Julia Knight took to the stage on her birthday with Songs of Joy & Justice, a thoughtfully structured cabaret blending wit, social commentary and musical skill. The show unfolds as a sequence of songs themed around joy and justice, with Knight accompanying herself on the keyboard almost throughout. Humour runs as a constant thread, inviting easy comparisons to Victoria Wood—a connection Knight acknowledges directly by including two of Wood’s songs in the programme. The set mo

The Big Bite-Size Breakfast Show celebrates its 20th anniversary at this year’s Brighton Fringe with a lively collection of short-form theatre. The show offers a series of vignettes, short scenes of new writing. These are designed to entertain, of course, but in some cases may serve as a springboard for full-length productions. The Big Bite-Size Breakfast Show offers two different versions of performances – the ‘Early Riser’ and ‘Late Brekkie’, with the audience being offered

Climate change has had a devastating impact already on the 21st century. Politically, a combination of wilful refusal and culpable neglect is exacerbating the crisis before our very eyes. Devastating images of floods, fires and more fill our networks from around the world – events from which nobody is immune, not even in the well-heeled surroundings of Los Angeles… It’s January 2025 and wildfires are taking hold in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Erin Hunter is living in L

Carly (Kathryn Mincer) sits alone, nervously broadcasting to the outside world. An agitated man pounds at the door. She is fraught, but determined to complete The Final Episode of her podcast. We rewind just six weeks to find the same woman in a quite different state: confident and amiable, at the outset of her launch into broadcasting work. With modest expectations, she is surprised to realise that she has, somehow, tapped into a cultural mood. Her audience numbers surge bey

Lucy Roslyn delivers a performance masterclass in BoonDog Theatre’s production of Lovett. The show explores the origins of Eleanor, before she became Sweeney Todd’s partner. Widowed, she is confronted daily by the battle for survival. 19th Century London is a challenging place to be impoverished: workhouses, crime and cholera abound. Resourceful and formidable, she draws upon those skills learned from her whaler father, a courtesan mother and a butcher husband. The arc of her

Photo Credit: Luxpraguensis

Northern Soul is a dance and music movement that formed in the north of England over half a century ago, drawing heavily on Motown. Its influence endures, which brings us to Two-Stroke: The Northern Soul Musical—a production inspired by the movement. It’s 1986, and three teenagers (Fizz Lewis Marlton, Ellie Warne, and Freya Mackay Blake) are in rebellious mood, heading to a scooter rally on the Isle of Wight in search of hedonism, freedom, and escape. Inevitably, not everyth

The last light of a balmy May evening filters through the beautiful stained-glass windows of St Mary’s Church, lending an atmospheric backdrop to Something Underground’s ambitious solo show History Has No Safe Word. The premise is hardly straightforward. A once formidable and renowned college professor (Nathan) is now in decline. He suffers from sleep deprivation. While being observed in a clinical trial, he begins to speak in his sleep - but in an ancient language that he se

Moon Idle ***** Moon Idle illuminate new depths in a luminous, shapeshifting Brighton tour opener. Moon Idle opened their first headline tour at Brighton’s Hope & Ruin with a set that felt both like a return and a quiet redefinition. The room has long been part of their story, but tonight the band stepped into it with a new sense of scale with their dreamsoaked triphop foundations intact, yet stretched into bolder, more exploratory shapes. They began with ‘Godzilla’, a slow,

Uncertainty sits at the centre of Michael Frayn’s ambitious piece, Copenhagen , at the Hampstead Theatre. Frayn’s play feels uncannily prescient, with Trump’s threats to destroy an entire culture dominating today’s political landscape. Where does science end and philosophy begin? The splitting of the atom—the twentieth century’s seismic scientific achievement—ushers in the possibility of unprecedented destruction, forcing moral questions to be confronted. By 1941, Nazi German

Three years ago, the comedian Jimmy Carr hosted a television debate on whether paintings created by reprehensible artists should be destroyed. The controversial nature of this show elicited criticism, but it did raise the moral question of art provenance. This theme is developed by Marius von Mayenburg in his modern satire Nachtland . Two siblings Nicola and Philip (Lilith Leonard and Gabriel Oprea) are going through their deceased father’s house. This painstaking and emotion

In 1904, the steamboat General Slocum caught fire and sank on the New York River, resulting in the deaths of more than a thousand people. At the time, it was one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history. The event made a profound impression on a passerby – Trudy Ederle’s mother, Anna. Many of the deaths were preventable. Although the boat was relatively close to shore, women at that time had been discouraged or even prevented from swimming, as it was deemed unse

Lucia Raffaella Mariani enters the stage tentatively, almost nervously, wearing a robe over a swimsuit. She begins by asking what at first seems a simple question – whether she can make the audience fall in love with her before the production ends. The reason for the red roses we were given soon becomes clear: we are to adorn the stage with them by the show’s conclusion if she has succeeded. The premise posed by Mariani is more complex than it first appears. The suggestion t

Italy is a country steeped in tradition and ritual. This manifests in countless ways, big and small: church ceremonies, university graduations and the acceptable times of day to drink cappuccino. And then there’s football. To the non-aficionado, football’s entrenched place in Italian culture requires some explanation. The national side is among the most successful ever, and when they play an important match, everything grinds to a halt. The powerhouse domestic clubs have won

L’ombra del Gelsomino is a fluid blend of drama, dance, and physical theatre, and the quality of the performances is simply outstanding.

There's probably a clue in the title of a production entitled Ha Ha Da Vinci , isn’t there? We all know a little about Leonardo da Vinci: creator of Mona Lisa , the world’s most famous painting, whose iconic status transcends the art world and has become a byword for enigma itself, lending its name to, amongst others, a Nat King Cole song and a Bob Hoskins film. Yet fusing art and science, Da Vinci was so much more – architect, palaeontologist, sculptor and engineer – the l

It's fair to say that Elizabeth Keckley lived a life less ordinary. Emancipated slave turned dressmaker to Abraham Lincoln’s wife, the roll call of her achievements includes fashionista, writer, entrepreneur, activist and fundraiser. Tami Tyree tells her story at Milan Fringe in Colored Silk . Born early in the nineteenth century into slavery, Keckley endured a typically brutal upbringing, including rape and beatings, despite being the daughter of the head of the household.

The ninth century: plague, war, pestilence, famine. The populace was largely uneducated, and ignorance was rife. Life expectancy was short – especially if you were a threat. We meet Johanna, born in a Rhine valley village at a time when women were forbidden from reading and writing. Her brother, Johannes, secretly helped her to read, though only after first extracting a price. Johannes died from a fever, however. A woman in the village, Matilda, had knowledge of herbal remedi

Walking the streets of Milan at this year’s Fringe, I stumbled upon the Wall of Dolls. A memorial to victims of female violence and femicide, members of the public are encouraged to pin dolls to the wall and, hauntingly, there are photographs of some victims. It’s all rather sobering. L’altro ieri (which can be translated as The Day Before Yesterday ) recounts the story of Franca Viola, yet another victim of female violence. However, she and her family displayed enormous co

Gaudeamus Artistic Company’s stated intention is to offer the Italian community in Scotland the means to reconnect with or discover Italian culture through theatre. Indeed, the excellent cast symbolise the cultural links between Scotland and Italy, not to mention the iconic and charming venue Valvona & Crolla , a visit being highly recommended at any time of the year. The set immediately suggests literary endeavours, with piles of books everywhere, some immediately identifia