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Review: The Bird & The Bee – The Bee

Underbelly

The Bee, whilst just half of The Bird and the Bee at the Smirnoff Underbelly, is not noticeably so. Each play having been written by different writers means that you get, in effect, two different stories and two different perspectives. Read more

Review: Mathilde

George St Theatre (venue 37)

There aren’t enough musicals about depression, disappointment and loneliness. Or maybe there are, but they aren’t commercial enough for a full run. Perhaps that’s why Connor Mitchell’s ravishing new piece, loosely based on a de Maupassant short story, is only on for four shows in concert. I want to see a full production now – but I also left deeply satisfied by this semi-staged offering. Read more

Review: Dark Grumblings

Underbelly

Parody is hard to do well, there being such a fine line between intelligently toying with the conventions of a genre and merely becoming a weaker, sillier version of the very material which is supposedly being spoofed. Dark Grumblings quite clearly falls on the latter side of this fence. Read more

Review: Carl Hiaasen’s Lucky You

Assembly @ Assembly Hall

A spirited attempt to bring best-selling US novelist Carl Hiaasen’s book to the stage, Lucky You is halfway between a Tarantino-style American social horror story and a simple morality tale. The play’s aim is admirable: to bring gritty social realism to the stage. However the fragmented distortion of the plot blurs its messages. Read more

Review: Greenstick Boy

Assembly @ George Street

Maggie Cronin’s Greenstick Boy takes the form of a narrated love letter to a soul mate tragically addicted to heroin, uncovering long-buried memories and confessing her true feelings. This personal journey, performed by Cronin, has all the makings of a bittersweet love story but there is an unnecessary weightiness to the delivery that is ultimately unconvincing. One would expect the author to have a real command of her own words and actions, but there is an inexplicable distance between the two. Read more

Review: Funk It Up About Nothin’

Musical Theatre @ George Square

Dope, fly, sweet, wild – even the most extensive rapper’s vocabulary would lack the superlatives to sufficiently describe the sheer ball-busting kick-assitude of this magnificent production. The self-titled ‘ad-RAP-tation’ of D’Bard’s classic comedy, Funk It Up (from the team who set the precedent with The Bomb-itty of Errors) does more than what it says on the tin. It pours it out, shakes it up and serves it up in style. Read more

Review: George Orwell’s Coming Up For Air

Assembly @ George Street

I have to admit I don’t usually like watching monologues, and more often than not find my own self-indulgent ramblings more interesting than the action on stage. However, George Orwell’s Coming Up For Air at the Assembly Rooms proves itself a shining exception. Read more

Review: Face in the Crowd

Iron Belly

The cramped, dank space of Underbelly’s Iron Belly gives an apposite sweaty backdrop to a piece of physical theatre which begins and ends on London’s tube. Face in the Crowd, presented by theatre ensemble company Kudos, lays bare the frenetic groundhog day that befalls most city workers trapped in the rat race. Read more

Review: Lough/Rain

Underbelly

Lough/Rain offers up an unusual double bill, with what essentially amounts to two separate plays which tell the same story. Written by Declan Feenan and Clara Brennan respectively, the two part piece charts the relationship of a young couple struck by tragic circumstance. Read more

Review: Surviving Spike

Assembly @ George Street

He was one of the great eccentrics of British comedy, his humour coming from a place that few understood, and no one would seek to copy. But that’s enough about Michael Barrymore. This is a play about the turbulent life of Spike Milligan, genius comic writer, womanizer, manic depressive and much-loved oddball. Read more

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