As a fan of Shakespeare, wordplay, and Disney (SPOILER ALERT: this show contains Disney references), I should have been the ideal audience member for the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s newest show. Unfortunately, the subject matter simply wasn’t enough to keep me engaged during this messy evening of uninspired comedy. The show follows 3 actors who are…

“Lizzie Borden took an ax, gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, gave her father forty-one.” These words, taken from a popular folk rhyme, are the first that we hear in Lizzie. Much like the show’s protagonist, they’re deceptively simple. They may be set to a simple nursery-rhyme melody, but there’s…

Hyper-conceptual fringe theatre can be a fascinating brand of performance art, filled with new ideas that push boundaries and challenge our notions of what theatre can be. Yet, sometimes it also deserves a big dose of ridicule. Publick Transport Theatre Company fills that prescription brilliantly with We Are Brontë, a tongue-in-cheek exploration of the Brontë…

Which mammal makes the creepiest sound? If you guessed the fox, you’d be right. Playwright, Titas Halder seems to have picked the perfect animal to represent his protagonist’s psychological struggle. Making its London premier directly after a brief run at Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre, Halder’s new play, Run the Beast Down is an eerie exploration of…

Unicorn Theatre’s magical production of The Iron Man is simply oozing with creativity. Adapted from the Ted Hughes novel of the same name, the simple story follows an iron giant who befriends a young boy, and must help save the world from a monstrous alien creature. However, Hughes’ story, lovely though it may be, is…

Much like the play’s own traumatised characters, Stuart Slade’s BU21 feels precarious, but ultimately achieves great depth through cathartic honesty. The intimate six-hander, now playing at Trafalgar Studios after a successful run at Theatre503, tells the story of six people who have been scarred by a terrorist attack on flight BU21 (a fictional attack that…

The Mirror Never Lies, a new musical set in 1960’s London, follows Leonora, a vain woman who loves high culture and “beautiful things.” She becomes infatuated with James, a younger man who prefers to spend his time with people closer to his own age, and particularly his own gender. With so many people vying for James’…

It’s easy to see why Madhuri Shekar’s play, In Love and Warcraft, has been frequently produced in regional theaters over the past few years. It’s simple, yet it exudes charm in a very endearing way. The central premise of a college gamer-girl struggling with love and sex, could have been too niche for general audiences,…