Stuart Bowden is clearly a multitalented, intelligent, and imaginative artist. His show – part way between comedy and theatre – is based on a very interesting premise, but for me too many of his comic riffs didn’t serve his narrative or the concept. He just too often indulged in easy and predictable gags that took […]

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 […]

How perfectly the heart works, when it works… Poker Night Blues is a collaboration between  the US-based theatre company Theatre Movement Bazaar and Chinese-based Beijing TinHouse Productions. Together, they take an iconic American dramatic text, A Streetcar Named Desire, and deliver it to us with an ensemble of Chinese actor-dancers (although some are possibly Chinese-American) […]

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 […]

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 […]