prepares himself to enter the sea.

This tender and intimate production is devised by Olive Merrill and Emma Clarke and explores the world of a five year old child who is learning to write. My interest was piqued by the piece’s concept, inspired as it was by ‘company members’ background in education and experience of working with children who have incredible talents but lack the tools to communicate them through writing’. Coming from a teaching background myself, the idea of exploring tensions between childhood imagination and the  potential restraints imposed upon it by specific teaching techniques in literacy (such as the use of phonics) is a fascinating one. Kaboodle state that their aim is ‘to highlight the absurdity’ of such techniques, and through being given an active role as pupils it is hoped that the audience will experience the associate feelings of ‘the confusion and ridiculousness’.

The performance definitely put us firmly in the children’s shoes, with gentle interactions within a classroom scenario which included asking us to draw, write and repeat phonic sounds. As someone who has never needed much encouragement to release my inner child, I thoroughly enjoyed this, and as a teacher it also reinforced the importance of clarity of instructions and of attaching clear aims to activities. When the performers chose to purposely remove these elements, I did indeed share some of the confusion that a young child might feel.

The performance is set around a five year old boy’s day at school. Constructed in front of us with the use of sticks and various costume pieces, ‘Jack’ is bought to life in painstaking detail, then operated by the performers, who also take the roles of teacher and class mates as needed. I did struggle here a little with this ‘painstaking’ element of the work; at times the piece felt like it needed more content, as certain ideas  were explored in such detail that they seemed overlong. There were however some very effective sequences in the telling of Jack’s story, most notably the imaginative construction of a large paper monster that glides across the room, summing up the literal ‘flight’ of a child’s imagination beautifully. When the monster is constrained we feel the impact fully. Notably too, both performers have an energetic and affable style which seems to encourage the small audience to feel safe enough to interact, again an essential principle in a classroom, making Writing a memorable overall experience.

This stunning solo piece fully captivated me right from the start. Originally performed in 1987 (with Tilda Swinton in the role), Manfred Karge’s gritty play is enlivened in a new translation by Alexandra Wood with the excellent Margaret Ann Bain as Ella. The pre-set introduced a stylish design: a sparse room with basic furniture (including an iron bedstead holding a slumped figure), decorated by sophisticated projections that along with stylised lighting and muted sound effects created a palpable atmosphere of foreboding.

We are introduced to Ella, a woman living in twentieth century Germany. Out of necessity of circumstance following her husband Max’s untimely death, Ella makes the unusual decision to impersonate him in order to survive. Bain characterises Max exceptionally well, in gruff Scottish accent and with fully developed male physicality and attitude. Conversely, her ‘real’ and female self seems less believable, and as the narrative progresses, Ella indeed becomes more and more entrenched in ‘becoming’ Max, long after there seems to be any logical need to do so. Indeed, she even states at one point that if she stops, she will have lost him, and gradually, the toll on her mental health becomes ever more apparent.

The performance challenges of performing a 75 minute monologue are significant, but I remained enthralled throughout. In part this was also due to the well-choreographed movement (created by Directors Bruce Guthrie and Scott Graham, whose backgrounds in work with Frantic Assembly and The Curious incident of the Dog in the Night Time are clearly apparent here) which included suspension and frenetic pace. Strong visual elements including unusual use of shadow play to reveal subtext (as Ella holds a pillow it becomes a baby in shadow, for example) were also strongly impactful.

Ella’s story is itself startling, highly tense from the start as war approaches and Hitler gains ground. Ella survives by first taking on her husband’s job as a crane driver, and later becoming a soldier and then a labourer. The context of these decisions is carefully explained, but I still had to suspend my disbelief here to an extent – I wasn’t wholly convinced Ella would be able to drive a crane after merely hearing her husband talk about it, but the piece encourages us to accept this due to its abstract performance style. Ultimately, if we are willing to accept an actor hanging from the ceiling dancing with a dress that appears from nowhere we must too accept her story, executed as it is with such skill. Bain’s extremely nuanced and powerful delivery coupled with the visual aesthetic leaves lasting images that make Man to Man affecting and quite special.