A Little Space, is a newly-devised production, a collaboration between Mind the Gap, one of Europe’s leading learning disability theatre companies, and Gecko, specialists in physical theatre. Created by Dan Watson, Rich Rusk, Charli Ward and Karen Bartholomew, A Little Space aims to explore ‘what happens when people connect and disconnect from each other, whether through choice…

Puccini’s masterpiece is reworked in this latest production from Opera Up Close, sung in English. In a run-down back street of 1980s Nagasaki we meet Pinkerton (Thomas Kinch), an American businessman. Gordon (Jonathan Cooke), a provider of “girlfriend experiences”, brings him Cio Cio San (Mariam Tamari), a local girl with little family and a tragic…

Oxford student company Stupid and Brave Productions banish the Battle of Troy to the interval by combining two classical Greek plays, Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis in the first half and Sophocles’ Ajax in the second, to create an all-new production. In the first half, Iphigenia at Aulis, Agamemnon (Tom Bannon) and all the Greek armies are unable…

By Alice Sebold. Adapted by Bryony Lavery. Directed by Melly Still Susie Salmon is just like any other young girl. She wants to be beautiful, adores her charm bracelet and has a crush on a boy from school. There’s one big difference though – Susie is dead. Adapted from Alice Sebold’s well-known novel, The Lovely…

Promising ‘a decadent and astonishing blend of sensational acrobatics, soaring aerial trapeze, operatic cabaret and tongue in cheek burlesque’, Rouge transfers to London straight off the back of its UK premiere for Underbelly at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Firstly, a caveat. At the performance I saw, opera singer Issie Hart was suffering from laryngitis so had…

Distilling a significant chunk of Homer’s ancient epic into a fringe-friendly 55 minutes is a huge task, but one which writer Jack Fairey somehow achieves with ease. Given context by the narration of Achilles’ mother, Thetis (Amy Tickner) the story centres not only on the eponymous hero Achilles (Michael Ayiotis), but on Patroclus (his aide/lover, played…

Nightmares and reality begin to blur as Nat, a talented fashion designer, is stalked by the figure of the Sandman, a character from her childhood mysteriously connected to her parent’s death… A show with a powerful message about the state of the world for young people today, and which sticks up its middle-finger to those…

Billed as an intimate semi-immersive theatrical style concert, this performance of the latter two parts of Handel’s famous Messiah was deliberately designed to appeal to a non concert-going audience. The set and lighting design was suitably sumptuous for the plush velvet-curtained Porchester Hall, and the quality of the sound produced by the young musicians filling the…