Rosie Wood

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  • Thou Shalt Sit The F*** Down

    Rating: 3 out of 5.

    Few jobs require quite so much forced enthusiasm as entertaining children. Ben Everett Riley’s solo show explores what happens when the smile starts to crack. He plays Will, a veteran children’s entertainer balancing the gruelling party circuit with the emotional turbulence of life as a gay performer. The story unfolds across a series of increasingly chaotic birthday parties, loosely structured around Will’s self-written commandments for surviving the job – his own ‘thou shalts’. Binding it all together is his relationship with new recruit Fionn (pronounced Finn – RADA apparently thought the extra ‘o’ would make him more bookable): handsome, privileged and quietly dismissive of Will’s career, seeing children’s entertainment as the preserve of the failed actor.

    This is where the show is at its strongest. The dynamic between the struggling performance veteran and the ambitious newcomer offers a compelling route into the familiar theatrical territory of competition and snobbery. Solo shows built around the refrain of “I’m a failed actor, get over it” have almost become a genre in themselves, but the contrast between Will’s fading optimism and Fionn’s confidence hints at something more interesting: the search for purpose and joy in work, even when it falls short of your ambitions.

    Riley’s performance is one of the show’s strengths. He delivers the piece with a spoken-word rhythm, slipping between narration and character with confidence. The problem is that the comedy surrounding him rarely reaches the same level. Recordings of Will’s Scottish boss Karin lean into broad, almost cartoonish expression rather than naturalism, but the show never fully commits to this heightened world. Will is tightly wound and constantly anticipating disaster, yet his anxieties rarely generate the comic chaos the premise seems to promise.

    The show also occupies an uneasy space between children’s entertainment and sexual humour. Hate wanks, a groping Australian parent and skin-tight Lycra costumes that split in unfortunate places all sit very close to stories about entertaining children. The opening plays with this ambiguity, teasing what appears to be a risqué performance before revealing a superhero costume for a kids’ party. The joke lands, if somewhat predictable, but the comparison between performing for children and sexual spectacle is maybe too dark to remain tongue-in-cheek.

    Structurally, the play feels episodic, taking too long to reveal its central dramatic question and lingering heavily on scenes of sexual humour. It is only towards the end that the most compelling idea emerges: an older performer clinging to hope while grinding through difficult audiences, set against the naive certainty of someone just starting out. Had this conflict been introduced earlier and developed throughout, the show would have gained both narrative momentum and emotional weight.

    You leave entertained rather than moved. Riley is an accomplished performer with undeniable stage presence; the material simply needs a stronger comic engine and dramatic spine to match it. The characters, themes and narrative never quite deepen enough to leave a lasting impression. For a show about keeping the magic alive, it struggles to create enough of its own.

    Written by Ben Everett Riley
    Produced by Be Wry Productions

    Published with Everything Theatre

    Review: Thou Shalt Sit The F*** Down, The Queer Comedy Club
    Review: Thou Shalt Sit The F*** Down, The Queer Comedy Club

  • James Phelan: Showman

    Rating: 4 out of 5.

    ‘The magic will work, but you must concentrate!’ is the slightly barbed energy that dominates James Phelan‘s spectacle of astounding psychological manipulation and mind-reading.

    With a finger pressed to an audience member’s forehead, he summons information directly into their mind – names, unspoken secrets, knowledge of sentimental objects from other members of the crowd. It is one of the most ambitious feats of hypnotism conceivable, built on a delicate atmosphere of trust, engagement and imagination.

    Phelan builds his world gradually, starting with a series of warm-up tricks that draw us into his logic. A card trick is framed around probability and influence, as he distracts us with mundane conversation before correctly naming the selected card. He then moves into exercises designed to engage the imagination: a magnet-like force pulling fingers together, one arm weighed down by an invisible box while the other is lifted by a balloon. From there, he escalates to his thought-summoning pièce de résistance, which begins by securing a volunteer’s feet to the floor with a few gestures and words.

    Alas, the imaginary quicksand does not take hold. The trick works only if the audience member fully commits to the illusion. We need to cooperate. 

    The interesting thing is how Phelan’s onstage persona copes with this. He begins to take on the voice of a strict teacher: if audience members don’t follow instructions, it’s our time they’re wasting. This is blended with a kind of comic cattiness, an air of‘You’d better not mess up my trick’. Traditionally, magicians project a relaxed omniscience. Phelan lets us see the desperate vulnerability underneath.

    This is slightly at odds with the much softer, more Disney-like vision of wonder that also runs through the show. He repurposes a Roald Dahl quote: “Those who believe in magic will find it,” and talks about his childhood dream of being a magician – as the nephew of Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee, it is in his blood. There’s a genuinely heartwarming moment where he asks a young boy named Logan what he wants to be when he grows up, then produces a coin engraved with the words “Logan Future Fighter Pilot.”

    The rickety moments also clash with the impenetrable fantasy world created by the show’s production design. As we enter, classic jazz standards such as ‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off’ play over slowed-down black-and-white projections of traditional TV entertainers. Like Phelan’s mental tricks, it encourages us to melt into another world, to let go of the nagging details of reality and believe in something more magical – but the nagging details persist.

    Nevertheless, the tricks themselves are undoubtedly incredible. The audience never tires of the mind-reading routines. In fact, they only become more compelling. You’re on the edge of your seat wondering: are they going to say my name? You hope they do.

    By the end, Phelan remarks that it has been “an eventful show”. This might be part of an extraneous comic schtick. Or maybe, on this occasion, Phelan really does lose his cool as reality threatens to topple the magical realm.

    Created by James Phelan

    Published with Everything Theatre

    Review: James Phelan: Showman, Underbelly Boulevard

  • Zoe Wohlfeld: Dog Funeral

    Rating: 3 out of 5.

    The title of Zoe Wohlfeld’s Dog Funeral promises exactly the kind of sweetly sinister paradox that the show delivers. It is a clown show about grief, an hour-long act of comic mourning that constantly balances the adorable against the disturbing.

    The story begins with a slideshow charting the life of Twinkle, Wohlfeld’s beloved dog. The illustrations are so sweet and lovingly rendered that they become faintly ominous. We know where this story is heading. After an act of fatal negligence involving a new boyfriend, Twinkle dies, and Wohlfeld emerges as a professional mourner of sorts, determined to process her loss in front of an audience of strangers.

    Her central character is a striking creation. With smeared make-up, gaping expressions and a childlike voice, she resembles a burnt Baby Jane or a Corpse Bride without the maggots, wandering the stage while she cries, mourns and seeks our attention. Her creepiness extends beyond the ghostly and gothic. Instead, it emerges from the childlike neediness that grief can provoke, reducing adults to creatures desperate for comfort, reassurance and affection.

    Here, loss strips away dignity. It makes us want to be noticed, soothed and loved. Wohlfeld’s clown captures this impulse perfectly. She cries, sulks, flirts and manipulates with the emotional logic of a child. The result is both funny and unsettling.

    This tension defines the show’s strongest — or worst — material. One audience member is recruited into a bizarre flirtation conducted partly through Wohlfeld’s backside. Another is sent on a mission to procure a “Pinot Gri-gee-o”. The humour comes from the absurdity of the requests, but also from the audience’s growing complicity in this strange and faintly disturbing spectacle. We laugh while simultaneously wondering whether we should be laughing at all.

    That discomfort will not be to everyone’s taste. Some may find the character’s babyish flirtatiousness grating, while others may find it genuinely unnerving. Yet the show commits so fully to its logic that resistance becomes part of the experience. Wohlfeld never winks at the audience or retreats into irony. She trusts the character completely.

    Whatever one’s feelings about these routines, there is no denying the strength of the show’s comic construction. In one sequence, audience members are instructed to repeat words fed to them by Wohlfeld, while another unfortunate punter is assigned a particularly suggestive sound. Once the pattern has been established, Wohlfeld casually inserts the phrase “my dog just died” before inviting the responses again. The laugh comes from anticipation, disbelief and the audience’s horrified recognition of what they are about to do. It is a simple mechanism executed with remarkable precision.

    That precision extends to Wohlfeld’s performance throughout. Her facial expressions are extraordinary. With mascara bleeding beneath her eyes and a mouth capable of stretching into cartoonishly tragic shapes, she creates an image that is at once ridiculous and strangely affecting. It is the kind of character that can carry an entire hour, and Wohlfeld commits to it without hesitation. Like grief itself, Dog Funeral is messy, needy and occasionally uncomfortable. It asks the audience to sit with emotions that are rarely flattering and then find ways to laugh at them. The commitment and the craft are admirable, even if the show’s more provocative impulses will not work for everyone. Nevertheless, Wohlfeld proves herself a daring clown.

    Written by Zoe Wohlfeld and Jack Grossman 
    Directed by Jack Grossman

    Published with Everything Theatre

    Review: Zoe Wohlfeld: Dog Funeral, Soho Theatre

  • Do All The Things

    Rating: 4 out of 5.

    Most interactive comedy asks the audience to participate. London Clown Festival’s character sketch show Do All The Thingsasks them to collaborate. The show is like being invited over by your crazy aunts for an afternoon of good old-fashioned fun. 

    Amid a jam-packed hour of character sketches, Abigail Dooley and Emma Joy Edwards of A&E Comedy find time for dancing, a conga line, compliments, pranks, and audience games. The show’s organising principle is the Thingo: a bingo card on which audience members tick off moments as they occur. Rather than receiving individual cards, spectators are grouped together around shared ones, immediately transforming strangers into teammates. With unapologetic abandon, together, we get up to all the things. 

    Many of the character sketches target a particular kind of pseudo-intellectual. Science, art, and spirituality are all skewered as the performers bring familiar stereotypes to life. Their characterisations tap into the subconscious images we carry of these people, taking our vague sense of what a scientist, an artist, or a tree-hugger is and rendering it in vivid, vital detail. 

    For instance, sporting goggles, frizzy hair, and an eccentric speech pattern, the scientist character delivers a presentation explaining a series of generic stock images labelled “science”. The sketch never concerns itself with actual scientific ideas. Instead, it draws laughs from the visual and verbal clichés we instinctively associate with the subject. The humour is immediate and visceral, elevated by the duo’s gift for comic performance. Their voice work is particularly strong. A fake advert for a Swiss beauty clinic stands out as another highlight. 

    Art receives similar treatment. One sketch pokes fun at the tendency to justify bad work with grand theories about what it supposedly says about the bad world. Yet the performers never come across as cynical. Even as they mock pretension, they invite the audience to join in, culminating in a naughty art project where we are encouraged to colour, stick, and customise Dooley and Edwards to our hearts’ content. 

    That spirit of collective play is what makes the show special. The bingo cards, mini-challenges, and opportunities to interact with strangers have the feel of dinner-party icebreakers. They encourage us to conspire together, compliment one another, and discuss what on earth it is we’re watching. It is how friendships are made in the real world. 

    There is a real lightness of touch throughout. Every hint of a sincere message arrives wrapped in absurdity. A clear feminist sensibility runs through the show: there’s nothing women should do except what they want. This sentiment emerges with a healthy dose of comic irony in backstage CCTV videos that show Dooley and Edwards changing costumes between sketches. “Joy is a political act,” one tells the other – while half-dressed as a spiritual guru, half-dressed as a mad scientist, and half-naked. For all their delight in exposing pretension, Dooley and Edwards are refreshingly free of it themselves. They understand that comedy can be clever without losing sight of joy, freedom, and connection. The goal is for everyone to enjoy themselves. Everything else is a bonus: the sharp observations, memorable character work, and the free badge. If joy is a political act, Do All The Things is both kinds of party.

    Created by Abigail Dooley and Emma Joy Edwards

    Published with Everything Theatre

    Review: Do All The Things, Soho Theatre

  • Moonkid

    Rating: 4 out of 5.

    Clowns are usually brash creatures. They revel in noise, disruption and the grotesque. Usually.

    Lucy Ellis’s Moonkid brings a gentler kind of cartoon to the London Clown Festival. Her parade of characters possesses an unusual serenity: a wandering moon, a nun absorbed in prayer, a gliding would-be poet and a wilderness safety guide sweeping the darkness with his torch. This stillness forms the backdrop against which the clowning takes place.

    The sweet and seemingly pure-hearted Moonkid, who attracts as many ‘awhhs’ as laughs, begins a friendly game of noughts and crosses before gradually becoming petty and sarcastic when they lose. None of Ellis’s characters, however saintly they initially appear, are entirely above a middle finger. The praying nun begins gossiping with God; her mischief eventually descends into violent slapstick. The comedy comes from small corruptions of innocence and mischief in church rather than explosions of chaos.

    Some segments choose to end on moments of contemplation rather than laughter. When the wilderness guide ends a section with a heartfelt reflection on the endlessness of the horizon, it catches the audience off guard at first, but ultimately stands out amid the cheekiness and adds to the show’s enchanting feel.

    The show even feels rooted in older traditions of clowning. Moonkid’s fixed mask looks as though it might have been lifted from the margin of a medieval manuscript, while the recurring religious imagery lends the piece the atmosphere of a medieval Feast of Fools.

    This gentleness shapes the structure as much as the characters. Where many clown shows begin with a burst of energy before settling into reflection, Moonkid proceeds in reverse. The opening scenes, featuring Moonkid and the nun, unfold entirely through mime. When the hunter finally emerges from the darkness and speaks, it feels transgressive, as though he has broken a silence that had become the show’s natural state.

    The poet is like a mad spider, slinky and villainous; her weapon is amateur poetry. Dressed in black, she resembles a cartoon shadow with large, attention-seeking eyes, improvising from audience suggestions: a corner, failure, a potato. She has a full grasp of the character’s internal logic, and her responses, which generate jokes physically and verbally, feel effortless. It’s that comic effect where someone of apparent low status is performed with the authority of a high-status figure. This is reminiscent of the inversion of order common at medieval religious festivals, and is probably the character with the most laugh-out-loud irreverence.

    Ellis’s movement is exceptional. Physical routines are executed flawlessly; meticulous gestures and jumps are a trademark of her style. She has a sharp precision that makes it seem as though an invisible force is working against her. Her hands and feet extend into delicate points, performing ecclesiastical gestures with exacting intricacy.

    Her achievement is in making restraint feel alive and playful rather than static. Moonkid creates a softly subversive world where innocence never quite holds. Stillness is constantly and delicately unsettled, with humour emerging from small breaches of calm — petty jealousy, playful blasphemy, and flashes of mischief in otherwise serene figures. Even its quieter moments feed into this atmosphere, creating a show that feels less like a series of sketches and more like an enchanting ritual.

    Published with Everything Theatre

    Review: Moonkid, Soho Theatre

  • The P Word

    Rating: 5 out of 5.

    The P Word is like a Hollywood movie in theatre. This Olivier Award-winning romance tackles massive real world problems: the asylum system in the UK, LGBT+ persecution abroad, racism within the gay community, and internalised racism, all while pulling us through an absorbing, unlikely love story. It tells that story in the best way: making it moving rather than heavy; gripping, action-fuelled and characterful; dense without ever feeling dry.

    The romance is between Bilal (Waleed Akhtar, who also wrote the play), or Billy as he calls himself, a British-Pakistani man doing everything ‘right’ to fit in as a gay man in London, and Zafar (Esh Alladi), an asylum seeker living in temporary accommodation in Hounslow. Zafar is fighting the authorities for his life as he escapes his father in Pakistan, who has already killed his lover Haroun. Billy, on the other hand, is stuck in an unfulfilling cycle of hookups and empty socialising, until a chance encounter with Zafar at Pride. Despite being drunkenly racially attacked by Billy, Zafar responds with kindness. From there, a friendship develops into romance as Billy intervenes to prevent Zafar being unlawfully deported to Pakistan.

    What Akhtar achieves so effectively is to anchor political and systemic pressures in intimate human consequence. Billy’s problems could seem insignificant compared to Zafar’s, but they have led him to deep self-erasure that prevents him from finding genuine connection. Zafar, meanwhile, is connected to his culture and at ease with himself in a way Billy is not, despite the constant fear he lives under. He gradually disrupts the defensive identity Billy has built around himself – the “fat, brown, gay boy” he still believes he is. Although the press casts Billy as the ‘hero’ of the story, the play resists this framing: each man is the other’s salvational force, and the romance lies in their mutual completion.

    Both performances are excellent, with Alladi particularly compelling – commanding yet understated, bringing a grounded naturalism to Zafar that keeps the stakes immediate. The climactic scene on the plane lands with the force of a Hollywood set-piece, only here it unfolds in real time in front of you. Some audience members were in tears. It is always interesting to hear what people say as they leave the theatre; never before have I heard the phrase “life changing”.

    This is all the more impressive given the simplicity of the staging. Two actors inhabit a central, circular revolving platform that does much of the narrative work. At first, the characters occupy separate halves of the rotating stage, physically divided yet moving in parallel, before the design allows for a literal coming together. As tensions rise, the rotation accelerates, disorientating the characters and intensifying the drama, as though the story itself has tipped into a controlled spin.

    The final moment shifts register entirely as Zafar breaks character and turns to real-world testimony, inviting the audience to contribute. The effect is to turn the theatre inside out. The story does not end on stage, but continues outside it – in solidarity.

    Written by Waleed Akhtar
    Directed by Anthony Simpson-Pike
    Set and costume by Max Johns
    Lighting design by Elliot Griggs
    Sound design by Xana
    Composed by Niraj Chai
    Movement direction by Rachael Nanyonjo
    Dramaturgy by Deirdre O’Halloran
    Produced by Tan France and Dr Ranj Singh

    Published with Everything Theatre

    Review: The P Word, Bush Theatre

  • Zoe.exe

    Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

    Just a few years ago, a play about an AI-powered robotic girlfriend would have felt like pure science fiction. Now, with people using AI as therapists or even claiming to fall in love with ChatGPT, Zoe.exe feels much closer to social commentary. 

    Jo (Rachel Duncan) has recently broken up with her girlfriend Zoe (Rhiannon Lucy Bird), and her roommate Zack (Izaak Hamilton-New) who works at a tech company decides to recreate Zoe as an AI-powered robot girlfriend. He asks Jo to help make the robot as human as possible by sharing everything she knows about the real Zoe. Jo is understandably furious: Zoe was not a string of data, but someone who knew her so well she could instinctively understand how she felt. When the real Zoe returns, however, she reveals that Jo had treated her like a machine too — programming her to respond perfectly to every emotional need until she eventually cracked and left. The play raises unsettling questions about the emotions and imperfections AI removes, and whether those flaws are exactly what make us human.

    Jo jokingly describes the situation as a “discount Black Mirror.” Although the script lays the groundwork to remove that discount sticker, it never quite gets there. The play explores the breakdown of a friendship, but it does not dare to explore any truly twisted consequences of a computer that can convincingly feel like a person. There are a few things holding it back.

    Zoe.exe is billed as a dark comedy, but with its central debate and relationship arcs, it is essentially a drama. The comic opening makes some of the emotion feel a bit jarring. Jo does not quite seem shocked or even blown away enough by the robotic replica of her girlfriend; she is too busy making sarcastic jokes, playing passive-aggressive games of Guess Who, and complaining about her job. All of this is funny, but it muddies the reality of the world and wastes time getting to the play’s dramatic core.

    There is also just too much going on in terms of plot. So many threads are set in motion that the ending feels shoddy. There is no resolution to the argument between Jo and Zack after he delivers an incel-y speech about how technological developments are there to help lonely men like him find connection in a world where women only want a man with an “eight-pack and a trust fund.” After a fairly thorough exploration of AI, the play seems to tack on another huge contemporary debate at the end without offering any real answer or opinion. It cheapens the discussion of AI by making the play look like an attempt to squeeze as many popular “2026” topics as possible into one show. 

    This is not to say that the script isn’t rich with great dialogue, and conceptually interesting. The acting is also excellent from each cast member. Hamilton-New plays exactly the kind of naive optimist who would become entranced by technological development and dance along with it — literally — without question. Duncan, meanwhile, is skeptical of everything: moody, guarded, but wanting care and attention just as much as Zack does. Then there is Bird, who is uncanny as the AI Zoe. She is like a cross between a Barbie, a character from a Ladybird book, and a Chucky doll. As the real Zoe, however, she becomes a flustered, emotionally sensitive woman. Her ability to embody these two characters is showcased in an impressive scene where she switches between them mid-conversation, the lights flashing blue and red with each change. Having said that, none of the characters are hugely likeable. Zack is a little too wet, Jo a little too mean, and Zoe a little underdeveloped, and this somewhat caps the impact of the emotional payoff.

    Zoe.exe is not as unsettling or emotionally devastating as it could be, but its ideas are timely, its performances strong, and its central questions genuinely thought-provoking. Even when the play overreaches, it is never uninteresting.

    Written by Andrew Atha

    Directed by Jasmine McHayle

    Published with the Reviews Hub

    Peckham Fringe 2026: zoë.exe – Theatre Peckham, London

  • HOT DAWWG

    Rating: 3 out of 5.

    HOTDAWWG feels like stepping inside a low-budget arcade game that has somehow become sentient. The show turns the repetitive logic of a cooking simulator — something like Papa’s Pizzeria or Hot Doggeria — into live clown theatre, trapping its characters inside a loop of service smiles, panic and absurd labour. It is slight, strange and meticulously controlled.

    At the centre is Ines Aresti, playing a hotdog vendor with the jerky, limited movements of a video game NPC. She sways nervously behind her tray, lifting hot dogs into the air with an over-eager grin and offering them to unsuspecting audience members. The comic premise is almost aggressively simple: how many different ways can someone give away a hot dog? Yet the show commits so fully to this tiny idea that it develops its own bizarre internal logic.

    Aresti is joined by Tom Kinsella as her boss, whose presence introduces a layer of status politics into the game. He stalks around reprimanding and directing her like a cartoon supervisor, creating the sense that the entire performance runs on invisible workplace rules that nobody fully understands. At only around half an hour long, HOTDAWWG never expands much beyond this setup, but its appeal lies less in narrative development than in the precision of the clowning itself. The whole piece rests on rhythm, restraint and control.

    The sound design is crucial to creating the show’s comic-book atmosphere. Ambient stadium noise hums constantly in the background, acting almost like the blank white space of a comic strip: a neutral field against which every tiny gesture becomes exaggerated. Familiar cartoon sounds — horn honks, abrupt musical stings, distorted effects — are chopped up and redeployed to punctuate jokes. One particularly memorable moment arrives when Kinsella appears dressed as an enormous hot dog, whispering “cómeme” (“eat me”). Aresti cautiously takes a bite from one of the sausages on her tray, and he instantly collapses to the floor dead. The joke is stupid, abrupt and perfectly timed.

    The bilingual nature of the show adds another comic tension. Dialogue slips between English, Spanish and indistinct muttering, with Aresti mainly speaking Spanish while Kinsella barks instructions in English. The mismatch in language sharpens the power imbalance between them and gives their exchanges a constant sense of near-miscommunication. Much of the humour comes from watching Aresti desperately trying to follow instructions she may not entirely understand.

    As the low-status clown, Aresti is deeply endearing. Her stretched customer-service smile barely conceals mounting anxiety, and the audience quickly becomes complicit in wanting her to succeed. Our laughter and participation feel like the only things keeping her safe from managerial punishment. Kinsella, meanwhile, avoids becoming genuinely threatening. With his exaggerated growls and finger-wagging, he resembles an overbearing toy conductor more than a real authority figure.

    Still, HOTDAWWG remains closer to a performance piece than a fully developed comedy show. Its ideas arrive as a series of neat little comic sketches rather than escalating into something genuinely chaotic or surreal. Despite the poster’s promise of grotesque madness — a ketchup-smeared face emerging from darkness — the show never becomes especially wild, shocking or psychologically strange. Instead, it maintains the same gentle register throughout. That restraint is both its strength and its limitation.

    Writer and created by Ines Aresti
    Directed by Wambui Hardcastle
    Dramaturg by Tallula White
    Design by Lolly Whitney-Low
    Produced by Ines Aresti, Zarmeeneh Khan

    Published with Everything Theatre

    Review: HOTDAWWG, Theatre Peckham

  • PalesTEENian

    Rating: 3 out of 5.

    Joe Haddad is a Palestinian, Catholic stand-up comedian who grew up in South London. There could hardly be a more relevant voice at the Peckham Fringe — an arts festival that values showcasing emerging local talent and cultural diversity. After being cautious about revealing his Palestinian background to those around him for years, here he is on stage at Theatre Peckham with his one-man show, presenting us with his unique perspective through a coming-of-age story which displays his skill as an entertainer.

    This unique perspective is that of someone growing up being from, and having family in, a country where there is war and tragedy. There’s a lot of the fragmented child’s perspective: the ominous feeling of half knowing, but also having the looming feeling of a darker unknown, something beyond your comprehension as a child — why you must repeat what your parents say at the airport word for word, why you can’t put up a string of Palestinian flags.

    There is also a lot of conversation about belonging here. Haddad expresses his love for his home country, his admiration for his “cool” Palestinian cousins, alongside his affection for British identity, represented through his attachment to his Chelsea shirt.

    He is conflicted and unsure about how to present himself to the world. However, through stand-up he finds a mentor in an older Scottish-Arab comedian, who encourages him to embrace his natural exuberance and find a home on the stage. This becomes perhaps the most concrete part of his identity, and the stand-up segments are some of the most successful parts of the show. His massive energy also carries the viewing experience, and he manages to embody a large cast of characters: aunties, uncles, parents, cousins, and students from his South East London school. He dips in and out of these voices with ease, without confusing the narrative.

    Admittedly, there is a great deal of complicated experience for him to unpack, but the plot, although chronological, could be more organised. The themes and ideas are delivered somewhat haphazardly, and a clearer narrative arc guiding the audience would allow these poignant themes to land with greater force. Perhaps because there is so much to cover, it sometimes feels as though he has only scratched the surface of some of the ideas he presents.

    Haddad’s hesitancy to fully reveal himself also comes across through his tendency to rest on clichés; the characterisations, although amusing, lack nuance, which at times makes his story feel more allegorical than personal. Some more specific portraits of the people in his life, in place of explicit explanation of how they function, would make the piece feel more grounded and emotionally immediate.

    Once he has bridged this gap between feelings and how he communicates them, this show could sharpen into a deeply resonant portrait of identity in motion, balancing its comedic vitality with the emotional precision needed to fully land its most powerful truths.

    Writer: Joe Haddad

    Published with Everything Theatre

    Review: PalesTEENian, Theatre Peckham

  •  ‘Title Goes Here’ An Improv Comedy

    Rating: 3 out of 5.

    Even as improv shows go, this one is especially casual. 

    It is hosted by show creator Brad Collett in a conversational style, with him and performers Beri Kahane and Richard Delroy veiled behind a pretty non-existent fourth wall. It is essentially just a fun hour of improv games without a theme or thread. There are lots of different formats, which add enough excitement and variation to the ninety minutes to keep things fresh and light. However, with a rotating cast of performers and such a wide variety of games and scenes, the show is as nondescript as the title suggests.

    The first is the best and produces some laugh-out-loud results. It centres around a date situation, featuring a waiter, a ‘weird’ character given a quirk by the audience, and the other half of the date – who steps outside and covers their ears before coming back in to guess the quirk. The audience on review night came up with gems such as becoming aroused when there was an awkward silence, and being terrified by questions. The guessing element really raises the stakes here; it feels like a glorified game of ‘guess the name on the forehead’. The game works so well because the situation of being on a date is clear and grounded.

    They have classic games, like scenes beginning with a location and a relationship, and more unusual ones, like a Dragon’s Den–themed game where one performer brings out an object and sells it to the other two as something it does not first appear to be. I would have invested in the light-up tutu, which becomes a bridal veil, rather than the knee-rest shaped like a head. A game where the trio perform scenes based on a famous film, suggested by the audience, with a twist, again given by the audience, is a little too complicated to produce interesting results. I wouldn’t know where to begin producing a minute-long scene which crosses Barbie with Hamlet either.

    The second half is a little harder to get through. We have the titular game, Title Goes Here, where the audience provide a title for a film and they make it. On the night of the review, they were given ‘Fishing for Friendship’. The team produced a relatively confused narrative with some funny moments, mainly centred around Collett’s character, who appeared dressed like a Sainsbury’s bag in a boxy orange windbreaker and burgundy top, complete with god-like abilities. It was perhaps a misguided choice to focus so much on the ‘fishing’ element, treated very literally with mimes of fishing rods, rather than the ‘friendship’ element; the latter might have given them more direction towards producing a clearer, more engaging narrative less reliant on object-based gags.

    The final game, in which a generic track from different  music genres is played and one improviser comes up with lyrics to a song based on a title from an audience member, is a fun idea, but only if the performers are comfortable with singing. It does seem as though they would rather not be doing it. 

    Other than that, Delroy in particular is very at home onstage; his ability to switch easily into many different accents adds excitement to the games. Collett brings a comical, somewhat camp energy, and Kahane is very funny pretending to be aroused at awkward silences. They make a watchable, lighthearted show with highlights and dips, but with so much variation and so little structure or theme, it ultimately lacks a strong identity. There is nothing terrible here, but not much that stands out either.