satire
Dead Dad Dog, Finborough Theatre review - Scottish two-hander plays differently 35 years on, but still entertainsSaturday, 14 October 2023![]() I know, I was there. Well, not in Edinburgh in 1985, but in Liverpool in 1981, and the pull of London and the push from home, was just as strong for me back then as it is for Eck in John McKay’s comedy Dead Dad Dog. Back in London for the... Read more... |
Untitled F*ck M*ss S**gon Play, Young Vic review - committed and important play let down by heavy-handed writingWednesday, 27 September 2023Seldom can a title have given so much away about the play to follow, not just in terms of the subject matter but also in terms of the sledgehammer approach to driving home its points. Kimber Lee, who won the inaugural Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting... Read more... |
Fool's Paradise review - unfunny stab at making fun of HollywoodTuesday, 29 August 2023![]() It must have looked like a funny idea on paper: a mute innocent stumbles into a Hollywood career, is mindlessly fêted by the industry and throws all its idiocies into stark relief. It’s an idea as old as the romances of Chretien de Troyes and... Read more... |
Modest, Kiln Theatre review - tale of Victorian would-be trailblazer fails and succeedsThursday, 06 July 2023![]() Whether you believe that Ellen Brammar’s play, Modest, newly arrived in London from Hull Truck Theatre, succeeds or not, rather depends on your criteria for evaluating theatre. On storytelling, character development and nuance, it is two and a half... Read more... |
Robin Hood. The Legend. Re-written, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - no bullseye for new take on familiar charactersMonday, 26 June 2023![]() After the pantos, the movies (epic, camp and animated) and the television series, is there anything new to be mined in the story of Robin Hood? Probably not, as this messy, misjudged show takes that hope and fires an arrow through its heart.We’re in... Read more... |
Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image The Musical, Phoenix Theatre review - more crude than cruelFriday, 16 June 2023![]() There are flashes during Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image The Musical of the old mordant humour from the show's heyday, when you could see Maggie the dominatrix, grey John Major eating his peas with his pants over his trousers and... Read more... |
It’s a Motherf**king Pleasure, Soho Theatre review - disability-led comedy hits hardMonday, 01 May 2023![]() Just when you’ve relaxed a little, privilege duly checked and confident that you won’t be guilt-tripped for nipping into that disabled loo a few years ago at the National (c’mon, the interval was nearly over and needs must), FlawBored drop a bomb... Read more... |
The Good Person of Szechwan, Lyric Hammersmith review - wild ride in hyperreality slides byMonday, 24 April 2023![]() As the UK undergoes yet another political convulsion, this time concerning the threshold for ministers being shitty to fellow workers, it is apt that Bertolt Brecht’s parable about the challenges of being good in a dysfunctional society hits London... Read more... |
Infinity Pool review - it's like The White Lotus on bad acidFriday, 24 March 2023![]() Director Brandon Cronenberg has inherited his father David’s eye for the twisted and the sinister. After the creepy mind-meld dystopia of 2020’s Possessor, Infinity Pool finds Cronenberg turning his attention to horror-tourism. It’s like The White... Read more... |
'Weird Al' Yankovic, London Palladium review - deep dive into his original songsTuesday, 21 February 2023![]() The most striking thing at the London Palladium for the last night of “Weird Al” Yankovic's mini-tour of the UK was the number of youngsters in the audience. I don't mean young adults, but children, who were there with their parents and even... Read more... |
The Unfriend, Criterion Theatre review - dark comedy is (largely) audience-unfriendlySaturday, 21 January 2023![]() We all have that friend. The person you met on holiday and couldn’t shake off. You added each other on Facebook, but they posted so much you’ve quietly unfollowed them. You can’t quite bring yourself to unfriend them, though. In The Unfriend, a new... Read more... |
Arms and the Man, Orange Tree Theatre review - a rollicking take on Shaw's satirical classicTuesday, 29 November 2022For his final bow as artistic director of the Orange Tree, Paul Miller has decided to go out with a bang, amid much giggling and snorts of laughter. This isn’t George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man as a barbed but fairly conventional comedy: Miller... Read more... |
