REVIEWS Archives - Page 28 of 548

Rambert x (LA) Horde: Bring Your Own – The Lowry

17Sep

By Lou SteggalsNo Comments

North West

Rambert x (LA) Horde: Bring Your Own – The Lowry

(LA) Horde’s collaboration with Rambert, Bring Your Own, is an ambitious attempt to bottle the unruly energy of nightlife and stage it as contemporary performance. Over the course of several distinct pieces, the production draws on social dance, rave culture, and acrobatic spectacle, pushing the 14-strong Rambert ensemble into a space where technique meets abandon. The result is fast, furious, and undeniably compelling, though not always as coherent as it aspires to be. The opening section, Hopestorm, is a striking fusion of Lindyhop and rave. Dancers charge through fifteen minutes of relentless partnering and synchronised group work, with echoes of Broadway chorus lines interlaced with rock ’n’ roll. Snatches of Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” surface beneath a pounding rave soundscape, wh...

17Sep

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

The Last Laugh – Alhambra Bradford

Sad clown paradox is actually a syndrome where comedians with early life feelings of deprivation and isolation use an audience as a release so they can remove feelings of suppressed physical rage through getting laughs. Paul Hendy’s ingenious idea to explore this paradox by imagining a meeting of seventies comedy titans Bob Monkhouse, Eric Morecombe and Tommy Cooper in a rundown dressing room as the lights flicker spookily. Trapped together, these troubled and driven funny men engage in a game of comedy one-upmanship as they slowly reveal the demons eating away at all three of them. Along the way Hendy subtly analyses the eternal question of what is funny, and who better to do than three men who dominated primetime TV in very different ways. Cooper was a physical comic who just had t...

Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell – Liverpool Playhouse

17Sep

By Miranda GreenNo Comments

North West

Matthew Bourne’s The Midnight Bell – Liverpool Playhouse

T.S. Eliot said that poetry can communicate before it is understood. The Midnight Bell is poetry in motion – not so much a linear tale as an evocation of a time and place, where love stories from the back streets of inter-war London swirl, intersecting and cross-referencing, before resolving into a tableau. Born in Covid and taking inspiration from the Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky novels of Patrick Hamilton, The Midnight Bell takes its name from a downtown pub, the narrative hub, where the small-time romances of chancers and spinsters alike play out. Certainly, there is something very Prufrockian about Lez Brotherston’s set, reminiscent of the “muttering retreats of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels” of Eliot’s antihero. The inside of a Soho boozer is wonderfully sum...

17Sep

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

Our Brother – Traverse Theatre

The horrific events that took place in Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) under the Khmer Rouge between 1975 – 79 are well documented, but writer Jack MacGregor has - to good effect -dramatised a true, less well-known incident from 1978. An idealistic Scots professor, simply referred to as ‘Stranger’ (played by Bobby Bradley) managed to grab 15 minutes with Pol Pot, or ‘Brother No 1’ (David Lee-Jones). With him was ‘American’ (Nicole Cooper), armed with enough knowledge of the atrocities to remain somewhat less effusive. This piece explored the (chiefly Marxist) motivation and ambition shared, initially, by Stranger and Brother, the notion that there was a way to create an egalitarian, agrarian utopia. Upon a simple platform covered in white sheets the three actors performed this inten...

Send in the Clowns: A Little Flop of Horrors – Hope Mill Theatre

17Sep

By Katie LeicesterNo Comments

North West

Send in the Clowns: A Little Flop of Horrors – Hope Mill Theatre

Returning for their fourth outing at Hope Mill Theatre, the boisterous cabaret troupe behind Send in the Clowns: A Little Flop of Horrors once again delivered an evening of wickedly funny, musically sharp, and gloriously risqué entertainment. Having caught their last production (C*ck of Ages) back in May, I was curious to see if they could outdo themselves and they certainly rose to the challenge. The four-strong cast – Fatt Butcher, Blu Romantic, Dahlia Rivers, and Alanna Boden proved to be a powerhouse ensemble. Vocally, they were outstanding, effortlessly switching from the sultry tones of Cabaret to a comedic delivery of Dear Evan Hansen, and the playful belting of a song from Annie. Their mash-up medleys, including an inspired collision of Chicago, Oliver! and Les Misérables, were ...

16Sep

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

Dagmarr’s Dimanche – Crazy Coqs

Hidden away beneath the streets of Picadilly, glitzy Art Deco venue Crazy Coqs provides the perfect venue for an anachronistic cabaret show performed by a vampire: Dagmarr’s Dimanche. Singer Hersh Dagmarr has absolute command of the stage. His voice is powerful and emotive, and he effortlessly draws the audience into the stories contained within the lyrics. With songs arranged by pianist Karen Newby, the eclectic setlist playfully jumps around from Édith Piaf to Kylie Minogue, via Cole Porter, Madonna, Sondheim, and the Pet Shop Boys. Dagmarr continually plays with the audience’s expectations, teasing one song and then performing another. A Kylie Minogue medley featuring riffs from ‘Willkommen’ and ‘Mack the Knife’ caught the audience especially off-guard, in the best possible way. My p...

16Sep

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

Shotgunned – Riverside Studios

Written and directed by Matt Anderson, Shotgunned gained some very good reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe and has now transferred to the Riverside Studios. It is an engaging 60 minutes of theatre. Cleverly written and excellently performed, it tells the story of a young couple, Roz and Dylan, charting their relationship from their first meeting at a party, through its highs and lows. The distinguishing feature of this production is that the story in not told linearly but in a series of short, some very short, vignettes in a seemingly almost random order. The fascination for the audience is piecing together from these fragments how the relationship has developed. This format presents particular challenges for the actors, who have to switch mood almost instantly during the s...

Cauld Blast Orchestra – Traverse Theatre

15Sep

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Cauld Blast Orchestra – Traverse Theatre

Some reunions coast on memory, others roar into the present as if they had never left. Cauld Blast Orchestra’s return to the Traverse is firmly the latter. Born out of Communicado’s Jock Tamson’s Bairns more than thirty years ago, the band has always revelled in being unpigeonholeable. Folk, jazz, rock and classical sit in the same set, stitched with irreverence and played with virtuosity. Founding members remain the backbone. Karen Wimhurst, who first gathered the band together in 1990, is on clarinet for most of the evening, weaving intricate lines that remind you why this music still burns bright. Ian Johnstone dazzles with his versatility, moving between tuba, accordion and piano, each instrument sounding like it’s his true home. Steve Kettley, equally compe...

15Sep

By Zain RussellNo Comments

North West

Not Your Superwoman – Bush Theatre

Not Your Superwoman, stars Golda Rosheuvel and Letitia Wright; two powerhouse actresses who breathed life into Emma Dennis-Edward’s deeply moving play. The story follows a mother and daughter, Joyce and Erica, who have grown apart over the years as they mourn the loss of their family matriarch — “Mummy” to Joyce and “Granny” to Erica. At its heart, the play is about family ties strained by silence, grief, and distance, yet bound by love and memory. Using Guyana as its vibrant backdrop, Not Your Superwoman becomes more than just a family drama, it becomes a meditation on the importance of culture as both a source of identity and a bridge across generations. Through the music, the language, the food, and the rituals of remembrance, Dennis-Edward captures how culture is often the thread...

15Sep

By Zandra OdetundeNo Comments

London

Black Power Desk – Brixton House

Theatre has rarely felt this alive, urgent, and unapologetically Black. Black Power Desk, an original musical directed by Gbolahan Obisesan, is a searing, soulful exploration of sisterhood, grief, and resistance, set against the backdrop of the covert operations of New Scotland Yard’s infamous “Black Power Desk” in 1970s London. Loosely inspired by the Mangrove Nine, the play follows two sisters, Celia (Rochelle Rose) and Dina (Veronica Carabai), as they navigate love, politics, and survival in a Britain defined by racial tension and state surveillance. The result? An electrifying blend of theatre, live music, and political storytelling that refuses to soften its edges. The entire ensemble delivers powerhouse performances, seamlessly balancing individual brilliance with collective ch...