Reviews

Dating Disasters’ premise was guaranteed to please: a verbatim cabaret built from anonymous audience confessions, stitched together with pop-rock standards and original musings on romance gone wrong. It was a format ripe for comic recognition, and the audience responded warmly, relishing the catharsis of shared misfortune. Yet while the show delivered charm, relatability, and flashes of strong character work, its musical execution remained a work-in-progress, with the overall production still seeking the polish needed to fully realise its ambitious hybrid form.

Shakespeare is having a good run this year: Othello, with a tight focus on jealousy; a ritualised Titus Andronicus; a sprightly Much Ado at the MTC; and, with Christopher Marlowe, The Breath of Kings, a compendium of Henry VI – Parts 1, 2 & 3 and Richard III. 

As Panto season continues, Roxy Lane Theatre’s Cinderella With A Twist would be my pick of the Community Theatre Pantos for this year. Directed with understanding by Jane Sherwood, this theoretically "non-traditional” pantomime has a good sense of pantomime traditions and works its audience well.

The woman on stage is quiet, dignified, looking healthy, and sounding articulate and rational. At 55, Rachel Gärtner is too young to be describing her life as being over, but since her husband’s death, she no longer wishes to live. She is here before the German Ethics Council, pleading her case that she be prescribed phenobarbital with which she will bring about her own death. This play allows the audience to play God, as it were, by casting a vote on whether the state should assist Ms Gärtner to, prematurely but peacefully, die.