Rosie Wood

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  • Daisy Doris May: Big Night Out

    Rating: 3 out of 5.

    This show is everything you would imagine of character comedy: one performer, three big cartoonish personas, bumping 

    music, and huge stage presence. But it is also exactly what you would expect from character comedy. A Berghain-born German party fiend, Häns Off; an Aussie wellness guru, The Divine Karen Moonstone; and best man and stag expert Steve Porter are all solid creations, but they tread familiar territory across both amateur and professional live performance circuits. From the outset, it’s clear what kind of night this will be: energetic, club-style entertainment – and it delivers exactly that.

    We’re greeted with club anthems and projected videos of Häns Off twirling around, laying down the “party rules”. It’s mesmerising, and that sense of spectacle carries through the whole show. The performance is incredibly smooth – high-energy yet controlled. What stands out most is Daisy Doris May’s agility and dance ability; the show remains highly watchable thanks to its immaculate execution. She is the life and soul of this big night out – someone who could enliven even the bleakest club. The audience are invited to dance and, notably, they’re very willing.

    The transitions are slick, with strong use of video. With vibrant colours and elastic energy, as Häns Off finally makes it into the club, Aussie wellness guru Karen tumbles out; it’s a neat overlap, and the idea that these characters coexist within the same chaotic nightlife ecosystem works well. In the next transition, set in a shop, Karen gives way to a stylish geezer buying mince, cheese, and “tit sticks” – sadly unavailable, though the cheese makes a callback cameo in Porter’s knowingly ‘cheesy’ best man’s speech. The structure flows as fluidly as Doris May herself.

    She’s also joined by her “party pouch” – her baby bump – which adds another layer to the feat. While most pregnant performers might be taking it easy, she’s hurtling around the Soho Theatre stage at full throttle on a Saturday night. She’s an absolute powerhouse, undeniably made for performance.

    The script, however, feels a little thin in terms of joke density and observational sharpness. While there is nuance – particularly in the way she plays with intonation and phrasing, most notably in Porter’s half-spoken, half-sung remixing of his own words – much of the comedy leans heavily on recognisability. And not just of real people, but of comedy characters we’ve already seen. Häns, for instance, recalls Sacha Baron Cohen’s Brüno, while Porter’s “southwest London but actually from Guildford” DJ feels pulled from a well-worn archetype. The Australian wellness guru is something I have even seen recently on the open mic circuit. There is, of course, space for new takes on established types, but what’s missing is a sharper sense of what makes these versions distinct.

    Despite this, a unique comic tension emerges between the professional command of Doris May herself and a large cast of unsuspecting audience members, plucked from the crowd to play bouncers, grooms, and stag party guests, among others. She handles them with total control, positioning them almost like props – plastic dolls arranged at will to play out her scenes. The contrast between her prowess and their awkwardness is brilliant. There’s a clear link to her online work here too, where she approaches members of the public in character.

    If you go to see this show, you’ll have a great time – it’s slick, high-energy, and confidently performed. It may not be the show you’re still talking about years down the line, but as a piece of well-executed character comedy, it absolutely delivers, even if it’s not quite pushing the form just yet.

    Written and performed by Daisy Doris May 

    Published with Everything Theatre

    Review: Daisy Doris May: Big Night Out, Soho Theatre

  • Pat Rascal: Space Gravy 

    Rating: 5 out of 5.

    Space Gravy is like one massive sketch — the ultimate sketch — with all the bizarre jokes connected by the story’s absurd internal logic, forming a narrative about trying to make YASA (Yorkshire Aeronautics and Space Administration) the first organisation to land on Mars. It’s performed by the trio Pat Rascal: Anisa Khorassani, Matt Blin and Rob Davidson. Are they characters? Are they comedians? Are they clowns? They are all exceptional performers who can definitely make us laugh.

    The show has come to Soho Theatre after an extremely successful Edinburgh Fringe run, where it was the seventh best-reviewed show of the 2025 festival — and watching it tonight, this is no surprise.

    To be perfectly honest, it would be very difficult to accurately describe the entire plot. So much happens so quickly; the story veers off into wild tangents, always on the brink of complete nonsense. After an extended scene with a Greek couple, for instance, we return to our narrator, Yorkie Yorkshire Yorkshireson Humberside-Smith, who shrugs, “yeah, it probably went something like that,” pulling us back into the main storyline. Rather than feeling like empty randomness, however, each scene complements the last, working more like a continuous setup-and-punchline structure that builds something cohesive and constantly evolving.

    The story kicks off with lip-syncing sections about Yorkshire’s performance at the 2012 Olympics — if it were its own country, it would have come 12th overall. It’s arbitrary details, like a fixation on the number twelve, that form the basis of the outlandish gags. From there, the trio are fuelled with astronomic confidence in the English county, treating Yorkshire pride like a form of extreme national patriotism, and they don’t stop until the three of them are crammed into a Yorkshire Tea–branded rocket (a cardboard box), ready to land.

    Each scene is packed with proper clowning: immaculate physical comedy and precise phrasing that keeps it funny enough to earn the absurdity. The physical jokes are almost mathematical in their precision and construction. These are jokes that clearly take a lot of thought and practice to execute, but they land with immediate, visceral impact. Simple moments — Khorassani reappearing to scare Blin and Davidson after a blackout, an unfortunate incident involving a live dog in a bag, or a well-placed Shakira impersonation — are executed with perfect comic timing.

    They also play with devices like narration, asides, and dialogue as tools for joke construction. A standout moment comes when they visit a Spanish space station to spy on its crew, armed with a giant phrasebook that translates exactly what the astronauts are saying. They create many games like these, each ripe for humour.

    The accent work is phenomenal. In keeping with the cartoonish absurdity, the voices aren’t aiming for authenticity or nuance, but instead stretch pacing and sound for comic effect. There are shades of The League of Gentlemen in the character work, slightly grotesque in their hilarity: the Greeks with their cartoonishly large bulges, the devilish American NASA astronaut Elon Husk with his sneaky schemes, and a haggard, bald Jessica Ennis — whose inexplicable coughing up of a feather is an absolutely hilarious touch. Each character is recognisable yet entirely original and exciting.

    It shouldn’t work. It really shouldn’t. And yet, somehow, it absolutely does. Once the insanity is set in motion, it just keeps building into something funnier and funnier. It’s sharp, punchy madness that you surrender to completely.

    Published with The Reviews Hub

    Pat Rascal: Space Gravy – Soho Theatre, London

  • Vittorio Angelone: you can’t Say Nothing any more 

    Rating: 5 out of 5.

    This is one of those shows that you feel glad to have seen. A complete, precisely structured, incessantly funny 70 minutes of stand-up. What seems to begin as any other stand-up show — with funny childhood stories and tales of recent TV appearances — flows into a hyper-dense script that explores what it’s like to be an entertainer today in a climate of hyper-surveillance, cancel culture, and the idea that having an audience means having a “platform” that ought to be used to advocate for causes.

    The hour-long show is a staple of the stand-up genre, but it’s so hard to make the most of. Funny anecdotes and tight one-liners can sustain things for a while, but soon become wearing without a solid structural backbone to carry us through.  Vittorio Angelone has had plenty of clipable viral moments on TikTok and Instagram — he can clearly play the short-form algorithm game remarkably well —but here he’s created a layered masterpiece that builds as it progresses.

    He breaks down the two directions we’re so often pulled towards: either earnestness, virtue signalling, and slightly desperate attempts to appear politically informed and righteous, or provocation for its own sake, kicking against that same impulse. He takes jabs at Ricky Gervais and Nish Kumar equally, joking that different sections of the audience cheer for different sides. What’s impressive is that he manages to be critical of both without ever seeming preachy himself. By this point, he’s already won us over with quick-fire punchlines and a personable, slightly mischievous presence—you really believe that he’s just someone who wants to make us laugh, and, as he sees it, make art.

    His thoughts on these wider themes hinge on his own predicament of being from Northern Ireland, but being born in 1996, two years after the end of the Troubles — though, as he jokes, for those two years he was involved. Many of his cultural references are connected to a tragedy that he can’t quite claim to have experienced, yet can’t fully separate himself from. A recurring bit (of which there are many) centres on the phrase “up the RA!”, which Angelone confesses he often uses simply to mean “woohoo.” There are many instances of people using phrases based on loaded topics so often and so frivolously that they lose their weight. He talks about “free Palestine,” which many performers use today to get whoops and cheers. He manages to walk this ethical tightrope with real skill, raiding it for laughs.

    Angelone owns the stage, making the vast Eventim Apollo feel like his own. He’s relaxed enough to shift from sitting on a large red chair to leaning into the mic stand, to delivering more animated sequences centre stage. There are also some brilliant theatrical touches, including moments where a harsh spotlight snaps on for faux disclaimers—often around mentions of Gerry Adams—neatly sending up both media outrage and the pressure to self-censor.

    He gives a lot of attention to what people think of him, particularly journalists, taking things he’s said out of context. At one point, he calls one out by name, after an audience member twists his words to make him seem homophobic — but he gets his own back by being just as selectively devious with theirs. He always seems one step ahead of potential criticism, aware of his own cleverness and even teasing the audience for possibly resisting it.

    There’s a cheekily catty, competitive streak running through the whole show; at times, he seems like an angry child who just wants to be recognised and to win. It feels familiar, too: that underlying desire for praise and attention in an increasingly complicated world.

    Written & Performed by: Vittorio Angelone

    Published with The Reviews Hub

    Vittorio Angelone: you can’t Say Nothing any more – Eventim Apollo, London

  • Phoenix Rising: Bar Staff Takeover Cabaret

    Rating: 3 out of 5.

    You couldn’t get more cabaret than a cabaret made up of performers who usually work behind a cabaret bar. Performers working behind bars and trying to break into the arts is a tradition. Singers, drag queens, and actors: The Phoenix Arts Club has an eclectic mix of staff. Having seen other shows here, the bar staff always seem as enthusiastic about what’s on stage as the paying audience; they must be itching to get up there themselves, and tonight we get to see what they’ve got.

    Dan Fishlock hosts the first half with easy charisma, holding the room together with bumper music playing underneath as he swiftly introduces each act. Rather than giving each performer a long set, the show moves quickly, with acts on and off stage after a single number. It keeps the evening varied and engaging.

    First up is Jade, delivering emotional vocals with a country song against a projected video of a moving road — as though we are driving along while she stands on the dashboard. The effect is mesmerising, and the screen is used effectively throughout the night.

    At times, some of the vocals veer slightly off, but the relaxed cabaret style allows for this. Each act brings a new energy, and the rough-around-the-edges quality adds to the fun rather than detracting from it. A particularly funny moment comes when MISSFACE ends her performance by announcing she hopes we enjoy it so much we don’t notice she isn’t wearing heels: chunky shoes that make it look like she’s just come back from a woodland hike.

    Tricia Wey keeps us on our toes, surprising us again and again with something weird and wonderful. She begins with a song accompanied by Fishlock on guitar, before suddenly breaking into a Yorkshire (ish) accent for a comic monologue about splitting the bill after an expensive meal. In the second half, her inner Miss Hannigan comes striding out for Annie’s“Little Girls,” which is a clear highlight — exactly the kind of unexpected camp fun you want from a cabaret night.

    The drag acts span a range of styles. Donafella is beautiful and captivating, leaning into old Hollywood glamour with slow, elegant lip-syncing. During a rendition of Where’s My Husband, she breaks from her perfect poise to cry out, “Where is he?” — the sudden unravelling of that impenetrable glamour is both desperate and brilliant. MISSFACE, who hosts the second half, brings a clubbier energy, performing an original song — I Don’t Know God, He Doesn’t Know Me — against chaotic projected visuals. It is a little clumsy in execution, but fuelled by undeniable charisma. Later comes DELUNA, MISSFACE’s drag daughter. There is a clear family resemblance, but DELUNA adds a burst of youthful, manic energy, throwing herself into aggressive cartwheels and really getting the crowd going.

    As Elisabeth Ellingsen herself puts it, she brings a jazzier tone to the evening, dripping in black sequins. In the second half, she performs The Man That Got Away alongside projected messages she has received from men on Hinge — bizarre and genuinely disconcerting in equal measure. It is a very of-the-moment concept; not particularly original, but undeniably funny. She is also the strongest vocalist of the night; her smooth voice never falters.

    We also hear from event organiser Jeneevah, who performs one number with a pianist and another in front of the now-familiar screen, bringing a welcome moment of sincerity and emotion to the evening.

    Part of the thrill of the arts is never knowing where the next talent will come from — the fantasy that the person shaking your cocktails could be the next Lady Gaga, or just another hopeful. This night leans fully into that idea. Maybe Gaga isn’t among us tonight, but there are plenty of performers here who feel far better suited to the stage than behind the bar.  

    Produced by: Josilyn “Jeneevah” Campbell

    Published with The Reviews Hub

    Phoenix Rising: Bar Staff Takeover Cabaret – Phoenix Arts Club, London

  • Measure For Measure & Julius Caesar – Dirty Politics Double Bill

    Rating: 2 out of 5.

    Politics, manipulation and deceit: these are the themes that connect the two plays — the tragedy Julius Caesar and the comedy Measure for Measure — that the Shake-Scene Shakespeare theatre company have paired together in this split bill. The real defining feature of the evening, however, is the company’s cue-scripted performance.

    Cue scripting is a historical performance method in which actors receive scripts containing only their own lines and the cues that precede them. There are no rehearsals beyond a quick run-through of entrances, exits and, in this case, the violent scenes. A Cue Holder (Lizzie Conrad Hughes) sits to the side with a full script, ready to prompt actors if they lose their place; and today they do, frequently.

    The technique attempts to recreate the conditions of Shakespeare’s theatre. In Elizabethan playhouses, there were no directors, and companies might perform a different play every day. Actors would not necessarily know the full text of the play, partly to prevent scripts being sold to rival playhouses and partly to minimise the need for expensive printed copies.

    Hughes opens the evening with a pre-show monologue in iambic pentameter, telling us that “our floor is a casino.” Yet the gamble is not quite the thrilling theatrical risk the metaphor suggests. Instead, it often feels as though we are gambling simply on whether the company will make it to the end of the play. Shake-Scene places this very difficult and technical task in the hands of performers who appear either amateur or unfamiliar with the technique. The dominant feeling is awkwardness, as actors hesitate over their lines and seem to hold their breath in case they interrupt someone else. Rather than encouraging deeper embodiment of character, there appears to be little room for characterisation at all; most of the actors’ energy is directed toward simply getting the lines out.

    The absence of blocking adds to the sense of clunkiness. At times, actors move abruptly or uncertainly, such as during the scene in which Brutus is visited by Caesar’s ghost, where performers circle the stage in a slightly haphazard pattern. In larger group scenes, characters often appear to stand around awkwardly, arranged in ways that feel unnatural.

    The production is openly self-deprecating, frequently acknowledging and even leaning into its rough edges. At the end of the first half of Julius Caesar, Hughes remarks, “And that’s what Shakespeare looks like when you don’t rehearse it,” before clarifying, “So Caesar has just died, if you didn’t get that.” These moments are genuinely funny, but they also reinforce the sense that what we are watching is closer to a workshop demonstration than a fully realised performance.

    The format fares better in the second section with Measure for Measure. Comedy proves more forgiving of hesitation and mistakes: one line mishap becomes an accidental Freudian slip from the otherwise earnest Isabella (Halli Pattinson), which only adds to the chaos. The rhythms of comic dialogue also seem easier for actors to navigate, and the inevitable stumbles can be folded into the comic timing.

    Still, there is something genuinely appealing about the spirit of the company. Shake-Scene Shakespeare runs workshops and training sessions for actors who want to get into Shakespeare, and the atmosphere on stage suggests an inclusive and supportive community. As an educational exercise or participatory exploration of historical theatre practice, the project has clear value. Whether it translates into a satisfying experience for a paying audience, however, is another matter.

    Written by William Shakespeare
    Produced by Shake-Scene Shakespeare

    Published with Everything Theatre

    Review: Measure For Measure & Julius Caesar – Dirty Politics Double Bill, Golden Goose Theatre

  • Shenoah Allen: Bloodlust Summertime

    Rating: 3 out of 5.

    American actor and comedian Shenoah Allen takes us to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for an hour of stand-up about his upbringing that plays out like a warped cartoon memoir. He performs it accordingly: an array of wacky voices, rubber-limbed physicality, and a face that seems capable of rearranging itself at will. His spirit appears equally malleable, surviving stories of witnessing murders, staring into the barrel of a gun, and growing up in a family that would buy LSD in bulk. Yet beneath the elastic performer is a human being carrying what he calls an “unnamed dread”, framing the show as a kind of pseudo-therapy session — a bold move, given how heavily this confessional approach to stand-up has been criticised of late. When you hear the wild stories, however, you cannot accuse him of self-indulgence.

    Fragmentation dominates the experience of watching this show. Allen begins with a string of false claims. He arrives speaking in a Latino accent as the owner of a shop called “Masks y Más” (Masks and More), but he is not Latino. He slips into a voice with a camp lilt, but he is not gay. He tries on a Cockney accent, but he is certainly not from London. One by one, these personas are discarded. Only after shedding these layers of character does he finally appear as himself.

    Yet when he does, the fragmentation remains. He drifts from story to story, touching on so many complex themes that it becomes difficult to keep track. Rather than being guided through his life in a way that fosters connection, we feel as though we are only scratching at the surface of each experience before moving on to the next.

    For all his acting competency, Allen is actually quite shaky in this performance; his tone carries a note of anxiety, and you find yourself anxious for him as he staggers towards his punchlines. A firmer sense of control would strengthen the comedic element considerably. The raw material of his life offers rich comic potential, but the execution is equally rough, making it difficult to mine that gold fully.

    This is not fast-paced, punchy stand-up but slower, more reflective storytelling, so a more assured tone — even simply to frame the tales — would allow us to relax and listen. He adds texture with audio clips: recordings of his father, the hum of cicadas, the sound of his father’s feet crossing the driveway. These details are evocative, yet they are not seamlessly integrated into the comedy. They jar slightly, drawing attention to the broader issues of flow. At times, it becomes difficult to concentrate.

    What Allen brings to life most vividly is Albuquerque itself. You can almost see the warm tones of the landscape and feel the heat radiating from the desert, even while sitting in a black box on a cold, rainy day in Soho.

    Leaving the theatre, we have heard a great deal about his life, yet giving his dread a name still feels a million miles away. A single word could not capture such a scattered narrative. It is as though he has not yet processed these experiences enough to shape them into something as technical and controlled as narrative stand-up. The heart is there, but the craft is missing.

    Written by: Shenoa Allen 
    Directed by: Kim Noble

    Published with Everything Theatre

    Review: Shenoah Allen: Bloodlust Summertime, Soho Theatre

  • Creepy Boys: SLUGS

    Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

    Two “Creepy Boys” shuffle onto the stage in sleeping bags as gastropods with vagina mouths. They regurgitate and eat a spoonful of beans, sing a song about Donald Duck and his lack of trousers, strip to reveal duck-like underwear with a strategically cut hole, offer the audience sweets, and eventually unleash a pantomime horse that shoots us in the face. Rate this experience out of five. It feels like a mad request.

    Beneath the mania, however, lies an Edinburgh Comedy Award–nominated piece of abstract performance art about a desire for nothing: innocence, physical substance without connotation — the thought equivalent of slugs. The opening song announces this mission plainly: the show is about nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. But achieving nothingness is harder than it looks, and the struggle to do so fuels this wild ride.

    Through an anxiety-fuelled stream of puppet shows, songs, sketches, and even a conversation with a paper Joni Mitchell, the Creepy Boys repeatedly demonstrate that everything is connected to something — and not just something neutral, but something politically or socially charged. A slideshow contrasts an egg (nothing) with a battery hen (something), and a person dressed as a ghost (nothing) with the same image altered by the addition of a pointed white hat (something). Even arbitrary physical movements performed by S.E. Grummet are instinctively ranked by the audience as more or less “something.”

    Grummet’s trans identity becomes a particularly pointed example of this “something-ification.” They cannot simply sing a song without it becoming a “trans song.” In one moment, the duo is prancing with their trousers off; in the next, erupting into despair at the impossibility of being neutral. If they are not the same as each other, then their bodies carry meaning, implication, and politics. Nothingness becomes unreachable.

    The visual elements of the show really elevate it. There’s a handmade aesthetic that is fun and, ironically, quite sweet. A projection of a miniature paper set, manipulated by either one of the Creepy Boys while the other acts in the scene, has real charm. It’s detailed and nicely crafted — the antithesis of AI-generated, soulless fodder.

    That said, some stylistic choices feel slightly dated: colourful geometric shapes and those specific cargo trousers they wear hark back to 2021, and sticking googly eyes on everything — including the genitals — is slightly reminiscent of a 90s art school project. At times, the humour veers into mild cringe — calling guns “pew-pews,” a childishness of tone creeping in occasionally, and a tad too much screaming. Alongside some of the wildness on stage, it may lose some people. The show is always intelligent and forceful, but occasionally its appeal thins. It could do with a facelift for 2026.

    One of the final scenes lands particularly well. Beginning with comic timing and exaggerated sincerity, they pivot to gun violence in America. The audience teeters between laughter and a sudden “oh God, I should not be laughing” feeling. That is the central danger the show exposes: innocent fun can become a profound difficulty at the drop of a pair of cargos.

    Perhaps the purest “nothing” in the piece is what the performers gain from it. By their own admission, this is hardly a transferable skill. It will not make them cash-rich or bring them fame. Are they even doing anything to change the world? The show ends with a video of the pair burrowed underground together, hopeless, before releasing the gun-toting pantomime horse.

    It’s definitely impactful, and the audience response feels divided — some fully immersed, others visibly unsure. Outside performance-art circles, its appeal will inevitably be limited. But SLUGS commits fiercely to its premise, is completely cohesive, and achieves what it sets out to do. Whether you admire it or recoil from it, it doesn’t beat around the bush. They don’t ask for stars; they ask for opinion, and they are thorough in putting their point across.

    Writers: S.E. Grummett and Sam Kruger

    Published with The Reviews Hub

    Creepy Boys: SLUGS – Soho Theatre, London

  • Josh Sharp: ta-da!

    Rating: 5 out of 5.

    More people than they would like to admit feel a flicker of excitement at the word PowerPoint. Few elements of office life have been resurrected for entertainment purposes so enthusiastically: fringe shows, TikTok trends, even full-blown PowerPoint parties. With ta-da! Josh Sharp makes the most of this format while stripping it to its bare bones — mostly blank white slides with black letters, which are often beautifully arranged as minimalist images that give the illusion of detail. There are 2,000 of them over seventy-five minutes.

    According to Sharp, this is theater theatre, not just stand-up, which he calls “bullshit” — especially considering the extra effort involved: he has chained himself to 2,000 cues. But bullshit feels like a deliberately harsh way of simply describing illusion. His jokes work like mathematical formulas or magic tricks, twisting spelling, punctuation and capitalisation — setting what’s on screen against what he says aloud. He is a master of irony and layers.

    There are so many bad pronoun jokes about at the moment, but one of the favourite moments here is an observation that as we age, our gender becomes less visible: we become less of a he or a she or a they, and more of a that. Sharp delights in the hidden implications of seemingly unassuming words, finding punchlines in their grammatical structure — a kind of verbal trickery that has you laughing at jokes built almost entirely from language itself. It’s good bullshit.

    He paces the evening expertly. Repetition forms the beating heart of the show, and live, the rhythm he creates consistently triggers laughter. He begins with punchy, word-based, quick-fire jokes, then moves into more complex narrative work surrounding his mother’s death and his own near-death experience — just as we begin to run out of energy for so much laughter. From there, he shifts again, into a more intellectual section about Schrödinger’s cat. There are also clear threads throughout. “Time <—> is a line, that’s how it works,” he says — a simple thought that is not really simple at all. We know this because he has played with it so thoroughly, fooling us again and again.

    Some of the humour here is quite blue, with a considerable focus on cum, much of it tied to his coming-out experience and his unbridled gallop into the New York gay scene after years of suppressing his sexuality in the South. Yet it is so rigorously shaped by an understanding of joke structure and language that it never feels like smut for its own sake or shock for shock’s sake.

    It’s not often you get a show that is so much fun in the moment and then so interesting to talk about afterwards, but this is that. The techno music before the show starts sets us up for a party, and then we are suddenly in philosophy, maths, grammar, science, grief, sexuality — and it is still a party. In terms of charisma, Sharp is a superstar. This especially comes through in a viral video of him watching Adele in concert with his dad: his dad belting along is endearing, but Sharp’s whooping beside him is hilarious. His energy feels boundless. He is an artist — and he is not afraid to tell us so.

    The show finishes with a trick-trick: he deliberately messes up a pick-a-card routine, and the final slides of the show turn out to be part of the deck itself. It is a strangely moving ending, one that means everything and nothing. Was the point of the show that we can read one thing and hear another? That time is a line? That Sharp is gay? Why do these shows have to end on a point at all? By refusing to pick one clear meaning, is he once again skewering the “industry-standard” expectation? It feels like another trick. It takes a sharp thinker to be so cheeky.

    Ta-da! is an instant recommendation. You leave the theatre completely satisfied: you’ve laughed, you’ve thought, you’ve felt. Sharp keeps you fully in the moment while you’re there, and thinking about it long after you’ve left.

    Written by: Josh Sharp

    Published with the Reviews Hub

    Josh Sharp: ta-da! – Soho Theatre, London

  • Krapp’s Last Tape

    Rating: 4 out of 5.

    Going to see a Samuel Beckett play, there is a certain expectation: no loud costumes, wild plots, or pelting gags. Audiences strap in, sharpen their senses, and prepare to notice every small detail and stylistic choice. This one-off production of Krapp’s Last Tape at Stanley Arts Centre, followed by a short Q&A with David Westhead, who plays Krapp, and director Stockard Channing, is classically Beckettian: brief, unceremonious, and reveling in simple foolishness.

    The Stanley Arts hall is vast: high ceiling, with rows of chairs surrounding a very small, cluttered stage. At its centre sits a table for Krapp, strewn with unravelled spools of tape. There is a particular tension in a room that is both so quiet and so full — so many people and objects poised to disturb the stillness. I wanted to click my pen to take notes, but even that might have drawn attention.

    Despite the scale of the auditorium, actor Westhead has an uncanny ability to make it feel as though he is entirely alone. Surrounded by silent faces, he never acknowledges others overtly, yet remains fully expressive. With his mouth slightly open and chin raised, he averts his gaze from the tape as he listens, as though the younger voice were emerging from his own mind rather than a machine. He follows Beckett’s stage directions with almost computer-like precision.

    It is striking to watch a performance governed by such tightly coded instructions in the age of AI, and stranger still how human and natural it feels — a humanity encoded by a man writing sixty-eight years ago. This is a testament to Westhead’s skill as an actor, making memorised movements appear instinctive. During the Q&A, an audience member asks how he makes the character feel so authentic. He responds that the experiences described in the play — parental loss, the loss of love — are things most people encounter at some point. Beneath the rigidity of Beckett’s form lie emotions the actor cannot help but infuse with humanity.

    Replication and repetition are, of course, central to the play. The tape is replayed; memories are replayed. Some moments Krapp chooses to skip, others he returns to. Each memory is recontextualised by how long he allows himself to sit with it, or avoid it altogether. Where he is most enthusiastic in youth, he is most dismissive in old age. The embarrassment of hearing his past overzealous happiness is consistently funny. His indulgence in memories of a lost lover is equally amusing.

    There is a concerted effort to keep the production brief. Within Beckett’s stage directions, Channing has chosen not to stretch the timeline. Where some productions of Krapp’s Last Tape run over an hour, this one comes in at just under forty-three minutes — a remarkably precise figure. In the post-show Q&A, Westhead treats Beckett’s esteemed text with humorous lightness rather than reverence, joking that he hoped no one had spent more than twenty pounds to see it — they hadn’t. Though clearly enamoured with the production, he still calls it “a bit of tut”: a very Beckettian attitude. There is no grandiosity here, only careful attention to detail.

    Before asking their questions, a couple of audience members mention being local, expressing a delighted bemusement at having come to South East London for this one-off performance. Westhead responds by listing a handful of other, equally unexpected and understated locations the production will visit next. Despite Beckett’s status as a revered literary figure, this production maintains his desire for humility.

    Directed by Stockard Channing

    Published with Everything Theatre

    Review: Krapp’s Last Tape, Stanley Arts Centre

  • The League of Improv

    Rating: 4 out of 5.

    The League of Improv returns for another monthly show, part of an ongoing series in which a guest stand-up comedian — on this occasion Morgan Rees — effectively emcees the night. Rees chats to audience members, extracting information and jokes, which the improvisers then use as the basis for a series of short improvised sketches. It is a fun night that involves everyone.

    The Phoenix Arts Club provides the perfect casual setting: a long room with tables and sofas stretching all the way back, where people can get up to go to the bar, drift in and out, and where even the bar staff are watching and laughing.

    On this night in particular, everything seemed to fall into place for the League. Rees is excellent in his role: his charm is the glue that holds the night together. He is able to get something amusing even from those who make it very clear they don’t want to be talked to, and this always feels cheeky rather than mean.

    Tonight’s audience also plays a huge part in the success of the evening. The classic crowd-work question “What do you do for a living?” is enough to make a regular stand-up-goer mentally switch off, but here it produces some juicy answers. There’s a man who works in an all-male sex club, a manager on a construction site, and — if you’re collecting evil jobs — someone from Thames Water! Another even announces that he “makes vapes for teenagers”; he doesn’t vape himself.

    Rees even speaks to my plus one. When asked what she does, she explains that she’s a print designer for women’s fashion. When he asks whether we’d know her work, she replies, “well… if you know, you’d know.” Rees amusingly takes offence at the implication that he wouldn’t, and from there the phrase takes on a life of its own. It generates a huge laugh when repeated by one of the improvisers in a sketch about trying to trademark “puma print” — so just black — and becomes an unofficial slogan for the evening, resurfacing when two other audience members repeat it under Rees’s questioning.

    This speaks to how funny the audience members themselves are, and how much they help to propel the night forward. The building-site manager provides a strong callback to an earlier sketch about HR telling a couple they couldn’t kiss at their own wedding, by explaining that he does allow people to kiss at his place of work. This sparks a very funny scene about a man being hopelessly misled by his HR manager about who he is and isn’t allowed to kiss at work.

    Using real audience stories as the foundation for the scenes is a smart choice. It means the show never asks you to suspend your disbelief too much: even when things get wacky, they remain anchored to something real that happened in the room.

    All the improvisers in the group are skilled, some particularly so. The improvised scenes rarely drag, and even when a scene becomes a little lost or confused, the performers embrace and acknowledge the chaos. However, improv is by nature hit and miss, and while some of the strongest material arrives later in the evening, the show does feel a little long at two hours including an interval. They just about pull it off, though, ending on a high with a sketch built around a manager and employee in the audience who are both named David, resulting in a workplace where everyone is called David. It is a neat way to close the evening, allowing for a wealth of callbacks to moments from throughout the show.

    Devised by The League of Improv

    Published with Everything Theatre

    Review: The League of Improv, Phoenix Arts Centre