Nick Barr

London

Freelance Contributor at Freelance

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1883magazine.com

Articles

Permission review – a bold, moving debut at Tara Theatre

2 days ago | 1883magazine.com | Nick Barr

Growing up means learning the world isn’t fair – but Permission, the debut play by playwright Hunia Chawla (check out my recent interview with Hunia) asks what happens when unfairness isn’t just outside you, it’s inside too. What happens when the thing holding you back is the voice you’ve internalised – your father’s, your culture’s, your own? It’s playing at Tara Theatre, a lovely little venue in Earlsfield, South West London.
Hunia Chawla on friendship, freedom, and Permission

5 days ago | 1883magazine.com | Nick Barr

Hunia Chawla’s Permission opens at Tara Theatre this week, and it’s not pulling its punches. Flipping the tired trope of the ‘oppressed Muslim woman’ on its head, the play spans rooftops in Karachi and immigration queues at Heathrow, following two best friends whose lives are shaped by state control, protest, and the elusive promise of freedom.
Pop Off Michelangelo review – queer, camp, heartfelt

1 week ago | 1883magazine.com | Nick Barr

Mark Twain (possibly) once said “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” That’s advice the writer Dylan MarcAurele and director Joe McNeice have taken gleefully to heart. Originally an American musical, it’s been brilliantly brought to life in London with a British cast and creatives. Despite being born decades apart in real life, POM imagines Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci as teenage besties in Renaissance Italy.
The Crucible blazes at Shakespeare’s Globe this summer

1 week ago | 1883magazine.com | Nick Barr

On Wednesday last week, I had two major firsts in the life of a young (career-wise) theatre journalist: my first ever trip to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, and my first ever production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Sitting down in this iconic theatre and looking out over the stage, I was moved by how authentically it has recreated the Shakespearian experience. The people standing in the courtyard in front of the stage, the beautiful thatched roof that goes all the way around.
Shucked at Regent’s Park

1 week ago | 1883magazine.com | Nick Barr

On Tuesday, I was (figuratively) whisked away to the Southern United States, for a breath of corn filled air, with Shucked, a new musical, having its UK debut at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. I’d never been to this venue before, and maybe I was just high on sunlight and birdsong, but I was already grinning before a single note played. Designer Scott Pask’s set was gorgeous: an enormous, tilted wooden barn, stunningly detailed and totally at home in the dappled light.
Yolanda Mercy on Failure Project, legacy, and lifting others.

1 week ago | 1883magazine.com | Nick Barr

There’s something quietly radical about the way Yolanda Mercy makes theatre. Whether she’s writing, performing, or producing, her work pulses with honesty – sometimes funny, sometimes raw, always rooted in a desire to reflect lives that rarely get centre stage. Her latest show, Failure Project, follows Ade – a woman whose life is unravelling just as her career takes off – and it’s already found a groundswell of support, from buzz at the Edinburgh Fringe to a three-week run at Soho Theatre.
a dazzling Taylor Swift tribute

2 weeks ago | 1883magazine.com | Nick Barr

Taylormania hit Wimbledon Theatre last month, and let me tell you, it was a Swifty paradise! From the moment we walked in, the excitement in the air was electric, with a crowd buzzing like they’d just found out Taylor Swift herself had dropped by. Honestly, when ‘she’ came on, there were more screams than at a Halloween horror marathon!My two girls, absolute Swifties since their mum turned our living room into a full-on ERAS tour screening last summer, were practically vibrating with joy.
The Last Incel review – savage, smart and strangely moving

2 weeks ago | 1883magazine.com | Nick Barr

The Last Incel is a dark, sharply constructed hour of theatre that dives headfirst into the festering swamp of online incel culture – and finds something strangely human inside it. Written and directed by Jamie Sykes and performed by a fierce Irish ensemble, this play doesn’t flinch. It throws you straight into a video call where four angry, broken men are yelling about their hatred for women, their hopelessness, their loneliness, and their obsession with labels, rituals and rules.
The Comedy About Spies review – Mischief’s Cold War farce is slick, silly, and packed with spy gags

3 weeks ago | 1883magazine.com | Nick Barr

Listen very carefully, for I will say this only once: taped to the bottom of the device where you are reading this is a tiny box. Inside the box is a microfilm containing my review of The Comedy About Spies… There are enemies everywhere who would love to get their hands on this sensitive information.
The Empire Strips Back

3 weeks ago | 1883magazine.com | Nick Barr

Have you ever thought, whilst watching Star Wars, “Wow, those stormtroopers are hot – I wish they were all gorgeous women doing a sexy striptease”? No? Oh. Well… you know that dream where Han Solo dances to Smooth Criminal and slowly takes off all his clothes? Good. Not just me then. Those fantasies – and many more you didn’t know you had – become reality at The Empire Strips Back, the fabulous new burlesque parody now playing at Riverside Studios in London.