tue 19/03/2024

Bush Theatre

Shifters, Bush Theatre review - love will tear us apart again

For the past ten years, Black-British playwrights have been in the vanguard of innovation in the form and content of new writing. I’m thinking not only of writers with longer careers such as Roy Williams and debbie tucker green, but also of Inua...

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Dreaming and Drowning, Bush Theatre - dense and intense monologue about Black queer identity

Kwame Owusu’s 55-minute one-hander does just what it says on the tin: it features a young student who dreams he is drowning. But its brevity is no bar to its being a dense and intense experience, worthy winner of last year’s Mustapha Matura Award....

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Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen, Bush Theatre review - charismatic stand-up routine

The Comedian runs, bounces even, onto the stage. The audience immediately applauds. He seizes the mic and makes self-deprecatory gestures. Then he rubs the mic stand suggestively. We laugh. When he turns around we can see a laughing mouth printed on...

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Backstairs Billy, Duke of York's Theatre review - starry and gently subversive, too

Rarely has a play's opening been so opportune. Just when it looked as if the West End was slipping into decline, along comes the smart, shrewd Backstairs Billy to allay mounting fears of late that the commercial theatre had lost all sense of quality...

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A Playlist for the Revolution, Bush Theatre review - idealism meets reality head-on

The revolution in the title of AJ Yi’s new play at the Bush is the one activists hoped to set in motion in Hong Kong in 2019, when China’s stewardship was increasingly restricting their civil liberties. The music on the playlist serves as an...

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Invisible, Bush Studio review - engaging monologue about Brown cultural identity

The Bond film theme plays and the lights go up at the Bush’s Studio space to reveal, not a tuxedoed superspy, but a slim figure in casual clothes sitting on a raised platform. He starts his first speech, then stops, makes asides to the audience,...

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August in England, Bush Theatre review - Lenny Henry monologue lands a painful one-two

Reggae hits are already playing over the speaker system at the Bush when the audience enters, some jigging to the sounds as they find their seats. The set before us is a living room with a bright orange carpet, a squidgy tan faux leather armchair...

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Sleepova, Bush Theatre review - sweet coming of age play with a soft centre

Can a play ever be a bit too much like real life? The thought came to me while watching Matilda Feyisayo Ibini’s entertaining new play Sleepova at the Bush. This latest opening is almost a bookend to the excellent Red Pitch, premiered at the same...

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Elephant, Bush Studio review - stirring solo show from rising star Anoushka Lucas

It lasts only an interval-free 60 minutes, with an upright piano as its only prop, but Anoushka Lucas’s one-woman show Elephant in the Bush’s Studio space prompts an epic trigger warning. It will discuss “racism, Empire, colonialism, classism,...

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Clutch, Bush Theatre review - new comedy-drama passes its test

Max is big and black and Tyler is slight and (very) white, an odd couple trapped in a dual-control car as Max barks out his instructions and Tyler prepares for his driving test. If their relationship is to get started, like the clutch of the...

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The P Word, Bush Theatre review - persecution and pride

Britain is a divided nation, but one of the divisions that we don’t hear that much about is that between Pakistani gay men. Written by Waleed Akhtar (who also stars in this impressively heartfelt two-hander), The P Word is about the differences in...

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Favour, Bush Theatre review - Ambreen Razia's punchy new tug-of-love drama

Where should Leila live — Ilford or Kent? It doesn’t sound like an earth-shattering decision for a 15-year-old to make, but the stakes are higher than they look in Ambreen Razia’s latest play, Favour.Ilford means Leila continuing to live with Noor,...

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