Author: Hyunjip Kim

The science of previewing is no more a science than augury. Especially if, like Gabe Day, the play has profited from two rehearsals only. A wrinkled, newborn baby is dangled before the soothsayer; prophetic words must be proclaimed. Gabe Day, the brainchild of Rory Platt from Trinity, is thankfully not still-born but very much alive […]

In an out-of-context quote from her bestselling series, Dannika Dark’s character Knox steamily goes: “I think we’re both bullshitting here, you ever play that card game?” Well, Cameron Cook’s game is poker. And there’s no bullshit in the fact that he’s holding all aces. In fact, he is the ace. In his directorial debut of […]

Light and fun. This year’s Merton garden play brings the ludicrous frivolity of the 19th century nobility to life in a slick adaption of Boucicault’s play. The script itself, relying much on subtle echoes to Austin, Wilde and Shakespeare, may not be for everyone. But you don’t have to be a lover of the world […]

The Merchant of Venice is perhaps the most unsuitable play for an outdoor Shakespeare festival. How does one capture the dark underbelly of city life on an English summer’s day surrounded by verdant pastures? Well, director Lucinda Dawkins’ answer was to start at eight and hope it gets dark in time for the trial scene. […]

Much like the title of the performance itself, the atmosphere at Keble O’Reilly Theatre on Thursday night seems at first really, really desperate. A bunch of people desperately waiting for an elating night; a presenter desperately trying his best to engage with the limited audience. Unfortunately, things don’t really change when the ‘poet’ Rhys Maliphant […]

The stage is set for what looks to be an unnerving tale. A single lamp suspended above a dark and dilapidated workshop, illuminating the presence of a tiny figure sat upright upon a crowded, wooden workbench. The moment you enter the darkened theatre you are at once thrown into the isolated disarray of Albert Grimlake’s […]

Little Shop of Horrors is a cult horror-comedy musical, somewhat in the vein of Rocky Horror, about a new breed of fly trap with a taste for human blood.  Seymour Krelborn (Michael Coombs) finds a rare and exotic plant that instantly revives business at Mushnik’s florists shop, but the plant, named Audrey II, soon reveals […]

Toby Mather’s act is a performance that occupies a territory somewhere between theatre and comedy; it is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of highly original comedy that both amuses and intrigues. Mather assumes the persona of a melancholic middle class male, swigging from a bottle of claret, lamenting the woes of his private school upbringing, of […]

Trinity Lawn’s Alice in Wonderland is not to be confused with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which is quite a different story altogether. It is not a straightforward adaptation of either of Carroll’s Alice books, borrowing from both but pitching the heroine as a peculiarly childish sixteen year old making her debut. Tom Elliot’s play centres […]

Natalie York’s production of one of Sophocles’ tragically underperformed plays, Philoctetes, fails to capture most of what makes the original so engaging. The play as Sophocles wrote it is about Odysseus and Neoptolemus (Achilles’ son) who have been sent to fetch the injured Philoctetes, left on Lemnos before the start of the Trojan War because […]

A Duchess loves a Knight who is having an affair with the Duke’s niece, the Chatelaine. The Knight spurns the Duchess, who accuses him of adultery to the Duke. The Knight tells the Duke about his real affair, but the Duchess finds out and mentions it to the Chatelaine. The Chatelaine is heartbroken and decides […]