The Crumple Zone. Review by Barbara Lewis. For anyone nervous their personal relationship might not withstand the stress of the festive period, “The Crumple Zone” offers a manic reassurance that we can survive the impact of an emotional crash, but the pain is excruciating.
plays
Truth to Power Café. Review by Barbara Lewis. Jeremy Goldstein is celebrating the 20th anniversary of his company London Artists Projects, whose missions include taking his “Truth to Power Café” across the world.
Tattooer. Review by Barbara Lewis. Love them or loathe them, tattoos have global appeal. But Japan’s version of permanently etching ink into the skin is culturally specific.
One Small Step. Review by Barbara Lewis. Japan’s Umeda Arts Theater, based in Osaka, began collaborating with London’s Charing Cross Theatre in 2019. It’s now back after a break for the pandemic and then a joint venture with London’s Menier Chocolate Factory last year.
Why Am I So Single?! Review by Barbara Lewis. From Jane Austen to “Friends,” the pursuit of heterosexual love has been the goal of romantic comedy. Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, the makers of the international musical hit “SIX,” have turned that on its head with a musical comedy that celebrates “love friendship” between a non-binary man and a woman.
The Trumpeter. Review by Barbara Lewis. Mariupol, where Ukraine for nearly three months in 2022 resisted Russia’s determination to create a land bridge between Crimea and Donbas, became a byword for horror.
The Comedy of Errors. Review by Barbara Lewis. This is the HandleBards’ uplifting summer tour, which after 935 miles of pedalling, brought the cycling players to a picnicking audience in the grounds of Horace Walpole’s Gothic revival mansion at Strawberry Hill, west London.
Kyoto. Review by Barbara Lewis. If Shakespeare put the English town of Stratford-upon-Avon on the global map, the Kyoto climate treaty arguably did the same for an ancient Japanese capital.
Pirandello In Context. Review by Alan Price. Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) is best known for his 1921 stage play Six Characters in Search of an Author. It was a landmark play that changed theatre.
May Be at Sadler’s Wells. Review by Julia Pascal. I walk into a Paris bookshop and ask if they can offer me play texts by contemporary French authors. The assistant directs me to a shelf of plays by Samuel Beckett. To the French, Samuel Beckett is one of theirs. He wrote in French. He lived most of his life in France. But was he Irish? Anglo-Irish? French?
Cutting the Tightrope. Review by Barbara Lewis. The arts have always had a role in saying the unsayable, making it all but inevitable that Arts Council England’s effort to clarify advice issued early this year on the risk of making political statements would only add to the controversy.
Kyoto. Review by Barbara Lewis. Oil – the fuel of Western capitalism – was the issue in 1997 when the Kyoto Protocol delivered the first set of targets to limit its use. Nearly three decades later, far too little has changed.
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