This is a modest production by a young company on a very small stage, but clearly much enjoyed by the youngsters and their parents in attendance. From the repeating wordplay, to the well-timed audience interactions and the inclusion of a just-scary-enough Queen of Hearts, this concise reworking of Alice in Wonderland demonstrates throughout a keen […]

‘Host’ is one of those delicious words whose multiple meanings sit, humming, in tension with one other, creating a delicious mental paradox. Both intimate, generous even, and legion, slightly threatening, its abstract use in the project’s title leaves all possible meanings in suspension. As if what exactly the project is to become has yet to […]

Sometimes you get to watch artists hit their stride and step majestically into full expression of their ability and passion to perform for an audience. Here Search Party present something beautiful and excoriating, a show which hit me over the head and made my noggin ring like a bell. Pete Phillips and Jodie Hawkes, who […]

There have been several plays about Florence Foster Jenkins, the American heiress, eccentric and self-proclaimed opera diva, one starring Maureen Lipman. I doubt any of them match this production by Dutch company Mtg de Koude Kermis in which form is so perfectly aligned with content. On a set like a playground, with sumptuous backdrop badly […]

Slap Talk is a six-hour sparring match: a constantly changing stream of aggression and one-upmanship, quiet digs and impressive bravado. At its centre is a game; a challenge to follow the rules, to keep going, to throw these words back and forth without break, without breaking. Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse, the two artists who […]