AUDITORIUM

✮✮ Carousel Arcola Theatre | London music Richard Rogers lyrics Oscar Hammerstein II directed by Luke Fredericks After a poor display in this year’s 2014 World Cup, England go home bowing their heads, not in shame, but in promise. Witnessing the English mentality of flippant support for yet another big competition reminds me of our subjective nature as a nation. Steven Gerrard for one reinforces what it means to be a loyal Liver Bird – and to utter the motto, 'You’ll Never Wa

✮✮✮ Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot Arcola Theatre | London directed by Simon Dormandy It’s been a long wait for an update to Beckett’s 1953 play, but this slick and lively new version at the Arcola theatre is stepping with bravado into a storied production history. The play conjures ideas of almost unbearably nostalgic tramps in battered bowler hats and beaten up suits; quaint, antic figures on a dusty country road. Director Simon Dormandy hasn’t had the heart – or guts

✮✮✮✮✮ Barney Norris's Visitors Arcola Theatre | London directed by Alice Hamilton One old-fashioned living room, ornamented with seated figures who have lost, or are losing themselves; billed as a love story, Barney Norris's play is more of a loss story. His first staged full-length script reveals itself as such only by its freshness and lightness of touch – his handling of this dimly unfolding story of forgetting is masterful. Edie and Arthur are an elderly couple living tog