Author: Emily Holman

‘I’m like a walking corpse’ Ibsen isn’t known for his cheery plays. Yet ‘Ghosts’, on at the BT studio until Saturday, is something else altogether. It’s fascinating, disturbing, deeply complex, yes: these are all Ibsen characteristics. But with syphilis, near-incest, and euthanasia the subject-matter, along with Ibsen’s favourite, oppressive moral codes, ‘Ghosts’ is intense stuff. […]

Abi Morgan’s Splendour is a chilling tale of violence and oppression in a country on the brink of revolution. Set in the opulent home of an unnamed dictator and his wife, the play follows four women as they await the absent dictator for his portrait sitting; the same scenes are repeated over and over from […]

Antigone is the latest in a series of Greek tragedies put on in the New College Cloisters and directed by David Raeburn. His artistic vision and sense of exactly how he wanted to convey the original text were evident throughout. This year’s play followed on nicely from last year’s Oedipus Tyrannus, for those who had […]

James Watts’ intense production promises to blow the dust off this 19th century classic. Using Eyre’s recent translation of the text, which abandons stilted period language for a striking modern tone, he’s opted for a minimalist approach to throw all the attention onto the story. Free from awkward Victoriana and cumbersome language, the play here […]

I’m maliciously glad that the person who was going to review Queueue yesterday at the café of the Modern Art Gallery fell victim to a stomach bug and leaving me to do it. I’ve tried not to use the word ‘d*fferent’ for this new musical from Leo Mercer and Stephen Hyde, directed by Scott Bolohan, […]

See this production: Tennessee Williams’ tight script still evokes laughs and trembles at the Keble O’Reilly in the hands of this assured cast and crew. The highlight is Mary Higgins’ Blanche; by turns guilty and inspiring guilt in those around her, and with a frantic urgency, she’s altogether delightful. Blanche’s attempts to maintain her fiction […]

In the small, modern North Wall Arts Centre stands a large, buzzing swarm of thesps and arty types. Each sporting their own unique variation on the traditional indie look of edgy eyebrows, unexpected hairstyles, distressed denim and a smattering of eclectic patterned vintage, these eager culture vultures await show time. What has brought this lively […]

Biblioclasm. Libricide. Book-burning. These are all words that roll off the tongue trippingly. But this action, this destruction of books, a nightmare for any student, is a concrete, or rather ashy, reality for the inhabitants of the dystopian society of Fahrenheit 451. Here, all books have been outlawed, and the government employs ‘firemen’ to burn […]

Three characters, Inéz, Garcin, and Estelle, are in hell. And where is hell, you may ask? Hell turns out to be a stuffy “second empire drawing room” with no way out. There are no conventional devils, or instruments of torture, but instead the trio are doomed to become one another’s torturers. The intimate space of […]

Polly’s Teale’s poignant drama Mine is very much a play for today: not least because of its exploration of the pressures of modern motherhood, and its emphasis on middleclass guilt. It shows the breakdown of relationships in a society so preoccupied by smart phones and emails, that characters often do not listen to each other, […]