London Archives - Page 3 of 94

3Apr

By Olivia CoxNo Comments

London

Holly Spillar: HOLE – Soho Theatre

Holly Spillar is obsessed with holes: the ones in your face, the ones in Warburton’s crumpets, and especially the ones in our pants. After being diagnosed with vaginismus (a condition that causes the vagina to suddenly tighten when something is inserted, making penetrative sex painful), she’s become particularly fixated on why her hole can’t easily welcome a pole. This quest to try and achieve the “basic, beige sex life of her dreams” is the premise of her one-woman show HOLE, playing at Soho Theatre until 3rd April. Accompanied on stage with nothing but a loop pedal and a microphone, Spillar takes us on a surreal musical and comic journey about her experiences of navigating a litany of gaslighting doctors, terrible one-night stands, and internal misogyny. Spillar’s deft use of the ...

Pansexual Pregnant Piracy – Soho Theatre

1Apr

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Pansexual Pregnant Piracy – Soho Theatre

Get on board, baby. It’s Pansexual Pregnant Piracy at the Soho Theatre. Creators Eleanor Colville, Ro Suppa, and Robbie Taylor Hunt also make up three quarters of the four-person cast singing and dancing their way through the totally possibly true and occasionally even accurate life story of real-life eighteenth-century pirate Anne Bonny. Played with great aplomb and shimmering gravitas by Suppa, Anne is a solid lead audiences root for as easily as she uproots gender conventions. Colville’s panachefull presentation as Calico Jack is delicious and the joy of creative performance shines out of every porthole. Elizabeth Chu rounds out the cast in a practically perfect performance as “hot wet babe” Mary Read, and an even more transfixing interlude as an even wetter fish. Creator, perfor...

Sherlock Holmes: The Valley of Fear – Southwark Playhouse

1Apr

By Khushboo ShahNo Comments

London

Sherlock Holmes: The Valley of Fear – Southwark Playhouse

Blackeyed Theatre’s Sherlock Holmes: The Valley of Fear makes its Spring 2024 revival at Southwark Playhouse Borough after a successful run in 2023 across the UK. Adapted and directed for stage by Nick Lane, the play weaves two plots set in the past and the present with stylised, engaging storytelling (Joseph Derrington) and neat choral transitions transporting the audience to a different time where mysteries and adventures are the norm. The play opens with Holmes (Bobby Bradley) decoding a mysterious message signalling “danger” with Dr. Watson (Derrington) and Mrs. Hudson (Alice Osmanski) at the iconic 221B Baker Street. This leads the duo on an adventure to an ancient manor house further unravelling a distant narrative set in Pennsylvanian Vermissa Valley involving a corrupt gang and...

Wild About You – Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

28Mar

By Maani WayNo Comments

London

Wild About You – Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

The new musical, Wild About You, with music and lyrics by Chilina Kennedy and book by Eric Holmes, opens for an exclusive two-day run at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. This staged concert gives a taste of the drama, talent and performances audiences can expect if Wild About You is taken to a full production. The story surrounds Olivia, an emotionally charged woman who has battled with her feelings and where she should be throughout her life. When she wakes up one day in the hospital, unable to remember her life or who her emergency contact is, she takes a trip down memory lane to discover who is most important to her and where they place in her life. The set is, as expected, limited due to the show being a temporary production and in essence, a staged concert. However, screens and li...

26Mar

By Olivia CoxNo Comments

London

Priscilla the Party! – Here at Outernet

Immersive theatre is all the rage in 2024. From Guys and Dolls to Mamma Mia! plenty of stories are returning to the stage with an up-close-and-personal twist. At London’s HERE at Outernet, it’s Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’s turn to get in on the immersive fun with Priscilla The Party! Until the end of September, Priscilla The Party! is transforming HERE at Outernet into the sparkling, disco ball-covered Cockatoo Club, where audiences are brought right into the iconic story of acceptance and self-empowerment. Seated tickets are available, but those who have a standing ticket (like I did) watch the show from the dancefloor, where parts of the stage move, and actors sometimes weave through the crowd. The party starts before the show even begins, with a series of cabaret perfor...

23Mar

By Olivia CoxNo Comments

London

Red Pitch – Soho Place

For Tyrell Williams’s Red Pitch, making its West End debut at Soho Place after two sold-out runs at the Bush Theatre, it’s not a case of ‘third time’s the charm’, but rather ‘third time’s an even bigger charm’. A story about the friendship between London-based, football-obsessed teenagers Bilal (Kedar Williams-Stirling), Joey (Emeka Sesay), and Omz (Francis Lovehall), Tyrell Williams was inspired to write Red Pitch after passing by his childhood football pitch to find it had been demolished and replaced with unoccupied housing. All the action is set at the titular ‘red pitch’, where the three friends play football together and dream of professional superstardom. But the pitch plays a much bigger role for the trio than simply providing a space to indulge in their favourite hobby. ...

23Mar

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Mary’s Daughters – The Space Theatre

Why do we tell ghost stories? To titillate? To frighten? To inspire? To warn? To grieve? To honour? Mary’s Daughters, written by Kaya Bucholc and Will Wallace and directed for The Space Theatre by Kay Brattan, attempts all of these feats. A haunting triplet performance by Megan Carter as Mary Wollstonecraft, Rachael Reshma as Mary Shelley, and Kaya Bucholc as Shelley’s forgotten half-sister and Wollstonecraft’s “unfortunate girl,” Fanny Imlay, sets out to right the wrongs of history and restore a legacy to three women who despite their brilliance did not get the option to control their own historical narratives. Many of the salacious details of the three women’s lives long known in fun fact format and prized as illuminating context by scholars of their works are here fleshed out, re...

Mind Mangler: Member of the Tragic Circle – Apollo Theatre

22Mar

By Carole GordonNo Comments

London

Mind Mangler: Member of the Tragic Circle – Apollo Theatre

Mind Mangler, Keith (performed by Henry Lewis), is a mentalist, a human lie-detector, an expert at prophesy, a man who can read your mind. As this show comes from the crazy team at Mischief Productions who also devised the hugely successful The Play That Goes Wrong and Peter Pan Goes Wrong, it's not long before the Mind Mangler's tricks spiral into chaos. Lewis is an imposing figure with a sonorous voice that is perfect for this role. He exudes misplaced self-confidence in his abilities, while recognising that his past is not without its flaws. A lot of flaws. This is a performer with huge aspirations to play Las Vegas but who fate will undoubtedly and inevitably kick to the end of the pier. There's a lot of audience participation, from revealing personal secrets to mixing up Rubik cub...

22Mar

By Jennifer LaishleyNo Comments

London

Faith Healer – Lyric Hammersmith

This season the Lyric in Hammersmith are showcasing some of the best classic pieces of British and Irish Theatre for modern audiences. Faith Healer was written by Brian Friel in the 1970s and will appeal mostly to audience’s who lived through or understand the political context of the time. Rachel O’Riordan’s direction is imaginative and powerful use of spacing helps to lift moments in this play. However, the stream of consciousness nature of the monologues in the play could lose some audience members. The key flaw here being that this is a play from another Era and audiences today will only give an awkward chuckle to moments that would have initially intended to fill a room with hysteria. Nonetheless, as Rachel O’Riordan describes ‘some of the best British and Irish talent around’ have b...

20Mar

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Indigo Giant – Soho Poly

“I will plant Indigo in your head.” Both threat and promise, this is the doom of a story’s characters and the hope of its audience in this touring production of Indigo Giant. Written by Ben Musgrave, directed by Gavin Joseph, and with production, dramaturgy & lyrics by Leesa Gazi, this moving play has been travelling between venues and currently finds itself nestled in the basement room of the Soho Poly, a somewhat cramped venue still in the midst of its renovation but steadily working its way toward re-emerging as a cultural and theatrical hub. Telling the story of the Bengali Indigo Rebellion, the plot begins shortly after the wedding of raiyat Sadhu (Diljohn Singh) and Kshetromani (Amy Tara), a young woman whose father was ruined by British planters exploiting both labour and la...