Category: Uncategorized
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
At LAMDA’s Carne Theatre, director Dhruv Ravi takes on Strategic Love Play, a new play by Miriam Battye. It follows a date between Man or Adam (Emmanuel Olusanya) and Woman or Jenny (Amber Grappy), arranged through an app, that goes… very strangely. The play feels distinctly of the moment: its characters are scarily real, it’s funny, and it’s always buoyed by…
-
Even in comedies, jokes are often treated as decoration rather than substance – meant to entertain while pointing to deeper themes. But the RSC’s new production of Twelfth Night, directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, doesn’t shy away from a focus on fun. Devoting more time to clowning and the comedic subplot – in which Olivia’s uncle Sir Toby Belch…
-
So many comedy plays rely on oddness as their engine, but this kind of humour is far harder to execute than it appears. Surreal jokes need to feel genuinely strange — surprising, even dark and a bit disturbing. When the oddness isn’t odd enough, or the darkness not quite dark enough, or the ideas not…
-
PRESSURE 3 brings together emerging theatre makers who are split into four teams, given the same theme, budget, and rehearsal time, and tasked with creating a half-hour play performed over three nights. Audiences vote each night, and a winner is announced at the end. The theme is “time is running out,” producing four pieces: Forwards or Backwards, Cookie…
-
Josh Jones returns with a new show, I Haven’t Won The Lottery So Here’s Another Tour Show, that plays like a round-the-houses tour of his life, told through a series of joke-embellished stories about his family, dyslexia, Dancing On Ice, his relationship, his hometown and “bumming,” among other things. The opening is clever: a bit about reading hate…
-
With his cap on and two earrings firmly in place, Carl Donnelly takes to the stage with Another Round, his latest hour of laid-back, anecdotal comedy. Last year, he tempted fate with a show about feeling good about going into middle age — and life promptly reminded him of its brutality. This time, he unpacks the fallout with his…
Rosie Wood 