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1 month ago | 
londontheatre1.com | Mary Beer |Mary has worked
Amidst the Ides of March, I can’t help but remember the demise of the Vault Festival as the treat it was to catch shows on their way to or from the Edinburgh Fringe, but thankfully the Soho Theatre’s programming at this time of the year goes a long way towards scratching that particular itch. Derek Mitchell’s one-person, one-act performance of Goblin is particularly satisfying as a sneak preview that is much more than an entertainment snack but also holds the promise of something bigger to come.
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2 months ago | 
londontheatre1.com | Mary Beer |Mary has worked
Malorie Blackman’s Pig-Heart Boy is a modern classic. As a pitch-perfect tween parable of friendship, betrayal, medical and press ethics and the real meaning of love, expectations for any stage adaptation of her novel are naturally high.
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2 months ago | 
londontheatre1.com | Mary Beer |Mary has worked
As is written boldly on its walls, the Bush Theatre strives to be “at the forefront of new writing, developing the very best new talent and championing unheard voices”.
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Dec 8, 2024 | 
londontheatre1.com | Mary Beer |Mary has worked
“Unassuming” is defined as “modest, lacking in arrogance, pleasant, or polite,” – and all of those things are true about Claire Cunningham. She enters the performance stage and is immediately, for lack of a better word, nice. She is inviting. She is welcoming. With her lilting Scottish accent, she was a warm and knowing wit such that you feel she really means it when she says she wants you to be comfortable.
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Dec 3, 2024 | 
londontheatre1.com | Mary Beer |Mary has worked
Omar F Okai’s Pinocchio for the Stratford East is probably one of the most wholesome and traditional pantos I’ve seen for a long time – whilst bringing in a colourful and high production value sense of otherworldliness. Stewart J Charlesworth’s sets (and costumes) are sumptuous and playful without a single nod to the Germanic fairy tales and their imagery (castles, princes) that are so often source material of the British pantomime tradition.
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Nov 1, 2024 | 
londontheatre1.com | Mary Beer |Mary has worked
James Fritz’s The Flea returns to the Yard Theatre after its world premiere last year for a second run (until the end of November) with an impressive new cast – including the stage debut of knock-out performer Connor Finch who dazzles in two opposing roles: aristocrat Arthur Somerset and telegraph-boy-trafficker Henry Newlove.
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Sep 28, 2024 | 
londontheatre1.com | Mary Beer |Mary has worked
As a piece of dynamic sculpture, Lyndsey Turner’s Coriolanus is a masterpiece. Es Devlin’s set, Tom Gibbons’ sound and Tim Lutkin’s lighting place us in an amphitheatre of bellicose tension with every nod to mid-century Italian fascism a reminder of the moderns’ reach for ancient Roman grandeur and legitimacy – a tradition extending from Mussolini to the present.
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Sep 28, 2024 | 
londontheatre1.com | Mary Beer |Mary has worked
Amos Gitaï wrote and directed House and its arrival at the Barbican represents the London centre’s first collaboration with La Colline – théâtre national (Paris). This work – adapted as a live theatrical production from a trilogy of films spanning 1980, 1998 and 2005 – is indeed art and has many beautiful aspects to it; but at 140 minutes with no interval, it becomes painful.
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Sep 16, 2024 | 
londontheatre1.com | Mary Beer |Mary has worked
Given the centrality of “identity politics” in contemporary culture, including theatre (throughout its content, commerce and criticism) but, most prominently, at the epicentre of social media and social-media-informed chatter that begets further chatter about the chatter and all the rage/bathos/exhaustion it induces, it seems almost impossible to find a nuanced artwork that touches on any theme of identity without being consumed by either caution or fury into a bilious and simplistic cul-de-sac.
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Jul 24, 2024 | 
londontheatre1.com | Mary Beer |Mary has worked
I am very torn about Nassim Soleimanpour’s ECHO (Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen). Setting aside the novel thrill of who the guest actor will be on any given night (mine was the lauded playwright of Slave Play, Jeremy O Harris — the only writer in the rotating repertoire of nightly stars), I found Solemimanpour both delightful and infuriating.
