mon 14/10/2024

mental health

The Band Back Together, Arcola Theatre review - three is a dangerous number

We meet Joe first at the keys, singing a pretty good song, but we can hear the pain in the voice – but is that the person or the performance? When Ellie walks in, he leaps up like a cat on a hot tin roof, nervous as a kitten, and we know –...

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Why Am I So Single?, Garrick Theatre review - superb songs in Zeitgeist surfing show

Going to the theatre can be a little like going to church. One communes on the individual level, one’s faith in the stories underpinned by a psychological connection, but also on the collective level, belief rising on a tide of shared emotions....

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The Silver Cord, Finborough Theatre review - Sophie Ward is compellingly repellent

One of the Finborough Theatre’s Artistic Director, Neil McPherson’s, gifts is an uncanny ability to find long-forgotten plays that work, right here, right now. He’s struck gold again with The Silver Cord, presenting its first London production for...

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Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: L'Addition / Long Distance / The Sun, the Mountain and Me

L’Addition, Summerhall ★★★★ Bert and Nasi – or, more fully, writers/directors/actors Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas – are virtually Fringe royalty, having carved out a niche in recent years with playful, provocative shows that question...

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Shifters, Duke of York's Theatre review - star-crossed lovers shine in intelligent rom-com

Pete Waterman, responsible (some might prefer the word guilty) for more than 100 Top 40 hits, said that a pop song is the hardest thing to write. Boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy gets girl back – all wrapped up in three minutes. Benedict Lombe’s...

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Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: In Two Minds / My English Persian Kitchen

In Two Minds, Traverse Theatre ★★★★ Mother is finally getting her kitchen extension. It’s a lot of work, though, and it’ll take several weeks. So she’ll have to move in – temporarily – with her Daughter, in her city studio flat, while the work...

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Next to Normal, Wyndham's Theatre review - rock musical on the trauma of mental illness

We open on one of those suburban American families we know so well from Eighties and Nineties sitcoms - they’re not quite Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, but they’re not far off. As usual, we wonder how Americans have so much space, such big...

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Miss Julie, Park Theatre review - Strindberg's kitchen drama still packs a punch

You have to tiptoe around the edge of the set just to take your seat in the Park’s studio space for Lidless Theatre’s Miss Julie. There’s a plain wooden table, a few utensils on it, wooden chairs and a small cabinet – not much, but, we’re smack...

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Multiple Casualty Incident, The Yard Theatre review - NGO medics in training have problems of their own

We open on one of those grim, grim training rooms that all offices have – the apologetic sofa, the single electric kettle, the instant coffee. The lighting is too harsh, the chairs too hard, the atmosphere already post-lunch on Wednesday and it...

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Spencer Jones: Making Friends, Soho Theatre review - award-winning comedian mines his post-lockdown escape to the country

Lockdown feels more like a dream now: empty streets; bright, scarless skies; pan-banging at 8pm. Did it all happen? One part of our brains insists that it did; another resists such an overthrowing of what it means to be human. Try recalling events...

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Pierre Novellie, Soho Theatre review - turning a heckle into a show

Pierre Novellie opens his show by telling how his latest show, Why Are You Laughing?, came into being. It started, he says, when he was heckled at a previous show by someone shouting out: “I have Asperger's and I think you have it too.” It's an...

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Samuel Takes a Break... in Male Dungeon No. 5 after a long but generally successful day of tours, The Yard Theatre review - funny and thought-provoking

You do not need to be Einstein to feel it. If the only dimension missing is time, 75% of a place’s identity can invade your very being, hollow you out, replace your soul with a void. It happened to me at Auschwitz and it’s happening to Samuel at...

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