Summerhall, EdinburghMamoru Iriguchi and Afton Moran raid their dressing-up box to give us a cheery guide to the evolutionary history of reproduction, and what it says about gender fluidity in humansI imagine the curriculum has changed since my day but…
Park Bench review – innovative show starts online and ends on stage
Park theatre, LondonTori-Allen Martin’s two-hander opens with the audience watching at home – then the second half is performed in personThe concept is the strongest part of Tori Allen-Martin’s two-act play, the first half of which we watch prerecorded…
Medicine review – Domhnall Gleeson despairs in absurdist institutional limbo
Traverse theatre, EdinburghThe Edinburgh festival’s theatre programme begins with Enda Walsh’s flamboyant and funny new play about a man receiving an inappropriate form of drama therapy in a psychiatric hospitalEver since One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nes…
‘Bloody difficult women’: Brexit play hits the London stage
Theresa May and pro-EU campaigner Gina Miller are key characters in a new drama about Britain’s battle over EuropeThey were both called “bloody difficult women”. Yet a play opening in London in the new year will portray Theresa May and the anti-Brexit …
Edinburgh Fringe returns with mix of in-person and online shows
Festival is part of world’s largest annual arts season which has been forced to curtail events due to CovidThe Edinburgh festival Fringe returns this weekend with a hybrid programme of nearly 800 in-person and online shows after its cancellation last y…
‘The best summer of my life’ – Kae Tempest takes Sophocles on a gender odyssey
The writer has turned a Greek tragedy about a marooned soldier into an all-women play for the Covid era. They reveal how its creation mirrored their own journey‘These stories can be intimidating for so many reasons,” Kae Tempest says of the classical G…
West End producer David Pugh: ‘My guiding principle was always: will mum like it?’
He turned Art and The Play What I Wrote into smashes. Now he’s handing out flyers for Charlie and Stan. But will pandemic-shy audiences come and see it? Reports of the death of the stereotypical West End producer have been exaggerated. I’m in Bath, sat…
Changing Destiny review – Ben Okri’s sketchy foray into ancient Egypt
Young Vic, LondonKwame Kwei-Armah’s adaptation of a 4,000-year-old Egyptian poem is ambitious and visually stunning, but Ben Okri’s script is too broadbrushTwo towering pyramids dominate the auditorium, which is arranged in the round. The top structure…
Lily Allen: from chart-topping handbag kid to the heart of London’s West End
The singer is back in front of a live audience this week, playing ‘a woman with a real point of view’ in a spooky new play, 2:22 – A Ghost StoryThere, in the background, wearing drop pearl earrings, is 13-year-old Lily Allen dressed up as a little lady…
On my radar: Domhnall Gleeson’s cultural highlights
The actor on an exhibition that’s like a rave, the best crispy chicken and why he’s having to take a break from Kazuo Ishiguro’s latestDomhnall Gleeson was born in Dublin in 1983. Following his father, Brendan, into acting, he broke through in 2010 wit…