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Troll Slayers

Troll Slayers

✮✮✮ 1/2 Tim Price's Teh Internet is Serious Business The Royal Court Theatre | London directed by Hamish Pirie A socially awkward penguin reclines in an Olympic-sized ball-pit with Willy Wonka, a Storm Trooper and the affectionately titled Pedo-Bear. Above the stage hang the logos of Twitter, Facebook, and the hundred-million-view-grossing, rainbow-pooping Nyan Cat. Just your average night at the Royal Court. God knows what Olivier would make of this. The opening of Tim Price

Don't Take Offence, Now...

Don't Take Offence, Now...

✮✮✮✮ Chris Thompson's Albion Bush Theatre | London directed by Ria Parry “I've got a gay, I've got a black. Everyone still thinks we're the fucking BNP. What more do these people want?” So moans Paul Ryman (Steve John Shepherd), the sweary landlord of proper East End boozer The Albion and leader (for now) of the BNP-like English Protection Army (EPA). These aren't your average hate-filled scumbags: Paul's deputy and best mate, Kyle (Delroy Atkinson) is black, while his tracks

The Good, the Bad and the Writer's Block

The Good, the Bad and the Writer's Block

✮✮✮✮ Sam Shepard's True West Tricycle Theatre | London directed by Phillip Breen Who’d bring a golf club to a gunfight? Sam Shepard, that’s who. His True West takes two classic Californian icons - Hollywood and the Badlands - and holes them up together like mangy outlaws. The resulting production by Phillip Breen gives us one heck of a shoot-out, and my do the bullets fly. Max Jones’ easy-on-the-eye design offers perspective as pleasantly skewed as the characters' sensibiliti

A Fizzy Fertility Cocktail of Baby-Making Drama

A Fizzy Fertility Cocktail of Baby-Making Drama

✮✮✮ Ben Ockrent's Breeders St. James Theatre | London directed by Tamara Harvey Breeders used to be a not-so-affectionate nickname for straight people – now, it’s a description that neatly titles a story of two modern gay people who, like this play, have set up comfortable home in the cultural mainstream. Ben Ockrent’s peppy new comedy centres on an affluent lesbian couple desperate to have a child that belongs to both of them, even if it means coralling a rather more feckles

To Find a Place in the Sun

To Find a Place in the Sun

✮✮✮✮✮ Maxim Gorgy's Children of the Sun Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Kip Williams In Andrew Upton’s adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s Children Of The Sun, 12 characters of distinct and diverse personalities intermingle in the privileged Protasov household, each with their own sets of concerns and world views that struggle to find cohesion and alliance. Written in 1905 but set 50 years earlier, Gorky’s play looks to the past in order that we may speak of the now. Crea

What It Is To Be Human

What It Is To Be Human

✮✮✮✮ End of Moving Walkway's Oh, the Humanity and Other Good Intentions Tabard Theatre | London directed by Paul Lichtenstern This debut production by polished new company End of Moving Walkway in a leafy corner of West London felt like something you might experience at a far bigger venue, on a good day. In fact, the cramped wooden flip-seat stalls – presumably reclaimed from some big old theatre before it was knocked down or converted into flats – made the auditorium feel li

Claymation with a Message

Claymation with a Message

✮✮✮ 1/2 1927's Golem Salzburg Summer Festival | Salzburg directed by Suzanne Andrade The Salzburg Festival world première production of Golem has little to do with Gustav Meyrink’s famous 1914 novel. As such, the title of the English language play is a little misleading. But it is great craftsmanship from the ensemble 1927 (director: Suzanne Andrade), and 90 minutes of splendid fun, superb entertainment, wholesomeness, plus a little thoughtfulness.   1927 consists of a small

The Skeleton in Every Family's Closet

The Skeleton in Every Family's Closet

✮✮✮ 1/2 Campion Decent's Unholy Ghosts Griffin Theatre | Sydney directed by Kim Hardwick We often go to the theatre for a dose of fantasy. It can be escapism that we seek, or a quest for inspiration, and it often becomes easy to conceive of fantasy as a thing severed from our daily lives. In fact, no fantasy can truly thrive without some root in reality. Campion Decent’s Unholy Ghosts is mostly autobiographical. It deals with family and death – probably the most universal of

Innocence Lost

Innocence Lost

✮✮✮ 1/2 Christopher Sergel's To Kill A Mockingbird Regent's Park OpenAir Theatre | London directed by Timothy Sheader For many years, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, set during the Great Depression has been known as a classic. However in recent months it has come under scrutiny and deemed irrelevant to modern day audiences; being dropped from the school syllabus along with other classics such as Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. This tale of one man’s plight to do the right th

Green Unpleasant Land

Green Unpleasant Land

✮✮✮✮ Chris MacDonald's Eye of A Needle Southwark Playhouse | London directed by Holly Race-Roughan It’s a minefield. Former child soldiers ineligible for refugee status because they’ve been active participants in war. Supporters of barbarous regimes securing sanctuary even as their tyrannical governments are overthrown. And, as we see in Chris MacDonald’s resonant debut at the Southwark Playhouse, members of the gay community denied asylum unless they can provide photographic

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