Under Three Moons: models for male friendship

“I bet when they get older they’re going to look back on tonight and say, that was a night that was, by that fire, that was a night.” Spanning half a lifetime, Daniel Kanaber’s new play Under Three Moons takes place on three nights across three decades of two friends’ lives. Through the lense of a friendship through multiple comings of age, this succinct fringe script explores how men relate to each other today. From a school trip to France as teenagers, to a surf shack in their twenties, to Christmas in their thirties, Mike and Paul meet up and talk into the night. From boyhood to manhood to fatherhood, these are the nights they share. Continue reading

Monster Makers: “give ’em something that they won’t expect”

Stephen Dolginoff (Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story) serves up a jolly, camp romp in his new triple-feature musical Monster Makers, which celebrates the colourful talents behind the most (in)famous classic horror films. Continue reading

Phoenix Dance Theatre: The Rite of Spring & Left Unseen

“The Rite just has to be shocking. If it doesn’t shake you to the core, if it doesn’t make you feel that the guts of the earth are opening up, or at least that the Royal Albert Hall is being immolated in orchestral violence, then the performers just ain’t doing it right.” – Tom Service, BBC Proms 2013 Continue reading

Mad Alice: “I was a witch that day”

Inspired by local landmark Mad Alice Lane and dedicated to her brother, Victoria Delaney’s new original play Mad Alice investigates the local legend we all think we know, but cannot accurately place in history. Opening in the ‘Mucky Duck’ (White Swan Inn) in 1825, an ominous electronic soundscape threaded with rumours and whispers plays as the cast creep on stage one by one, immediately establishing palpable dynamics between them with the slightest of glances. Continue reading

Irving Undead: “a haemorrhage of gaslight”

James Swanton (Double Date; Frankenstein’s Creature) is the master of the one-man show, here finally devoting a captivating ninety-minute feat of physical and emotional character study to his long-time fascination, the Victorian actor Henry Irving. Continue reading

The Beauty Queen of Leenane: theatre at its best

Martin McDonagh’s dark, comic thriller set in 1990 Galway, Ireland, follows great success in the West End and Off-Broadway to appear in a new guise at Hull Truck Theatre, directed by Mark Babych. Tony Award-winning The Beauty Queen of Leenane is an exhilarating character study of 40-year-old Maureen Folan (Siobhan O’Kelly) and her 70-year-old mother Mag (Maggie McCarthy). Continue reading

A View From The Bridge: “How dark the room became when he looked at me”

Directed by Juliet Forster (Romeo & Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre; Sense and Sensibility for Theatre by the Lake), Arthur Miller’s potboiler case study of commuco-production between York Theatre Royal and Royal & Derngate Northampton. Continue reading

An Evening with Armistead Maupin: love and other things we’ve been doing since the seventies

In his first ever UK tour, Fane Productions and Kilimanjaro present an evening with the bestselling, much-loved author and LGBTQ+ activist, Armistead Maupin. Continue reading

Malory Towers: Grade A Girl Power

Where to begin? The present: to a mixture of current and nineties pop songs, this year’s bad guys assemble outside the Head Teacher’s office in a British secondary school. Quickly, character traits and dynamics are established before a pair of girls fighting over a diary sends one into unconsciousness, starting off this adaptation of Malory Towers with an Oz-like dream framework. Continue reading