Based on the Ken Kesey novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest takes place in an asylum, beginning on the day where the charismatic Randal McMurphy is admitted. Whether or not he is insane or faking it to get out of work prison remains to be seen, but in encouraging the other patients to assert their free will rankles Head Nurse Ratchet, and consequences ensue.

Programme Report: A beautiful full-size programme with lovely pictures. There is an essay on Congo Square, the only place in New Orleans where slaves were allowed to congregate and the birthplace of jazz. This information was projected on the stage during the beginning of the play, so the essay is a bit superfluous, and also overstates an aspect of the show that has little to do with the action of the play itself. There’s a wonderful interview with director Clint Dyer about his love for the film and his decisions to put the play In the Round, which I don’t agree with, but heck if he doesn’t make a compelling argument. I would have liked some more contextual essays about the time period and the asylum setting, as well as perhaps the shock therapy treatments that become an important framing of the play. 2.5/5.

Overheard Exit Conversation: “Who is the bad guy though.”

Ice Cream Report: CORNISH CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM 1,000/10

Things are going to be slightly different around the blog going forward. I’m going to focus more on the the three things I end the posts with: ice cream report, programme report, and overheard conversations. I might pipe in with some feelings about the show itself, but these are generally the things I care about most, and there is a gap in the literature about theatre ice cream. So here we go.

Programme Report: At six pounds, this is a sturdy programme with only a little bit of Andrew Lloyd Webber propaganda. There is an essay about Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animation studio from which Totoro originated. There is another essay about transposing the animation into theatre. I would have loved a bit more about all the creatures in the show and how they figure into Japanese storytelling, but it’s overall a solid programme. 3/5

Ice Cream Report: I did not have ice cream, but my friend Matt did get some chocolate swirl, which I ended up being a bit jealous of. He gave it 4/5.

Overheard Exit Conversation: I was honestly so overwhelmed by this show that I could only hear my own sobbing. I’ve never seen the movie, so I went in almost totally blind, and as both a piece of theatre and a story, I was too moved to do anything other than focus on not falling down the stairs on the way out.

The less I say the better, not because it would ruin the show to know anything about it, but because for fans of Inside No. 9, the discovery is gleeful, frightening, and genuinely touching. Reece Sheersmith and Steve Pemberton have spent decades doing their weird, spooky, hilarious thing, first in the 90s with The League of Gentleman, then in the ‘00s with Psychoville, and most recently with their phenomenal 9 series (!) run of anthology show Inside No. 9. What has been most stunning about their tenure in this last series is how often they managed to trick the audience, especially an audience who had been trained by them to look for secondary twists and never expect the unexpected. Or do expect the unexpected. Honestly they’ve twisted me up so much over the years I hardly know. It is no less true with their stage show. In Stage/Fright, the double act bring the same goofy, sometimes crass, always clever work to the theatre, and they show a clear understanding of theatre as a new medium to be explored and exploited. Beneath the ridiculous puns and Reese’s inevitable corpsing, there is a rigor and a respect that these two have brought to everything they do. You can viscerally feel the love emanating from the stage: the love for storytelling, the love for each other, the love for the audience. You can tell how much work has gone into making sure this final outing isn’t phoned in, and in today’s age of meandering television lumbering towards a half-baked finale, that is really the best love you can show a room full of pedantic nerds. We are lucky indeed to have such talent on our side.

The Evertim Apollo is not the ideal place for the last leg of the show, as its quite cavernous, and the emergency lights on throughout the show make it difficult to immerse oneself. Anyone who didn’t get to see it in a more intimate theatre during the tour will surely feel that loss, but one can understand why they wanted to pack as many people into the final week, as it doesn’t seem likely the show will come around again. This show is a must-see for fans of Inside No. 9, and as there are only six shows left, make it a priority.

Overheard Exit Conversation: “Of course it was going to be scary, it’s called Stage Fright. Did you think it was Stage Freight? Did you think it would be about trains?”

Programme Report: THIS is how you do a programme, my friends. Yes, it’s fifteen pounds, but it is worth every blessed cent. Sheersmith and Pemberton have clearly made the programme they wished they could get from their favorite shows. We’ve got interviews, timelines, inside jokes, a cryptic crossword, unused script material, new art, a word search. This is a wonderful souvenir to return to again and again. I know it’s only 2 Jan, but if I find a better this year, I will eat it. 5/5!

Ice Cream Report: The Apollo is a madhouse and there was either time for a programme or time for ice cream, and we know how I feel about potential essays.

I don’t want to say too much about this because I do think the less you know the more fun you’ll have, but I do have Thoughts, so don’t read any further if you want to take my own advice.

Based on the Paranormal Activity film franchise, this plays picks up the general concept that houses aren’t haunted, people are. Because of this, when young couple James and Lou move to London, it doesn’t take long for whatever spirit was plaguing Lou to get a non-stop from O’Hare to Heathrow to stir shit up in Blighty. While James is at first skeptical about the bumps in the night being much more than Lou missing her medication, he soon realizes much more is at play. The star of this show is, unsurprisingly, the stage magic designed by the same folks behind Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. There are several moments of shock and awe, and I found myself clinging to the person next to me just as often (luckily he is someone I am married to). The sound, lighting, set, and design elements are simply fantastic. What fails the piece, though makes it no less entertaining, is the lore of the script.

It’s clear effort was put into this production to make it a play and not just an experience. It is understood that the stronger the characters are, the more we as an audience will care about their plight, and it will be that much scarier. James and Lou are sympathetic characters performed well, but there is a conflict in their relationship that never quite manifests. The original Paranormal Activity film was about a marriage as well, but the conflict was obvious: the husband believes there is something going on, but he completely ignores what the wife feels about what is haunting her, and he does it to his peril. In this script, James similarly ignores his wife’s adamant pleas that he follow her instinct on the haunting situation, but the writing feels unwilling to truly make him a benevolent villain in the way he needs to be for the end to feel earned. The subtext of Paranormal Activity is all about believing women and believing their pain, and touches upon the toxic masculinity that can seep into a modern marriage. That, plus demons. It’s actually quite simple and effective, and this play unfortunately heaps on too much new lore, ignores too many of the original rules of the IP, and ultimately makes less sense the more you talk about it on the way home.

That being said, the stage magic is worth the price of admission, and if you want to see something that will scare you, this will do the trick. I only wish it got under my skin a little bit more.

Overheard Exit Conversation: It was impossible to hear because there was so much of it, adding to the communal experience of being scared shitless in a room of strangers.

Ice Cream Report: This was my second show of the day so while there was ice cream I did not partake/was also afraid I would throw it in fear, so you are welcome, person sitting in front of me.

Programme Report: Y’all, this is not how you do a six pound program. I appreciate you don’t want to spoil too much, but there’s little more than acknowledgments from the writer and an (admittedly interesting) interview with a designer. Give me a contextual essay about horror in theatre or stage magic. Let’s have something about the original IP and how it went from a small-budget indie film to word of mouth phenomenon. Give us an interview with Toby the OG demon! Six pounds, this ain’t it. 1.5/5.

Director Ivo van Hove considers himself a maximalist minimalist and if a set covered in floor to ceiling carpeting isn’t exactly that, I don’t know what is.

I’m not wild about van Hove, and I’m not wild about Arthur Miller, so I’m not entirely sure why I did this to myself, but I sometimes think perhaps seeing something you know you won’t like takes the pressure off a bit and anything you do like is a special surprise. There were many such surprises in this production, many of them positive, but honestly all roads lead to Marianne Jean-Baptiste. That she was amazing was not surprising; anyone who has seen Hard Truths is aware of her magnetic brilliance. What was consistently exciting was seeing her raise the level of everyone around her every time she was on stage. As Kate, the grieving mother who refuses to acknowledge that her son Larry is dead and not simply missing in action, she is the glue both in and out of character. Her pain, her anger, her fortitude is all on display, and every actor on stage benefits from her presence. Bryan Cranston is at his best when he is manipulating others into following his narrative, offering jobs and perks in exchange for loyalty. In the later moments, when he is confronted with his part in his son’s death, his breakdown isn’t entirely convincing, especially as it is on the heels of Jean-Baptiste’s own heartbreaking realization. As the surviving son Chris, Papaa Essiedu is more an awkward mumbler than the neighbor that makes men want to improve their lives so much that the neighbor’s wife wants him gone. There are moments where we see the Essidu that blew all of us away in Death of England, but they are too few and far between to make the last moments truly count.

There is a strange disconnect in a lot of this production. In cutting down the script to suit an interval-free show, it is snappy in some parts, oddly sagging in others. The entire last act is done with ambient looping music and ambient looping lights, making what should be the height of tension into a sort of mood vibe one uses when they’re having trouble falling asleep. It was a strange decision for the climax of a drama.

England loves Arthur Miller. I’m not sure why. They love Ivo. Again, not sure why. And they love this production. And you know what, love in the world is a good thing. I do not begrudge more love in the world even if it baffles me entirely.

Overheard Exit Conversation: Special edition, because it isn’t an exit conversation, it’s a teenager sitting behind me narrating the entire play from start to finish, ending with “oh he’s going to shoot himself”.

Programme Report: Nothing too wild, some essays about the director and set designer, a piece about the American dream, another about cutting corners in industry. 3/5.

Ice Cream Report: No interval. All my sons, none my ice creams.

While the giant glowing eye logo of the Kit Kat Club beckons you from the top of the Playhouse Theatre by Charring Cross, if you want to see the show, you have to go in the back door. You are lead down the cast entrance, down down down, into the seedy underbelly of Berlin. Bare-chested men in lipstick dance in front of mirrors, violinists demand for foot-stomping, and the old men in the unisex bathroom look at you strangely even though the door clearly says Unisex.

Once in the theatre with your free shot of schnapps, the Emcee greets you with his famous Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome to the Kit Kat Club. He assures you that though outside the world is ugly, here everything is beautiful. The women are beautiful, the men are beautiful, even the orchestra is beautiful! Lights up on the orchestra who are... in snuggies? Well at least they look comfortable.

This is the course of events for most of the West End’s hit immersive revival of Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret: long stretches of wonder punctuated by a sudden “wait, what?”

There is no derth of iconic Cabaret performances, ranging from the 1972 film that solidified the tone of the piece, to the 1993 Donmar Warehouse production that saw Alan Cumming create an iconic role that had already been made iconic by Joel Grey as the Emcee decades prior. Because of this legendary history, it makes sense that director Rebecca Frecknall chose to deviate from our collective understanding of Cabaret wherever it was possible to deviate. Gone is the monochrome, replaced by colorful, whispy pieces that evoke Bohemian sensibility and certainly easier to dance in than fishnet stokings. The choreography, which Bob Fosse had once turned on its head so significantly you would be forgiven to not realize he was not the original choreographer, is now more interpretive, eschewing the minutiae of Fossian dance to broader, bigger strokes that take up space and stage as the Emcee puppeteers the dancers. The set is now decidedly in the round, making it clear that in this production, we are always in the Kit Kat Club.

Except we’re not always in the Kit Kat Club. There is also a story to tell, that of Clifford Bradshaw, an American author who bops around the world looking for something to write about, and finds it in the Club’s original Manic Pixie Dream Girl Sally Bowles. Evan Noblezada successfully encapsulates Sally’s mediocrity without being mediocre herself, allowing Sally to be likeable, unlikable, chaotic, vulnerable, and everything in between. We can see why the reluctant Cliff eventually comes around to wanting her, even when (or perhaps because) the first time he sees her she is dressed as a sexy baby.

In a show without a steady moral compass, the closest we get is Fraulein Schneider, Cliff’s opportunistic landlady, and her tenant Herr Schultz, who share a sweet love affair that the audience knows is doomed because of the latter’s Jewish faith. It says something that this part of the show is staged almost the same way in every production, so foolproof is its writing and characterization.

That is the most special thing about Cabaret as a musical: the lock on its characters. Some characters don’t sing what they mean, but what they wish they meant: Fraulein Schneider sings “So What”, establishing her laissez-faire attitude, but by the end of the show admits she “regrets everything”. Other characters say exactly what they mean, only to be ignored. Sally purrs that “you have to understand the way I am, mein herr, a tiger is a tiger not a lamb, mein heir”, yet Cliff wants to turn her into exactly that. It’s his inability to believe Sally when she tells him the truth that leads to the combustion of their relationship. This production does a fantastic job of letting these particular moments bloom without distraction.

There are plenty of “wait, what?” moments, however, that put little lumps into the theatrical gravy. The Emcee sings a bit of ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’, the show’s Nazi hymn that foreshadows where the show is going, and while he does it removes a suspiciously familiar blonde wig which he later dons (pun intended) to signify the necessary assimilation to survive. This moment, while admittedly relevant, paints the foreshadow far too dark, and when the friendly Ernst Ludwig takes off his coat at a party to reveal his swastika band, the shock is lessened because we’ve been primed. Similarly, in the final moments, when a broken Sally sings the title song, her voice is too pleasing, her oversized men’s suit too stylish. It is perhaps the perfect image for this revival: a series of beautifully polished pieces that are perhaps too polished to fit together properly.

It is also worth saying that Cabaret is a show written in the 60s looking back at facism in the 30s being put on in 2025. We no longer have the benefit of looking back at facism; it’s already come around again. This show has never offered any sort of optimism or advice when it comes to dealing with such things, and it’s not going to start now. But there is something particularly ineffective in seeing all the characters dressed in the same grey suits, the color drained from the world, everyone having assimilated. Perhaps this is the exact inertia we are all experiencing at this very moment in time, and exactly what we will be confronted with when we leave the theatre. It’s only too bad that, like ourselves in these predictable times, the moment feels entirely unmet.

Overheard exit conversation: “That sort of took a turn, didn’t it?”

Ice Cream Report: No ice cream, because ice cream is not cool. Perhaps you would like a shot of cherry-flavored paint thinner?

Programme Report: A beautiful program with some lovely bits about the costumes and sets, but not much else. 3/5

Full disclosure: This is the first play I went to after fracturing my coccyx. Why choose a 2h50 play when you can’t sit, you may ask. That’s how much I like Hamlet is my answer, but unfortunately, I could not stay quietus with my bare bodkin, and therefor left at interval. Because of this, I will only address things I liked about the production.

I think we have a Hamlet in each of us, and that’s what makes the character so enduring. My Hamlet is different than your Hamlet is different than Simon Russel Beale’s Hamlet is certainly different than Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet. People make all sorts of decisions, from the obvious (he may be cray) to the less obvious (he cray cray) to the over the top (just keep adding ‘crays’ until only Nicki Minaj can understand). What’s important to me when I see Hamlet is not that I understand what Hamlet is doing, but that I can see the actor understands. Hiran Abeysekera (brilliant in The Father and The Assassin) is a frenetic, effervescent Hamlet. He’s anxious, he’s manic, but above all he’s grieving, and you can feel that in quieter moments , such as when he clings to the seat his father’s ghost recently occupied. Across the board, this production emphasized those family ties that perhaps go for granted in other productions. The unit that was Polonius, Laertes, and Ophelia felt like an actual family, joshing with each other, finishing Polonius’ famous bits of fatherly advice as though he repeats them all the time. These relationships make me more invested in their ultimate fates, which are hopefully happy. As I said, I left at interval.

Some things I am sad I missed:

-Francesca Mills doing mad Ophelia. She played sane Ophelia with a strength and humor not often shown in the character, and as evidenced by her roles in All of Us and Two Noble Kinsman, we know she can do cray.

-I really love seeing what they do with the duel at the end. By showing Claudius in fencing gear earlier in the play, it’s possible it would be with epees, which makes for easier losing of weapons. However, what’s really cool about that fight is that in the original, it would have been with dagger and rapier. It would have been more difficult for Hamlet to deduce that Laertes’ wasn’t blunted until the moment he’s hit, causing Hamlet to do a VERY DIFFICULT COOL DAGGER RAPIER THING called a left-hand seizure to switch his blade with Laertes. I just think that’s neat. My guess is that it won’t be with dagger/rapier because a) this was not in period as evidenced by the wearing of a Blockbuster Video sweatshirt and the application of the macarena, and b) Hamlet whips out a gun at one point. I don’t love guns in Shakespeare, because they ruin the tension, they deliver a quick solution when we’re meant to be still searching for one, and actors can’t help but gesture with it, making them look like some kind of Goodfella. I suppose I will have to wait until the production is in cinemas early 2026 to see if Hamlet capped a bitch.

Overheard exit conversation: “They did Ophelia dirty with the track suit. Like, girl, you were not just reading in your room.”

Programme Report: A piece about breaking the fourth wall, and another about the history of Hamlet at the National (it was the first production they ever did). No third essay, but beautiful photos of the set designs. 3/5

Ice Cream Report: Ice cream is for stayers.

BONUS Best Theatre-y Inside Joke: The players in this production for The Murder of Gonzago are kind of wanky luvvy actors. When the curtain comes up, their stage is particle board with plastic chairs… If I could figure out how to put a cheeky side-eye emoji, I’d do it here.

For the inaugural play of her inaugural season, the new artistic director of the National Theatre Indhu Rubasingham has chosen to direct a new adaptation of Euripedes’ The Bacchae. The original play is about the god Dionysus whipping his cult of women, the Bacchae, into a violent frenzy to exact punishment on King Pentheus for denying his divinity. This adaptation is similar but- get this- sometimes they say fuck.

As with every Ancient Greek play, the Chorus is our anchor in the action, and here the Chorus is the Bacchae themselves: a group of female followers of the god Dionysus who are keen to Fuck Shit Up. There’s a type A one with a clipboard, there’s a tough one that only grunts out a few tough words at a time, and there’s a smart one that knows lots of medical facts, and then there are twins because we’ve run out of personalities, sorry ladies. It’s the sort of #feminist rewrite that can really only be achieved by a male writer in that there are so, so many women about, but the most compelling arcs are given to the male characters, in this case Dionysus, Pentheus, and even the very silly artist formerly known as Bull, Bubull.

This is Nima Taleghani’s first play, and there is an unwillingness to accept theatre in all its goofiness that is at the root of this play’s problems. In an interview with The Guardian, Taleghani speaks of his discomfort with the form, and one wonders why it was so enthusiastically pushed to the front of the new director’s season when he and the play weren’t quite ready to exist in this capacity. Constantly clinging to irony and eschewing any possibility of sincerity, the text is full of exclamations. (Fuck! Orgy! Wank! Dick! This ain’t your mama’s Bacchae!) But while the words themselves are declarative and assured, the meanings behind them carry only question marks. (Feminism….? Immigration…? Pentheus is Trump maybe…? Dionysus is a migrant, does that work…?) Taleghani has a lot of ideas of what the Bacchae would be, but seems unwilling to truly push forward with any of them. A play that should at its core be deeply disturbing and both psychologically and literally violent instead becomes Horrible Histories does Euripides, or Cher Horowitz from Clueless giving a book report with a facial expression that says ‘can you believe someone made me do this’? It is in the moments between Dionysus and Pentheus that the dialogue most gets to shine, even if the purpose (toxic masculinity…?) is still a little under-baked.

The play is at its absolute best in the musical moments. The choreography, joined with the chorus proclaiming themselves as Bacchae, make for the only times where they feel like a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, the rhymes go from forced (Egypt/eejit) to cringey (youth in Asia/euthanasia) to baffling (cunning linguist/cunnilingus). As with other plays I have seen this season, there is so much promise here, and it simply needed more time and more craft to get it to the right place.

That is not to say it can’t be a cracking night out. The lighting and set pieces are stunning, and the show starts in such a magnificent way that I think the rest of the show simply chases that feeling. As Pentheus in disguise as a Bacchae, James McArdle wears a dress that was distractingly gorgeous. I’m pretty sure McArdle and I are the same body type, so if someone from the Nash needs to get rid of it after the show, hit me up. What was really fun was seeing a group of school kids get really into it. At times, while I felt like there was more than a whiff was ‘*boom boom chh* My name is Dionysus and I’m here to say/ I’m gonna do revenge in a major way’, it was clearly hitting with The Youth. If it leads them to go home and pick up some Ancient Greek texts, or really any play, I’d say that’s well worth the price of admission.

At the end of the play (spoiler), Pentheus is violently dispatched, and Dionysus is invited to be the god of theatre. He ascends a beautiful golden rope to the heavens, and the leader of the Bacchae, Vida, sends us off with a reminder to not be a bystander (or something), and then she shoots off a flare into the darkness. This moment felt like Indra Rubasingham on stage herself, shooting the starting pistol for her first season. The play may not have been the straight shot one might have hoped for, but heck if I’m not excited to see what comes next.

Overheard Exit Conversation: Shrugs. “Bit panto.”

Programme Report: Standard National Theatre programme fair: An essay on Euripides, another on the Chorus, and a nifty history of Ancient Greek theatre at the Nash. 3/5.

Ice Cream Report: No interval, no ice cream, but the Nash isn’t really an ice creamy sort of place anyway.

Born With Teeth is a what-if story about playwrights William Shakespeare (Edward Bluemel) and Christopher Marlowe (Ncuti Gatwa) collaborating on Henry VI. Marlow is a sexy slutty spy who may or may not be trying to either recruit or turn in Shakespeare, who just wants to get the play done/maybe have a bit of a roll on the desk with Marlowe. In a break-neck 80 minute run-time, the two lay out their life philosophies but never quite each other. If you saw the above poster and thought ‘well hello there’, I am sorry, but you are leaving with theatrical blue balls.

There’s so much potential in a play on this subject because we know so little about Shakespeare and Marlowe that the world is basically a speculative writer’s oyster. Liz Duffy Adams focuses on the newly formed secret service, the idea that perhaps Marlowe had been recruited into the fold, something that will ultimately lead to his early death. The play wants us to not know who we can trust, whether Marlowe is really attracted to Shakespeare, or if it’s an act to either destroy the bard or else bring him into the sexy world of leatherclad spies. Unfortunately, the script lacks subtext of any kind, I suspect partially due to how much information has to be pumped into the short running time. To have two people in a room who are meant to not trust each other constantly say exactly what they mean takes all tension out of the scenes, even when Marlowe is practically on top of a panting Shakespeare. The bones of a wonderful story are all here, and were it given another hour to play around with some of the ideas, it might feel more like a full meal than bag of cotton candy that melts when you stuff it in your face.

Someone I am married to, let’s call him Blusband, often asks me to write a musical version of the classic TV show Cheers. This comes to mind because my answer to him was and shall ever be that I will never adapt something that already has an iconic song. There’s no way to live up to it. It takes a very, very confident writer to throw in actual Shakespeare lines into your play, and unfortunately the ones in Born With Teeth stick out as either superior or else shoehorned in (“I haven’t started to sharpen my teeth on you” says Marlowe. “I think you were born with teeth,” answers Shakespeare. Huh?). Give this play another 60 pages, and we could be in Stoppardian territory, and the waste in shoving this onto the West End before it was brilliant is what irks me the most. When we reached the end, I felt expected to have been manipulated into feeling something for these starcrossed characters, but I couldn’t rouse myself. The only reason I knew they cared at all for each other is that they had said so.

Gatwa and Bluemel have excellent chemistry that I wanted to see between five and twenty thousand more examples of. The set was sparse: a table and chairs surrounded by walls of lightbulbs that somehow didn’t overpower. The acts were punctuated by odd late-90s hacker imagery that never quite found it’s place in the whole.

Ultimately I want them to go back and do it again, remembering that if you promise us teeth, you have to show them.

Overheard Exit Conversations: “Those lightbulbs though.”

Programme Report: Spoiled for essays! We have stuff on Marlowe, on Shakespeare’s collaborations, Elizabethen spies, and the sets/costumes. 4/5

Ice Cream Report: Once again, no interval, no ice cream. When did England become North Korea.

They dug a hole on stage! They had dirt and everything! Sorry, I just really enjoyed that. It’s not easy to really evoke the outdoors in a warehouse, but between the birdsong and the darkening sunlamps, the grass and the dirt and the woodchopping, I was pretty convinced, even if I could see every single person in the audience because of that damned sun.

I digress.

Juniper Blood is comprised of three scenes that take place on Lip’s family farm. His girlfriend Ruth has a dream of making the farm organic and sustainable. A dinner with Ruth’s ex-step-daughter Milly and her knowledgeable conservationist friend Femi results in Ruth changing how she means to run the farm. In the second scene, these plans have proven to be much more difficult than originally thought, and the pregnant Ruth spars with a Lip who has decided that the only answer is to go off the grid and let the farm rewild itself. They part, and in the third scene, they meet again several years later and Lip must make a choice between his firmly held beliefs and what is is doing with his land or being present for his daughter in the modern world.

There’s a lot to chew on in Mike Bartlett’s script, and his natural dialogue belies a wonderfully complex script that makes the audience question how far they might go to deal with the existential crisis we are currently confronted with in modern life. Is Ruth too much of idealist when she reasonably suggests that living of the grid is fine as long as her daughter can be guaranteed the benefits of modern medicine? Is Lip insane when he refuses that idea, not wanting to bankroll big pharmaceuticals? What does it mean to live a life where one does no harm? Ruth wants to be sustainable, wants to live simpler, but she is, as we all are, trapped in a cage of our own making. She doesn’t want to dispose of her phone like Lip has, not because she loves it, but because she’s afraid of being disconnected. Her concerns are reasonable, but as long as she is participating in capitalism, can she truly be a conservationist? And then there is Lip, who believes chopping down a tree is the same as if someone took an axe for himself. He is a proponent of evolution and survival of the fittest, opining that perhaps modern medicine and other such luxuries prevent us from being killed off at a rate that the Earth can handle. But evolution, too, is what compels us as animals to reproduce and protect our young. Therein lies Lip’s final challenge: where does his young daughter fit into his belief system, and is it possible he doesn’t even really know?

Despite two intervals, this play zooms by. There is not a weak link in the cast, and the particular chemistry between Hattie Morahan’s Ruth and Sam Troughton’s Lip keeps it all moving. As Ruth and Lip’s old-school farmer neighbor, Jonathan Slinger brings a vulnerable edge, and in his speech about not being able to find the future, he perhaps pinpoints the thesis of the play: how can we plan for a future that feels less and less clear every day? Like the rest of us, Juniper Blood can’t provide answers, but the questions it raises are still worth asking. Maybe continuing to ask is as much of an expression of hope as we can expect these days.

Overheard Exit Conversations: “I was thinking that poor tree must be very confused getting planted every night but then I saw it’s plastic.”

Programme Report: A free digital programme to keep in line with the values of the play. The Donmar always slants slightly more dramaturgical with their programme fodder, and this is no different, as evidenced in a fine piece about the role of farms the history of theatre. Also is a bit about school-based theatre and Frankenstein Adjusts His Ring Light (and Then Starts Dancing), a modern take on Frankenstein for young people wherein teenager Vic creates an AI bot called Adam. 3/5

Ice Cream Report: Double interval, no ice cream??? Devastation.

Based on the 2019 poetry book by Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic tells the story of a fictional town in an equally fictional war with an authoritarian regime (fictional). A deaf boy is shot when he can’t hear the commands of an occupying soldier, and the next day, the rest of the town is deaf.

As with much theatre associated with theatre company Complicité, this work makes use of Brecht’s alienation effect. We are told from the start that these are actors, that the village is not real, that nothing that happens is anything more than a story. When done well, this is quite effective, particularly in the beginning. Romel Belcher, with translation by Caoimhe Coburn Gray, uses BSL to explain that this is an accessible performance, therefor concessions will be made for those in the audience who don’t understand BSL, such as spoken word and surtitles. It is at the top of the show where this concept is its most vital. Belcher goes on to talk about the nature of communication, how translation is an imperfect art even in white BSL versus black BSL, where even the word for ‘colonization’ has separate signs depending on if you are taking the land or having it taken from you. As the play progresses, there are other moments where the nature of BSL is discussed, but they often happen less organically and in a moment that shatters the tension.

Gray and Belcher become the main characters of the first half of the play, Sonya, who is pregnant, and Alphonso, her husband. They perform a puppet show in the town square, and it is here where the little boy is murdered by a soldier. Like others in the play, after his death he is attached to a rope and raised up, like a puppet being taken out of its box. The following day, the townspeople are deaf. Some woke up that way, some are pretending as a protest against the occupying forces. The second half of the play focuses on the character Galya and the women who work at her puppet theatre, seducing and killing soldiers.

This play reminded me of a time when I wanted to make a pumpkin pie. I used pumpkin pie mix for the filling, but misread it as just pumpkin, so I added all the things that were already in the mix. A double filled pie, if you will. When it came out of the oven, it looked fine to the eye, but as soon as it was lifted out, the filling waved back and forth precariously. This play is pumpkin pie soup. It wants to say so much, and in throwing everything in there, yes you got it all in, but now it’s a bit of a mess. When it is trying to be about accessibility, there are many interesting moments. Similarly when it is about fascism. Similarly when about parenthood in wartime. String them together, and like the limp puppets, they are just a bunch of disconnected bits that knock into each other.

There was a lack of trust in the audience much of the time. All soldiers are played by Dylan Tonge Jones, which feels like a pretty simply metaphore, but they nevertheless explained it to us when he says “do we all look the same to you?” The poetry the play is based on is sometimes recited, but when it is, it is laughed at by other characters or meant to seem ironic. There is a fine line between Brecht’s alienation effect- this is a play and we are actors- and Shakespeare’s Snug explaining that he’s not really a lion just playing a lion so don’t freak out. I’m not sure this play knows which side of that line it wants to be on.

All of that being said, at the end of the day, we still ate the pie. It still tasted good, we just used spoons instead of forks. However much of a misfire much this play might be, I’ve still been thinking about it all week, and I know I will continue to. In that respect, it succeeded.

Overheard Exit Conversations: There were many people speaking BSL and with my Makaton Level 3 I was able to pick up ‘soldier’.

Programme Report: No programs, but the playtext was only five pounds. I would have loved some essays about this play and will have to make due reading the playtext next to the poetry book.

Ice Cream Report: No interval…

A rumor that I choose to believe is that when Queen Elizabeth I saw Henry IV Part I, she requested that Shakespeare write another play featuring Falstaff, and she wanted to see what it would be like for him to be in love, and please write it very fast, thank you. This is the 17th century equivalent of writing a fanfiction in which Sherlock and Watson finally kiss. RIP Elizabeth I, you would have loved Tumblr.

Merry Wives of Windsor is a unique entry into the Willy Shakes canon as it is mostly in prose and it’s a comedy in the way that we recognize the genre now: that is to say less about a marriage at the end and more about running in and out of rooms and hiding in baskets and making a few dick jokes for good measure. It’s basically a lost episode of Frasier. In the main part of the story, Falstaff, here played as a sexy pirate by George Fouracres, woos two married women with identical love letters, and the wives (merry ones) seek revenge. Add in three suitors for a beautiful daughter, a singing Welsh priest, and some jealous husband plotting, and you’re in for some zaniness.

I am easy to laugh and easy to cry, and I will say I laughed til I cried two or three times. This cast is phenomenal and makes me wish they were a company, because I’d see them in basically evertything, even Titus Andronicus, which I hate. The cast doubles up in many cases, and manage to bring different levels of nuttiness, be that a strange walk (Adam Wadsworth), or a silly French accent (Adam Wadsworth again). As the eponymous Wives, Katherin Pierce and Emma Pallant make for a very satisfying double act that serves as the delightful anchor of the play.

The set, a teal William Morris-like print that looks astoundingly like the skin I printed for my iPod in 2004, works well as a backdrop, but less so in the costuming of the residents of Windsor. Having such a busy print against itself made the cast look like chameleons even when they weren’t meant to be hiding.

Overall, this is an incredibly fun return to what the Globe does best: authentic Shakespeare that lets him be a complete and total weirdo.

Overheard Exit Conversations: “Falstaff, phwoar!”

Programme Report: A lovely essay about Windsor in the early 1600s (With a map! Result!) with a focus on women. Also a piece about metamorphosis in Shakespeare. 3.5/5

Ice Cream Report: Both ice cream and sorbet on offer in the courtyard, I opted for very tasty chocolate. 10/10

Inter Alia is Suzie Miller’s follow-up to smash hit Prima Facie, which took theatres and cinemas by storm in 2022. Again, Miller draws upon her former life as a lawyer, focusing particularly on strong women flourishing in a career designed by men and struggling with their part in a system that is not built to work for them. While Prima Facie centers on a criminal defense barrister’s rape and resulting trial, Inter Alia concerns judge Jessica as she negotiates work with raising a feminist son and being a good wife to a husband threatened by her career. As one would expect from a play called Inter Alia (Latin for ‘among other things’), Jessica oscillates between rock star judge and guilty mother, never second guessing herself at work, always second guessing at home. She raises up other women in her field and is an advocate for female victims, but feels like she must be careful not to emasculate her husband with her laurels. She is proud of how she has taught her son about concent, pornography, and autonomy, but when he is accused of rape, she struggles between doing what is right by the law and right as a mother.

After the massive success of Prima Facie, you would need someone with the star quality of Rosamund Pike to follow up, and she nails the role. She is able to be fierce and powerful as much as she can be vulnerable, creating as well-formed of a character as can be done in an hour and forty-five minutes. Similary, the men around her- son (Jasper Talbot) and husband (Jamie Glover)- slowly tranform from foils constantly getting in the way to fully-fledged people all their own. Once this happens, the crisis of male stoicism is opened to us, and how toxic masculinty harms us all can be broached without pretense.

Prima Facie’s director Justin Martin returns with a bit more in his pocket than the first time around. While Prima relied on a single set, the stage of the Lyttleton Theatre has hidden layers, pulling us into the hole of Jessica’s memories before grounded us suddenly in the familiar kitchen. Much has been made about the usage of microphones, but it was always to serve the purpose of judge-as-rock-star, and once for a performance of Tina Turner’s ‘Simply the Best’.

There were moments during Inter Alia where I was very concerned about the knife’s edge tipping into trite or unbelievable. Right up to the last moments it felt like perhaps we were going into territory that would weigh down the balance. This is, however, Suzie Miller. In a world with increasinly less nuance in our art, Miller is a gentle hand cupping our cheek to guide our eyes to the mirror. It’s more than obvious how well she knows her legal onions, though they are so subtle they are more like legal leeks. We are in safe hands here.

My only real point of contention is how, during Jessica’s rock star judge moments, she is backed up by her son on the drums and her husband on guitar. If this were presented as part of a fantasy, that she wishes her family to be her supporting band, it would make more sense. Unfortunately, the use of the boys as backup continues unaltered throughout and it never completely makes sense other looking (admittedly) cool.

Originally, I thought perhaps Prima Facie and Inter Alia might be the first two thirds of a Legal Trilogy, just because that is what one has come to expect in the Star Warsification of pop culture. I have since realized they are sister shows, fitting together like two halves of a deeply discomforting friendship necklace.

Overheard Exit Conversations: “I found it very moving. My son would never do something like that.. but if he did…”

Programme Report: The National has great programs, and this one has essays on the history of women in law and the state of parenting an adolescent in today’s tech-obsessed culture. Suzie Miller has a piece as well, and any Miller essay is one worth reading. 3/5

Ice Cream Report: No interval, no ice cream, nul points.

It’s the time of year where my inbox is inundated with press releases for Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Every year, more of them are from independent companies and individuals who are asked to serve their show as marketer, producer, actor, director, caterer, and any other number of posts that in a more sane situation might be carried out by an entire team. This means many of the releases I receive asking me to see and review their shows are written by well-meaning, talented folks who might never have done this before. Sometimes a less effective press release is the difference between going on my watch list and being sent to trash. Here are a few common mistakes that I see often in press releases for Fringe shows.

1. Leading with accolades. Listen, I am so happy you’ve won Woking’s Next Top Model and were a runner-up for Best Fruit-Based Pun at last year’s Brighton Fringe, I really am. It’s an impressive paragraph, and you are clearly doing well. But I have no idea what your show is about, and I’m scrolling and scrolling, and now here is some stuff about how the director once met Pinter at a Tesco Express. I want to know what your show is about FIRST. I might only have two minutes between shows to read this. I need to know what your show is. Not only that, but if I get the impression you’re not wanting for press, I might skip over you to review someone who needs it more.

2. Misrepresenting your show in a way that only confuses me. Every year I get a few of these: “Cinderella is sick of cleaning her stepmothers house, and she wants to go to the ball- luckily she has a fairy godmother! This classic story comes to Gilded Balloon for its third year in a row, and it’s ADULTS ONLY! FAIRYTALE? MORE LIKE SEXYTAIL!” And then I’m like… what? If I only had a second to read that, I would have brought like twelve children and gotten into so much trouble. Start with your elevator pitch- a concise one or two sentence description that gives me the accurate tone of your show. Otherwise… there are going to be some kids at your sexytail.

3. The press release is an attached PDF. This is likely not going to open properly on my phone while I’m bopping around the Royal Mile from show to show. I know reviewers who won’t so much as open an email if they see a PDF attached.

4. You have AI prompts for suggested interview questions. This is new this year. I’ve been getting a lot of emails with pre-written interview ideas, some of them with questions included. Y’all… what’s even the point then? This is like when Clark Kent interviews Superman! If you’re coming up with the questions and the slant, I am just some kind of blog husk. One of my favorite things about covering the Fringe is talking to people about their work and getting to know what they’re passionate about. Don’t take that from me!

So here’s the press release I like to see: It gives me the elevator pitch right up top. It includes the dates and times pretty close to that. There is information on how I can easily get a ticket. What you do with the rest of the space is up to you, but I know many reviewers who prefer pitches written by the artist rather than a PR person or AI. It’s scrappy humanity that makes the Fringe special, so lean into that!

Jaimie Lloyd’s production of Evita is stirring up controversy even as it enters its second week of previews. This is due to Lloyd’s decision to have the show’s most popular song, ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’, performed not inside the theatre but instead on the London Palladium’s balcony that overlooks Argyll Street, a move that was predictable from the moment we heard that a) Lloyd was directing and b) it was clear there was a balcony available. Several of Lloyd’s past few productions have played with the boundaries of the theatre as a building, as well as the application of digital cameras and screens to mixed effect. In his 2023 production of Sunset Boulevard, the screens kept the cinematic nature of the source material at the front of our minds, and a performance of the title song that weaves through the theater and famously utilizes the streets outside connected Hollywood to the West End/Broadway medium. Yes we are in a theatre, it says, but this is the pictures, baby. Conversely, having Tom Holland perform as Romeo on a rooftop while it’s piped to the audience via drone cameras didn’t connect you to the material as much as make one say, ‘oh wow, that really is Spiderman’. Whether or not Lloyd’s tricks will work for Evita is yet to be revealed- it’s still in previews, and reviews won’t be out for another week. What we can talk about is the discourse surrounding the outdoor balcony scene and whether or not concerns of FOMO are valid.

Evita is an Andrew Lloyd Weber situation about Eva Peron, the aspiring actress who rises from nothing to become the first lady of Argentina. The song in question occurs at the top of Act II, when Eva addresses her adoring fans from the balcony of the Casa Rosada, the Argentinian equivalent of the White House. By the time we hear ‘Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina’, we’ve already heard the tune at the top of the show in ‘Oh What a Circus’, sung by the narrator. It is a cynical response the country’s mourning of Evita, who is described as a diva who hadn’t done anything of consequence for her country in years. When Eva Peron sings the same tune as ‘Don’t Cry For Me Argentina’, the lyrics become a speech to the people of Argentina from their much adored new first lady. In his autobiography, Tim Rice writes that the title was chosen from the epitaph on the real Eva Peron’s gravestone and then followed up with “a string of meaningless platitudes”, lyrics like ‘I love you and hope you love me’, and ‘all you have to do is look at me to know every word is true’. It is the type of monosyllabic sound bite that paints with the broadest brush in order to appeal to the largest possible audience, the type of thing we’re all used to hearing when we are courted by politicians for a larger and larger portion of each year. The song by intention is a political speech designed to manipulate and convince the masses of a sacrifice on Peron’s part. It is this aspect that makes Jamie Lloyd’s decision incredibly effective.

If you are on Argyll Street at 9pm during show night, the only context you get for this song is a beautiful woman in a ball gown singing with conviction about her decision to dedicate herself to you. Who cares if you didn’t spend money on a ticket to see Oscar-nominated Rachel Zegler perform at the Palladium? Theatre is for everyone, and now here she is, for you, performing the biggest song of the show while the suckers inside, presumably, have to watch it on a screen. And then, after soaking in your applause for a moment, she retreats back into the building. She has returned to her elite world, but you’re left with a moment of connection, one that perhaps makes you feel like you’ve had a personal moment, if not with the actress herself then with the people around you on the street. Maybe you even talk to them. Maybe you even talk to them about those morons inside who paid top dollar while you got the real show gratis.

The people inside the theatre, if recent articles are anything to go by, feel ripped off by this. What is the point of paying to see a specific person sing a specific song if you don’t even get to see it in the same room? In a world of sixty-second films and 140 character opinions, it’s easy to see how this might feel like a real loss. You are missing the THING. Not only that, but you have to sit here like a chump while other people get to see the THING, and if you get up to go look at the THING you’ll probably not be let back in! Well, let’s not forget there is no thing without the stuff that precedes it. What I’d argue is that what the audience has paid for in this situation is context. The people on the street have gotten the best song, the pretty dress, the emotional plea. The audience, in contrast, sees the machinations behind the scenes, the deals made, the chinks in the armor and, if screens and cameras are used, perhaps the sweat on the brow of the diva as she puts on her show for the masses. And then, she comes back into the theatre, and sings 'Just listen to that! We are adored, we are loved!’ You’ve been in on it the whole time. Maybe you can hear the cheering from outside, but she’s here with you, back where she belongs, with the air conditioning and the ice cream you got at interval. The people on Argyll Street have dispersed.

Perhaps, on another day, when the paying audience member finds herself on Argyll Street, she sees Eva Peron belting from the balcony of the London Palladium. The dress is the same, as are the words— but she has seen behind the veil, and now it is less the Best Song in the Show, and more a single part of a complex tale of power, and what it means when a politician ends a song with ‘every word is true’. Surely that’s worth the price of admission.

To close up, here is the definitive version of the song if you are of a certain age: The Miami Mix version by Madonna.

I think it’s worth mentioning Evita is Donald Trump’s favorite musical.

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“What is dramaturgy?” Achilles asks the tortoise.

“Oh, dramaturgy is many things,” the tortoise muses. “Many, many things.”

“But what is its essence?” questions Achilles.

“Its essence is its own,” the tortoise answers.

“Yeah but… what is it really? Like, dictionary definition, what is it?” queries Achilles.

“It is easier to define what dramaturgy is not,” asserts the tortoise.

“But like… it’s a noun, right? You can agree it’s a noun,” posits Achilles.

“How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?” the tortoise- after checking his thesaurus- expresses.

In the weeks leading up to my masters of dramaturgy program, I’ve read about a dozen books dedicated to the subject of ‘what is dramaturgy’ and the most concise answer I can come up with is ‘don’t worry about it’. The least concise answer is ‘when you ask ‘what is dramaturgy’, you ask the wrong question’. And maybe that statement itself is the definition of dramaturgy. That feels appropriate.

Geoff Proehl’s foreward to Katalin Trencsényi’s book Dramaturgy in the Making includes a by no means definitive list of verbs attributed to the dramaturg in alphabetical order: Accomodate, Administer, Advance Advise, all the way, presumably, to Zebra. The demands and expectations of a dramaturg depend on the director, the text, the company, the way the wind is blowing. A dramaturg can be entrusted with seeing the director’s vision through the entire process, put in charge of Brecht’s ‘red thread’ that runs the theme through the piece. A dramaturg can, as in the tradition of New Dramaturgy, be more part of the collaborative process, working to shape the piece from the very beginning and keeping newly devised scenes copacetic with what came before. A dramaturg can be simply thinking of dramaturgy, writing a blog post that becomes increasingly less edited as the autocorrect turns itself off because the writer has written a non-existent word- ‘dramaturgy’- too many times. It can mean theatre critic, researcher, translator, liaison, cheerleader, mischief-maker, mirror holder, mirror breaker, mirror mender. And maybe none of those things at all.

Of course, if I explain it like that to a family member who is asking me ‘what is a dramaturg’ in passing just to be polite, I can’t very well launch into a tight-five presentation on mirrors and zebras and Bertolt Brecht’s concept of Verfremdungseffekt. I think at least for the first few family gatherings, I will rely on the most concise explanation I have found:

Don’t worry about it.

Drama turgid. Bloated with love for theater/the Yorkshire Crisps I got during interval.

Dramaturg ID. My identity as dramaturg is so important that I think the term should actually be Drainmaturge so you can’t spell it without 'Erin’.

Dramaturg id. My pure unfiltered psyche at its most primitive state wants to be pedantic about Back to the Future: The Musical.