Reviews

‘polished and sincere, but curiously inert’ ★★★  After the striking physicality of Jungle last year, Korea National Contemporary Dance Company returns to The Place with a more restrained double bill, Young-doo Jung’s Voyage and Ryu Suzuki’s Hakkō. Jung’s recent Olivier Award nomination for Lear at the Barbican gives Voyage considerable promise. Voyage takes inspiration from NASA’s Voyager probes and the Golden Record, imagining movement towards the unknown. It is an exciting meeting point between the cosmic and the human, but the piece often feels more like a prolonged state of meditation. There are moments of stillness and inward concentration that suggest ritual, contemplation and suspension. The dancers move with control and focus, but the choreography rarely develops enough tension, surprise or physical urgency to make the journey feel necessary. The costumes, with their loose, pale, draped shapes, seem to gesture towards Korean traditional aesthetics, but the reference feels more aestheticised than dramaturgically integrated. Rather than opening a deeper cultural or emotional layer, the visual world remains somewhat decorative. The soundscape, with its resonant, meditative textures and fragments of musical reference, creates atmosphere, but it also risks flattening the work into a single sustained mood. Ryu Suzuki’s Hakkō, inspired by the repetitive actions of the Japanese toy kendama, promises transformation through iteration. Its connection to club culture and electronic music gives the second half a different texture, but the work suffers from a similar problem. Repetition becomes an idea more than an experience. The dancers enter states of concentration, but the piece leaves surprisingly little afterimage. Overall, the evening is polished and sincere, but curiously inert. Rather than feeling transported, I often felt held at a distance, waiting for the works to reveal why these movements, images and durations mattered. What felt missing was not skill, but transformation: the point at which repetition becomes revelation, stillness becomes tension, and atmosphere becomes meaning. Voyage / Hakkō by Korea National Contemporary Dance Company at The Place A Festival of Korean Dance 2026 BOX OFFICE https://theplace.org.uk/whats-on/

‘... a rocket ride through awkward family conversations, stepdads and mothers who are forced to choose between careers or their children’ ★★★ A scientist slams a tub of ice cream on her mother’s kitchen table in an angry tantrum. A description of how and why glaciers are melting due to surface meltwater follows but is lost on its audience. Prepare to be reminded, empathetically might I add, that a climate crisis is upon us during this work. Award winning playwright, Martha Loader, fills Albatross with such quirky arguments fuelled by climate anxiety and produces a rocket ride through awkward family conversations, stepdads and mothers who are forced to choose between careers or their children. Albatross is Loader’s fifth play and has reached its destination at the Omnibus Theatre in Clapham. Her work has seen national and international stages, won a Judges Award at the Burntwood Prize for playwrights, and she has recently picked up the George Devine Prize in 2025. It’s quite a collection; I’m sure you would agree. But her new play, though brimming with excitement, scientific theory and niche spiritual superstitions, just misses the bullseye. Based symbolically and rather loosely upon Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner , the play centers on the relationship between Eve and Alice. The former a stay-at-home grandmother and the latter her absentee daughter who constantly are at battle. Eve (Agnes Lillis), forced to look after her grandchild meets Martin (Patrick Morris), a divorcee, who had a large family stunt of his own, and she falls for his promises of taking her to Antarctica on a cruise. When Alice (Caroline Rippin) returns from the same place on a geographical experiment to save the ice bergs and, in her eyes, prevent global warming all by herself — whilst leaving her kid behind — well expectedly, chaos ensues. At first, it's difficult to see why Coleridge, the formidable but largely forgotten romantic poet, appears pasted as a prelude to the script. My best guess is it’s something to do with the insinuations of climate activism which many find his most famous poem but correct me if I’m wrong. For it’s the actors who keep the play on four wheels through bringing a studied but fluid and at best spontaneous spirit to each of their respective characters. Patrick Morris, though for the most part playing a sidelined stepdad just nodding away through the arguments like a placid dog, appears as a considerable thespian in his quiet ability to play a character who really hasn’t much to say. Instead, he prefers to present himself through a taxidermic albatross, his slightly strange choice of gifts for his 64-year-old sweetheart, Eve. The two women are frankly a formidable tour de force, dealing with some of the quirks of the script and sometimes repetitive dialogue with great skill. Menagerie Theatre certainly knows how to produce a play and the set design, even if a little purposely wonky, alongside the lighting/projection magic, plays a considerable part in the work’s success. A couple of issues present themselves with the ending that feels jilted and bizarre. I’m all for an abstract projection of the ice caps playing on the back curtain, even if it feels like it should be narrated by Greta Thunberg but, its symbolism felt too complex and was only truly grasped a while after the play had finished. Overall, it’s a worthwhile piece that plays upon the heart strings whilst providing a brain freeze with scientific facts at the same time. We must look forward to seeing Loader at the Almeida, the Mercury Theatre and BBC Voices programs I hear. Photography: Ashley Day Menagerie Theatre Company presents: Albatross Written by Martha Loader | Directed by Patrick Morris NATIONAL TOUR 28 April – 23 May LONDON Omnibus Theatre, 26 – 30 May BOX OFFICE https://www.omnibus-clapham.org/whatson/albatross

“Together, they chipped away everything that doesn’t look like David” ★★★★★ In dealing with love, the weight of legacy, and the public vs private notion of the self, Patronage avoids the big topics. A sparkling debut from writer Camellia Elerman about the life and times of Michelangelo and those closest to him, we should begin with the bare facts. This play is utterly superb. Brilliantly paced and lovingly told, what emerges is a piece so natural and at home with itself that it feels like the work of a writer with many years in the game. As we progress, a thought arrives that quickly becomes unshakable. Elerman will go far. We will hear from her again. There is a deep love for history, form and process here, with art, Florentine politics and Vatican intrigue described without ever descending into head-patting condescension. That said, this is no observation piece, and Patronage is unafraid to pose sadly relevant questions about success in the arts and proximity to wealth or the fallout effects of the tortured genius. That pesky “oh we’ll be seeing them again” feeling extends to the cast. Each offers a remarkable performance, coming together with a wonderful complementarity under Cecilia Walker’s exquisite direction that has us fully immersed in this behind the curtain glimpse at brilliance. As Michelangelo, Sebastian Porter excels. Explorations of his inner self are nuanced and deeply moving and, working with Elerman’s rich text, Porter brings a reality to an individual so mythologised that his own surname couldn’t keep up with him. Sitting back as a beautifully grounded Pater Familias, Porter never chases cheap showiness but focusses on bringing to us a much more remarkably real man, someone charred by his own ceaseless ambition. Someone who feels he never really lived at all. His efforts are wonderfully complemented by those of Fred Di Rosa as the great man’s great-nephew Mikey, endlessly brooding on the personal consequences, real and perceived, of proximity to genius. Despite the risk of mewling self-pity, Di Rosa’s marvellous turn as someone born already eclipsed creates a tormented, deeply human character, capable of growth and redemption. Mikey’s entire being is defined by his famous relation and yet the two share scarcely a word until a late confrontation where the desolate loneliness of an aged prodigy meets the jealous self-loathing of a never-quite-will. Somehow, in this exchange, a kind of spiritual understanding is reached from which both seem to take solace, if only for a moment. Di Rosa also provides some brilliant multi-roling as Hollywood-slick Cardinals and a vengeful Pontiff, but it is in the subtle and wounded portrayal of Mikey that he really shines. And then Tina Greenwood, who emerges as Michaelangelo’s PR lead and manager Cassandra, with a full LinkedIn vocabulary and a healthy disregard for the unfortunately necessary creative process. She brings a brilliant Huel-swigging ‘grow the brand’ energy to proceedings as she attempts to protect and steward the artist’s ambition in a vigorously hostile environment, at significant cost. In an extraordinary performance, Greenwood’s ability and Elerman’s writing see her transform, what, in bygone times could have been a two-dimensional scold into a brilliantly complex character, who fully humanises the toll of legacy preservation. She is equally impressive in her comic delivery as she is when, briefly remonstrating with her woe-is-me son Mikey, she highlights a legacy of brilliant women erased from the histories of great men. In a flying the nest family denouement, she is simply astonishing and must be singled out. If you’re sick of the superlatives by now, tough because it’s time to discuss Filippo Brozzo. Playing Leo, nephew and co-manager of Michaelangelo, and husband of Cassandra. Brozzo offers another stellar performance as the moral centre of the piece, desperately trying to keep the band together. He shines with Greenwood, showcasing the demands of work on a fraying home life. When it comes to Mikey, their collective effort to generally put a brave face on a bad parent’s evening might crumble, but by the play’s conclusion, we know his loyalty to those he loves. When he confronts Michaelangelo for his increasing detachment from humanity, we truly feel it. Ultimately, what makes this show so good is that ordinary family dynamics and musings on the nature of art and creativity are interwoven so perfectly, feel so unforced. The characters work effortlessly together and avoid the opportunity for pastiche at every turn. The scanty staging of a few bits of homely furniture only increases focus on the exquisite performances and helps to further situate this extraordinary life in the everyday. There is very, very little to complain about. With an eighty-minute run time, the interval feels like it’s injected more for the comfort of Patronage’s patrons in a not exactly Baltic loft during a May heatwave. Whatever the reason, at this length, it certainly isn’t needed and unnecessarily risks a dip in energy when it arrives roughly an hour in. Luckily, the flawless acting and tight direction ensure an instant return to form and an unforced, rewarding conclusion. In Patronage, a uniquely talented writer, cast and crew have joined forces to create something genuinely outstanding. To pilfer from the great man himself, together, somehow, they chipped away everything that doesn’t look like David. This is how it’s done. Box Office https://www.thedraytonarmstheatre.co.uk/patronage CAST Sebastian Porter - Mike Fred Di Rosa - Mikey Lewis Trela-Gray - Leo Martina Greenwood - Cass

‘Borrowed plots and fabulous fiddling’ ★★ ½ The real star of this show is Maria Jaszewska. She plays violin in the unseen, eight-piece live band led by MD, Matthew Herbert and she’s utterly brilliant. Because the setting is a fictional Appalachian small town – vaguely a few decades back – there’s a lot of very lively folksy music and her zingy, virtuoso playing is a real joy. Also very strong are Glenn Adamson and Lauren Jones as the leading couple. Dark of the Moon is the Romeo and Juliet story yet again – two people from different communities fall in love so they’re both doomed. But Adamson and Jones are pretty convincing and both sing well, especially together, The narrative however has as many (plot) holes as a colander and the whole thing is wearily derivative. In the town are ordinary people growing crops, going to church and dancing at hoe-downs. In the nearby mountains is a coven of witches who are malevolently interested in the townsfolk. There are more Shakespeare echoes when “invisible” characters jinx “real” ones (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and the three young witches lurking in the corners and flinging curses about are straight out of Macbeth. Then once John (Glenn Adamson) decides he really does want to be mortal – and there’s a “sua padre” moment (The Marriage of Figaro) when he realises that he’s already half a mortal – we’re straight into Iolanthe territory with a whiff of The Little Mermaid and I’m left beginning to giggle at the corny lack of originality. And that feeling of obviousness is compounded by the use of two different musical styles – hard rock (and some very raucous singing from Josie Benson as Conjur Woman) for the witches contrasted with homely, acoustic folk for the mortals. And as for the story itself what are we supposed to think these witches actually are? For immortals they’re oddly obsessed with sex. Should there be a literal “witch hunt”? Burning at the stake is mentioned more than once, only half-jokingly, and the time setting is very vague. The potion which drops from the flies for John to drink is absurd. If the witches have influence only in this place then why doesn’t Barbara (Lauren Jones) simply go somewhere else as she keeps mentioning? And for a woman whose hopes and dreams seem to fly independently of her insular community at the start she’s pretty keen to marry and settle down with a baby exactly as her ancestors have always done. Another problem is Conjur Man (Gary Turner) who, unaccountably, seems to become a completely different character in Act 2. The set (Libby Todd) is grey, angular and suitably sinister with some rather neat flaps which open to reveal a stage right shop and a stage left family home. And the sound and lighting effects are quite fun but on the whole this is not a show I shall be rushing back to. WITZEND PRODUCTIONS AND CHARING CROSS THEATRE PRODUCTIONS PRESENT WORLD PREMIERE MUSICAL DARK OF THE MOON AT CHARING CROSS THEATRE 18 May – 8 August 2026 Book by Jonathan Prince Music and Lyrics by Lindy Robbins, Dave Bassett & Steve Robson Based on THE play by Howard D Richardson and William Berney BOX OFFICE https://www.charingcrosstheatre.co.uk/ Photography: Tom Bowles 

“The real star of the show of course is Cat Gannon, who is fantastic” ★★★★ ½ Dominus is an example of when the straightforward mechanics of theatre are deployed so well as to elevate it from simple to superior. In this refreshingly revelatory solo show, Mistress D (Cat Gannon) invites us cosily into her life, and her subconscious, for an intimate and off-the-cuff chat about her first six months as a dominatrix. It’s got the verve and pep of a stand-up show, especially with Gannon’s casual, natural style, and easy interaction with the audience, but don’t be fooled, there’s also the tight architecture of a full-length play here. Mistress D talks us through how she got into the job, her favourite clients, and a bit about her religious family and endearingly boring boyfriend. While she’s incredibly funny, it’s clear she’s in denial about something, and this will trickle out until the floodgates open at the end. It’s a simple story of redemption from trauma that should be predictable and very easily lapse into repetition and tedium after 45 minutes, but the thoughtfully crafted and consistent character development marks this piece out from the crowd. The show is not flashy. It doesn’t need to be, it’s engaging from start to finish, for the full 80 minutes runtime, because of a remarkably well-paced structure and a tonal shift from comedy to tragedy that happens so smoothly I found myself wondering when it happened. The use of the projector displaying quick captions of her true thoughts and feelings, and with which she occasionally and tragicomically argues, is a simple but beautifully executed touch. And we’re bathed in magnificently evocative lighting (no credit given unfortunately), and flawless, eerie, entertaining sound design by Balint Blasko. The real star of the show of course is Cat Gannon, who is fantastic. But all the creative team has worked in perfect harmony here. Kimi Thompson’s movement is gut-punch powerful – at times hilarious, at times heartbreaking – showing a real creative versatility. The rape scene through interpretive movement is skin-crawlingly uncomfortable, and the dances, the mimes, bittersweet and uneasily funny. Later, Gannon’s anguish coming out in her binging of cheese sandwiches is brave and grotesque. Overall, this is a really good example of how to craft something deeply emotional, perhaps personal, without ever becoming self-indulgent or overly self-absorbed. This is still a play after all. If I were to be pedantic, I’d say that the show has the potential to make two errors: stigmatising submissives, further stereotyping them as posh wankers, and perpetuating the myth that all sex workers must necessarily have suffered some sort of sexual trauma. I think it does an exemplary job of just about avoiding those tropes, but that might only be because of how incredibly charming Cat Gannon is as a performer. Otherwise, there could be a troubling connection made between intelligent and consensual BDSM and a real darkness of hatred and abuse. In this way, the show maybe, just maybe falls a touch behind the times in an era when much has been done to bring whips and chains out into the light; but, in fairness, that’s only if we were to really over-intellectualise it. At its core, it’s just a great story of one individual’s search for a route through despair. Given the juicy (albeit traumatic) subject material, immensely charismatic performer, and moments of genuine hilarity, I also wonder if the show would have a surprising commercial appeal if it weren’t for the misleading Latin title and its associations with Ancient Rome – or maybe that’s just because I’m a nerd. Either way, as Mistress D herself says, the phenomenon of feeling as though you want to jump off a high building, bridge, cliff is called “l’appel du vide”, the call of the void, and for me that makes much more sense, as dominatrix or not, that’s something to which we can all relate. And while the show would have it that to be dominated you must be an asshole with no trauma of your own: the irony, perhaps genius, of Dominus, is that the act of sitting in silence in a theatre makes submissives of us all. DOMINUS written and performed by Cat Gannon  CREATIVES Savannah Beckford and Avery McNeilly - Directors Shakur Jones - Lighting Designer Vivienne Melody Coupe – Producer Maki Omori – Producer and Dramaturg Bence Blasko – Producer Kimi Thompson – Movement Director Balint Blasko – Sound Design Box Office: https://www.thelionandunicorntheatre.com/whats-on Reviewed by Alix Owen

 “On that note: love, love, love!” ★★ ½ Sarah Tara Ray’s debut play challenges relationships that are affected by abortion in a freshly uncensored way, though unfortunately lacks the realistic dialogue, character development, and structure to string it all together. Our Mothers’ Daughters focuses on an otherwise unnamed character, The Artist, and the friends and family who make up the inner circle of her life. The characters are initially given tropes that are well-suited to the casting (the one who uses humour to mask her worry, the young naïve one, etc), and the play makes clear straight away the existing depth of their relationships. It’s the nature of these friendships that Ray captures particularly well; there are plenty of inside jokes that the audience are let into just enough to find funny, all while building our understanding of the women’s relationships. As the play progresses, LGBTQ+ relationships are challenged around the theme of abortion, showing one character in a particularly difficult situation; this moment falls well in the first half of the play. However, despite multiple surprise revelations such as this sprinkled throughout both halves, the play lacks an overall climax, and the structure of the second half in particular fails to lead towards any particular moment. On reflection, this left me expecting the play to end at various points towards the end of the second half. Although poetic at times, the dialogue ultimately fails to develop any character beyond the version we are introduced to at the start of the play. The poetic metaphors are individually well-written, but do not fall naturally in the context of the scenes. They are used interchangeably between all the characters, thereby blending their speaking styles and personalities into one, causing them to lose collective value, and binding the characters to the two-dimensional attributes they are assigned in their first scenes. The soliloquy from The Artist in the second half gets away from this and shows the emotional core of the play’s message – though brief, this is an excellent scene. Ray aligns the plot with political references to reproductive rights but turns scenes into lectures; although this puts the setting into a wider context, it disrupts the direction of the scene. The play is generally well-cast, with Sophie (Andi Bickers) and Emma (Ellen Pallant) giving particularly good performances. The character of Billy (Sarah Tara Ray), though played well, is granted the least development of the characters, and fluctuates between reflecting on the same thoughts throughout the play, and giving one-liners that undercut the nature of the scenes. However, the concept of Billy’s character remains important; she plays a crucial role in negotiating change amongst her friends, and also asks the important question; can you be upset about change which doesn’t affect you? Ray is using a portion of the profits made to donate to Abortion Talk, a charity which challenges abortion stigma, and also provides information on reproductive health within the programmes. I must stress that this is a well-cast show with an excellent and important concept, but currently lacks the foundation to make an impression. Our Mothers’ Daughters plays at the Hen and Chicken’s Theatre until 30 May 2026. BOX OFFICE Writer: Sarah Tara Ray Director: Hanna Berrigan Photography credit to Luke Martin

‘raw, generous and quietly devastating’ ★★★★★ The title Joy Isn’t Always Joy already carries unease. Joseph Toonga takes the word “joy” and places pressure on it. In this work, joy becomes a mask, a habit, a defence and a way of surviving. Presented at The Place, this hip hop theatre work enters the emotional lives of Black men with force and care. It looks at loneliness, stereotype, pressure and the need to stay composed while carrying private pain. The piece speaks through rhythm, contact, breath and repeated physical struggle. From the opening moments, a group of dancers build the work through sound and movement. Body percussion, vocal calls and sharp physical signals pass between them like a challenge, then like encouragement. The exchange begins with the charge of competition. Gradually, it reveals a group of men testing how much weight they can carry together. This opening gives the piece much of its power. The dancers listen, provoke, interrupt and support one another. A beat struck on the body becomes a way of speaking. A shout pushes the movement forward. A pause holds tension in the space. Toonga shows care inside confrontation, and he lets masculine energy move through play, pressure and protection. Conflict runs through the choreography as a recurring physical idea. The dancers fight with the space, with each other and with themselves. Bodies fold, rebound, drop and recover. Arms pull away and reach back. Weight is thrown forward as if each performer is trying to escape something, then caught again by the group. These moments carry force because the movement feels driven by need. One of the most memorable images comes when two dancers handle the body of a third. The scene creates discomfort because it holds several meanings at once. They control him. They restrain him. They keep him standing. Support and pressure share the same physical shape here. The image speaks clearly about brotherhood, expectation, care and strain. The piece is rooted in hip hop, and Toonga stretches that foundation into a theatrical language shaped by spoken voice, silence, repeated gestures and close physical contact. There are moments when the performers seem to dare each other into movement. Other moments soften into care. Brotherhood appears as a source of safety, expectation, tenderness and weight. The honesty of the performers stays with me. Nothing feels decorative or arranged only for emotional effect. Even when the choreography is tightly structured, it carries lived urgency. The dancers move from internal pressure. This gives the work its sincerity. It asks the audience to look at what these bodies hold, not only what they can do. The work sustains a high emotional intensity, and some sections would land more sharply with greater contrast. A few transitions blur because the pressure remains at a similar temperature for long stretches. Still, that constant pressure feels connected to the world Toonga is describing. The body rarely gets full release. Joy Isn’t Always Joy is raw, generous and quietly devastating. It places vulnerability at the centre and keeps the performers powerful. Toonga has made a work that is physically strong, emotionally direct and deeply human. It leaves us with the uncomfortable recognition that joy can become a demand, a performance and a form of protection. The Place, King's Cross Box Office Joseph Toonga at J ust Us Dance Theatre

‘a very welcome UK premiere’ ★★★★ For anyone not familiar with the work of Nobel-prize winner Jon Fosse, this is a valuable introduction. The Name is his second play, first performed in 1995 during the Bergen International Festival, it was awarded the Norwegian Ibsen Award. It tells the story of a pregnant girl forced to come home with the father of the child as they have nowhere else to go. This production is highly recommended for anyone who enjoys Nordic-noir, with its take on a family living by the sea and their dysfunctional dynamics. Their failure to communicate with each other is drip fed throughout the play until the final denouement, a painful discovery which ends the play with a gut punch. The living room set, by Anthony Lamble, is appropriately gloomy and the sound design, mainly footsteps from the family coming and going in the house, adds a feeling of empty spaces with little soft furnishings to cushion the family. It’s an appropriate symbol of the harshness of their lives, the often repeated phrases, the lack of empathy and the personal needs which fail to be addressed. The father, brilliantly portrayed by Tony Bell, is so recognisable in his closed in state, that it is heart-breaking. The long suffering mother, played immaculately by Valerie Gogan is one of the victims of the piece. There are glimmers of hope with the sister (Marie Thorseth Molnes) who brings a breath of fresh air, and the boy (Daf Thomas), whose imagination shines through. In an interesting episode in the play, the boy fantasises about the life of unborn babies thinking about where they will be born, and dreading the pain of their birth. It’s nicely performed by Thomas, a difficult role to play as he treads the line of being the stranger in the house, with all the discomfort of meeting the girl’s parents for the first time, he reads to fill in the time. Perhaps this is a comment on how much literature broadens the mind. If the play sounds rather dour, there are moments of humour to lighten the load, and potentially there could be many more (this might change from performance to performance). Just a mild niggle, and a question whether Jasmin Dufa Pitt who plays the girl, could have more of a sense of what is meant when she says ‘you don’t care’ a refrain throughout the play. It is so loaded, with so many different possibilities, that a sense of intent, might have given the character more of an inner life. In addition to this bothersome thought, her bump was four or five months, rather than nine months making nonsense of her imminent birth and her sister saying, ‘you’re so big’. Hardly major concerns to put anyone off seeing this very welcome UK premiere, with fine direction from Simon Usher, who used the White Bear tiny space to perfection, giving a sense of place: The claustrophobia of the house and the proximity of the sea outside opening onto a world of wider of possibilities just beyond the reach of the parents but giving hope for the youngsters. There are many fine moments in the production which do justice to Fosse’s highly regarded play in this translation by Gregory Motton. Hornsey-Pennell Productions Presents: The Name by Jon Fosse Translated by Gregory Motton White Bear Theatre, Kennington 19 May – 6 June 2026 BOX OFFICE https://www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk/whatson/the-name Cast: Jasmin Dufa Pitt (Girl) Daf Thomas (Boy) Valerie Gogan (Mother) Tony Bell (Father) Marie Thorseth Molnes (Sister) Jan Martin (Bjarne) Creatives: Simon Usher - Director Anthony Lamble – Set design Malcolm Gluck and Saurabh Agarwal – Executive Producers Photography: Charlie Usher

 ‘Shows flare and brilliance.’ ★★★ ½ You’ll have the best of times, you’ll have the worst of times – this ambitious adaptation of Dickens’ classic novel for the stage shows flare and brilliance almost as regularly as it stumbles, and though it stops just short of its lofty goals, it achieves so much in the process that you might not mind much. First the good; the ensemble here (Nikki Claire Durrant, Caroline Edwards, Reece Lewis, Aryan Chavda, Liv O’Connor, Joe Childs and Vince Mathews) is strong and each take on their multi-roles with gusto as they bring dozens of characters to life over a narrative spanning decades, with O’Connor, Matthews and Lewis in particular doing well to add layers to the characters they portray, keeping the story engaging even when it falters most. Alongside this the design of the show is excellent and lives up to the incredibly high standard that can often be seen in the Jack Studio Theatre, a venue well-known for regularly punching well above its weight – the costumes are elaborate and elegant, and the intelligent use of haze and light often mean that there’s plenty to keep the senses occupied during the more dull or dense scenes of the play. This dullness is where the show’s flaws start; naturally the journey from novel to play is expected to have some bumps, particularly concerning how hundreds of pages can be condensed into an hour and thirty minutes of performance, and director and adapter Liz Love is to be commended for navigating much of the original work so well. However, there are still a dizzying number of characters and relationships to keep track of, leaving individual scenes featuring highly static and compact dialogue that can be difficult to parse in time for the next scene, with the ending in particular feeling a little bungled and rushed. Overall, the play ends up feeling both too long and too short. Too long in the sense that we’re often exposed to more threads of the original narrative than feels absolutely necessary for the core that works on stage, and too short since many of these threads end up under-explored. Either cutting these threads or extending the show and allowing them to fully develop would give the show firmer footing. Despite this, the show remains a well-crafted and exciting adaptation of a classic that should easily please anyone looking for a night of culture and history, filled with strong performances. Runs : 19th – 23rd May 2026 Box Office : https://brockleyjack.co.uk/jackstudio-entry/a-tale-of-two-cities/ Creatives: Written by Charles Dickens Adapted and Directed by Liz Love Lighting & Sound Design by James Connor Costume Designer by Helene Gustavsson Produced by VandL Productions Photo credit: Claire Greenan.