In which performance artist Bryony Kimmings is joined by her advertising accounts manager boyfriend Tim Grayburn in the creation of a show exploring his clinical depression, her response to this, and their decision to face it together as they move forward as a couple, now expecting their first child.

On one level, there’s not much drama to the piece. Everything is presented upfront. We know the outcome from the beginning. They’re together. Tim has left his job and joined Bryony as a theatre-maker and touring performer. She’s pregnant. He’s handling his depression. Yet it’s filled with drama, as we backtrack to the start of the couple’s relationship, their falling in love, Bryony’s discovery of Tim’s terrible dark secret, her desire to rescue him, his attempt to kick the SSRIs (anti-depression drugs), his recovery, his regression, his further recovery, and where they are at now. It has us on the edge of their seats, our hearts in our mouths. For many audience members, there is no attempt to hold back the tears as we hear Tim’s pre-recorded voice (a series of audio interviews the couple have made, used throughout the piece) describing the onset of his depression, the symptoms – fatigue, anxiety, poor concentration, agitation etc – and the confusion and suicidal thoughts that followed. He is – and this is truly depressing in the 21st century – a young man who feels that he can’t share his worries with his friends or family, can’t visit a doctor. Real men don’t cry, so he hides the tears that pour from him daily.

This is issue-based theatre with a strong message: the outcome is the statement that a real man is not afraid to cry. A real man asks for help. The couple’s son will be told about his father’s depression – nothing will be hidden.

But it is a Bryony Kimmings show, so this is all played out in typical Kimmings fashion – what Andy Field calls ‘Bryony-ness’ in the notes he has written for the playscript. For yes, Bryony is at the Traverse, and there is a playscript. Performance art has come a long way – once upon a time you had to search very hard to find performance texts by the likes of Karen Finlay and Lenora Champagne, Bryony’s natural predecessors, which were rarely viewed as ‘proper plays’, because of the focus on autobiographical material, and the inclusion of such elements as pre-recorded taped voice and stylised physical actions using ‘real’ objects. Which is another way of saying that innovative though Fake It ‘Till You Make It is, it follows in a noble tradition.

So, what we get: there’s dances in underpants, silly socks and heads in baskets; slow-mo walks towards each other; jiggled signs listing symptoms, a tent erected on stage to the tune of The Carpenter’s Close To You, a whisk (her) and a hammer (him), and Japanese good-luck dolls hung around the space. There are ditties and confessions and kisses, and a bit of guitar playing. There are whole head masks that obscure Tim’s face and represent his mood swings – a head full of clouds, a horned beast, a coil of rope, a paper bag (its blankness the most disturbing of them all). When, finally, Tim appears unmasked, speaking directly into the mic rather than mediated through the recordings or through Bryony’s interpretations, it is a magical moment of pure, raw theatre.

In the interests of honesty, I feel I need to say that this isn’t my favourite piece by Bryony Kimmings – for me, that honour goes to previous work Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model, which merged the personal and the political adroitly, yet maintaining a sense of artistic distance from the material that is missing here. Fake It ’Til You Make It is so rawly personal, so intimate, so tied up with the couple’s love for each other, and the onstage presence of their unborn child, that it feels impossible to engage in any sort of critical questioning of the content or delivery. Which is, perhaps, problematic.

It feels like the only reasonable response to the honesty and ‘realness’ of the show is the one that it has garnered from all quarters, so I will join others in saying that this is an important piece of work about clinical depression and masculinity, using theatre as a vehicle for the disseminating of information about the condition, by way of two people’s personal experience of this terrible curse of the modern world. And that is a valuable thing.

Welcome to Massiveville, which is in fact a small town populated by puppets. It has a local shop selling overpriced vegetables, a pub, a cottage hospital, and a recreational ground where young people take drugs and make out. Its puppet population includes old codger Howard, whiny middle-class teenager Suki who is like so sick of her parents, local cop Clive who’s seen it all, hippy-dippy Dinah who believes in fairies and omens, and nosey-parker Tina who likes a jammy dodger with her tea. Oh and Daz – Darrell – who’s an experimental theatre-maker, when he’s not being a stoner ‘ripped to the tits’. There’s been a local disaster – the beanstalk has fallen – and Daz is going to make a play about it, using the local villagers.

And so we have the set-up – a play about puppets putting on a play about Jack and the Beanstalk, a story that we would view as a fairy-tale: ‘a kind of verbatim true-crime, puppet docudrama’ as Blind Summit would have it.

The puppets are beautifully made Bunraku-style rod puppets with moveable jaws, perched on portable, wheeled stools and benches. They are marvellous creations – each puppet a larger-than-life character with an array of physical tics (literally, in one case) that give them a totally credible air of real existence. The choreography is brilliant – by Carolyn Choa, widow of film director Anthony Minghella, and co-creator with him of the lauded ENO opera Madama Butterfly, for which Blind Summit created the puppetry. The stools and benches bear their puppets aloft, flying across the stage into their places for their solo speeches, flocking and deflocking into ensemble groups. The five puppeteers in head-to-toe blacks are mostly Blind Summit veterans – artistic director Mark Down isn’t amongst them, but Laura Caldow (the feet of Moses in Blind Summit’s other current touring show, The Table), Simon Scardfield (Winston in the company’s version of 1984), Fiona Clift, and Jake Waring are here. And they are joined by Samuel Dutton, another highly experienced puppeteer. So there is skill aplenty in the production, which is a visual delight.

Mark Down’s writing is witty and edgy, but as is sometimes the case with Blind Summit, they have trouble sustaining a full-length show. There just isn’t enough to the story. Once we’ve got that this is a a modern fable about greed, acquisition and financial gain, based on a retelling of the classic British fairytale; and once we have met and heard from all the delightful characters, then that’s it. Where’s the drama, is the question. There’s a beginning, a fizzling out middle, and nothing in the way of an ending. It feels more like a comic sketch than a play, and would have made a fantastic 15 or 20 minutes, but there just isn’t enough in the way of an exploration of ideas or unfolding story to sustain it for an hour. By the half-way mark I feel I’ve got it, and long for something to shake things up.

Victoria Melody has been many things: pigeon fancier, Northern Soul dancer, championship dog handler (with her trusty friend Major Tom, subject of her last show). That show weaved together stories of the dog’s bid to win competitions with her own attempts at the beauty queen business – come on down Mrs Brighton! Part of her transformation into a beauty queen saw our Vic augmenting her barnet with hair extensions, transforming her into a luscious-locked blonde. The hair is real human hair, and it is glued on. Yes, human hair glued on to other human hair. At some point it occurred to her to ask: where did my hair come from?

So here we are: another show is born. This one has a set comprising a hairdresser’s chair – and the world’s only battery-operated hairdryer – a screen at the back of the stage, and to each side plinths with mirrors in front and a monitor on top of each. There are, of course, wigs involved. Lost of wigs. Short and dark. Long and blonde. Natural looking, and highly artificial. Marie Antoinette type artificial.

On her hairdresser’s trolley, Victoria has three ‘tails’ of hair which she’d used in her previous show. ‘Do you know whose hair this is?’ she asks. This becomes a repeated mantra throughout the show. Cue song: The Who – Who Are You?

In her search to find out, she goes to Kings College London where she meets a scientist who will help her with her quest. It turns out that one tail is from India. One is from Russia. And one is of unknown origin. It might even be pony – a real pony tail!

So off she goes to India where she meets Nerika, who has been trying to get herself to Tiramala temple to get ‘tonsured’ – to have her head shaved as an act of religious observance, sacrifice, and purification. The extremely personable Nerika becomes a key player in the show, appearing on screen, on the monitor stage-right, throughout, as we follow her decision-making process. On the screen stage-left is another key-player, Beverly, who is Victoria’s cousin.We similarly get to hear about her life and decisions around her hair: Beverly is a single mother who believes in not letting yourself go when you have kids, making regular trips to beauty parlours, and to the hairdressers for extensions. Pairing these two is perfect. And as is the case in all of Victoria Melody’s highly anthropological theatre pieces, her subjects are observed with loving neutrality. No judgement is passed on anyone’s choices.

She also travels to Russia and meets a hair dealer – Russian ‘virgin’ hair is the most desired in the world. No, it doesn’t mean the hair of virgins – it’s that the long fair hair doesn’t need bleaching, making it highly desirable. On the screen at the back of the stage, we watch as dealer Russlan negotiates with women carrying their dead mother’s hair in carrier bags, or with women who have grown and cut and sold their hair four or five or more times.

Hair Peace feels like the sequel it is to Major Tom – and if, at the moment, it doesn’t feel quite as strong a work, that is probably down to the newness of the material rather than the content, which is equally engaging. Or maybe it’s just that there’s no dog live on stage – what can follow that? The structure of the show follows a similar pattern – her anthropological research transposed into a mix of cheery, confessional performance and film – and the core subject matter is similarly to do with female image and the beauty business.

It is not Victoria Melody’s style to be ardently polemical. Yet her work manages to unite the personal and the political in a seamless way, never losing track of the need to entertain when on a stage. The whole business of the significance of a woman’s crowning glory is investigated with wit and humour. Why are we so obsessed with hair?

And there are questions aplenty here about the hair extensions and wigs business. Do Indian temple-goers know that their hair is going to be sold to the West at vast profit? Do we care if women in Russia get £15 for hair that will cost ten times that amount in a swish hairdressing salon? Is it right that human hair is brought into the UK not as a body part but as an accessory?

An hour in Victoria Melody’s company is always thought-provoking and entertaining in equal measure. She has a way about her that invites the confiding of confidences from collaborators, and the conveying of information gleaned with both charm and confidence. There’s no fourth wall, and her relationship with the audience is engaged and respectful, with moments of audience interaction handled with aplomb. A delightful show!

A chair, a man, a white envelope: The Letter starts with the arrival of the eponymous letter, which becomes an object of play in the show’s wordless opening sequence. Jonzi D shows off his quite considerable skills as a mime and physical performer, opening the letter, and reacting with shock to its contents. He stares, he writhes, he dances with a mix of excitement and horror. He tries to throw the letter away but it follows him round the room. In despair he tries to eat it, but chokes on the paper. Or perhaps on the paper’s content.

What could it be that causes such agitation? It’s a letter from Buckingham Palace: Jonzi D, renowned hip-hop artist, theatre-maker, and creator of the legendary Breakin Convention hip-hop theatre festival at Sadler’s Wells is to be honoured in the Queen’s New Year Honours list with an MBE. To accept or to refuse? To be or to MBE? What would you do? To work it all out, Jonzi D goes back to his roots – Bow, East London – to hear what his friends and family have to say.

On one side is the argument that this is a rare honour for a black British artist; that he has a duty to accept to show that hip-hop is an artform deserving of such honours; that he needs to get down off his high horse, drop the attitude and just say ‘yes’. This is the view put forward by many of the women in his life. In a series of brilliant physical comedy character vignettes, Jonzi transforms himself into the sassy lady friend who rolls cigars on her thigh and shimmies tantalisingly round the stage, berating him for even thinking about turning it down. ‘Stop fighting the white man’ she says ‘stop playing the maverick – there’s a black family in the White House!’. Even more beguilingly is his transformation into his mate Darren’s mum, replete with shopping bags, wide-eyed stares, and fabulous old-school Jamaican accent. She has no time for Jonzi’s nonsense about turning it down, and plays her ace card: ‘Think of your dear Mum, she would have been so pride!’

The argument against comes from numerous male friends and acquaintances. And there’s a lot of them, with a lot to say. Musicians, dealers, guys in the car valeting joint – whoever, wherever – give their views, which vary from the mildly sneering to downright aggressive. ‘MBE?” says one. ‘More like VBE – Victim of the British Empire!’ citing the terrible legacy of slavery, colonisation, and abuse.

Finally, we’re at the family house for Christmas. Since the death of Jonzi’s mum, the matriarch of the family is his big sister Ruth – and he’s in awe of her, and terrified of what she’ll say. The climax of the show is the revelation of Jonzi’s decision, and the reaction of Ruth – which I won’t give away, but will just say that this final scene is played out with the same delightful humour, clever characterisation, and adept rhyming that has brought us through the story to this moment.

A surprising and charming show performed with great aplomb – surprising because who knew such consummate traditional mime skills lurked beneath the hip-hop surface; charming because Jonzi D just is – a charmer who woos his audience and has them there with him on his journey. Hip-hop might not exactly feature, but it’s there under the surface. Jonzi D’s skills as a physical performer are always paramount, merging mellifluously with the verbal storytelling. The autobiographical subject matter at first seems quite small and specific, but is widened out to become a far broader, and important, reflection on dilemmas facing many people from so-called ‘minority’ groups: to what extent are you selling out your cultural heritage when invited in to the establishment?

Three women sitting on a dimly-lit stage, each in her own space, hands busy folding and arranging. The music intensifies, and they rise, and dance. One is presented with a garland, and she twirls ecstatically, the picture of happiness on her wedding day, the two others reflecting her joy and supporting her. The pattern is established: heroine and chorus. Renowned Kathak dancer and choreographer Amina Khayyam plays Federico Garcia Lorca’s angst-ridden and desperate Yerma, whose barrenness becomes an obsession. Dancers Lucy Teed and Jane Chan (former students of Amina Khayyan and of her mentor Alpana Segouta) play everyone else: her husband, friends, sisters, village gossips.

Because the low lighting is mostly focused on Yerma in the first scenes, it takes me a few minutes to realise, with a shock, that the beautiful music I’m hearing isn’t recorded – there at the back of the stage, sitting in the gloom, are a tabla player (Debasish Mukherjee), a classical Indian singer (Lucy Rahman), and a cello player (Alastair Morgan). Keith Khan’s costume design is simple but effective – the three women are in shot-silk midnight blue dresses that shimmer subtly in the semi-darkness, their triangular-shaped skirts spreading out into the space as they spin.

So that’s our team – a host of talent. Garcia Lorca’s play is reduced alchemically to its essence. Kathak is at heart a storytelling form, so lends itself very well to the text: the poetic words of the original stageplay transpose to poetic movement. Amina Khayyam’s interpretation is engaging, her feet thundering on the ground in anger, her arms stretching out in despair, her body whirling and twirling around the stage – first in joy, then agitation and anguish, and finally in madness.

Amina Khayyam’s experience in the form shines through, and she is very much the focus, but the two supporting dancers are able in their roles, which are sometimes traditional Kathak and sometimes more inclined towards contemporary dance and physical theatre. Not that Khayyam would differentiate in any case: programme notes are firm in their assertion that Kathak is a living dance form and thus differentiation of ‘classical’ and ‘contemporary’ modes of expression. The final scenes of hair-shaking wildness, despair and insanity are an intense and accomplished demonstration of the power of movement-based theatre to tell stories.

In Kathak, as in flamenco – which in part grew from Katthak traditions brought to southern Spain by gypsy travellers – the relationship between dancers and musicians is paramount, and it is fantastic to see and hear the inter-relationships between voice, tabla, and stamping feet played out. The cello adds another element – sometimes sounding like a wailing human voice, and at other times providing the foundation for an atmospheric soundscape. Ankle bells add another element. The putting on and taking off of the bells – held on with long ribbons, rather like a boxer’s wraps, wound around the ankles – becomes an intrinsic part of the physical action. Towards the end, the pile of six bell-wraps are piled into the centre like a sacrificial offering, bodies robbed of their bells rolling around them, through the space.

The play might have originally been set in Southern Spain, but the core theme of the oppression of women, housebound and valued only for their ability to mother children, other older women employed by men to manage their oppression, is sadly very much back on the agenda in the 21st century, with the rise of religious fundamentalism. The company’s stated aim to tell ‘new and urgent stories of global importance’ is thus satisfied.

It is interesting also to reflect on the continuing artistic inter-relationship between India and Spain that this production fosters, bringing together Kathak dance with the work of one of Spain’s most renowned poet-playwrights.

An accomplished piece of dance-theatre, and an interesting reflection on the continuing struggle for women’s liberation.