Idea: Memory
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In James Graham’s The Man, quite a lot. Ben is attempting his first tax return. As a sole trader, he has accumulated a year’s worth of receipts that must now be classified as either an EXPENSE or NO EXPENSE. Except the receipts contain information no tax return can record. A journey. A relationship. An embarrassment.…
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It is often said that a violent man “lost control”. Girls & Boys asks a far more frightening question: what if the violence was not an absence of control, but its most absolute expression? Dennis Kelly’s play begins like a romantic comedy. A woman tells us about meeting her future husband during an argument at…
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Can we accept that our parents did what they could without pretending it was enough? My First and Last Solo Show began as Natalie Rose’s attempt to create an extraordinary gift for her daughter Mabelle using the skills she had: naturally, she made her a theatre show. Then Mabelle busted in—and what was meant to…
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The Lark review: A life of endings, but not ended Does wanting more from life mean the life you lived wasn’t enough? At 75, Rose stands inside The Lark—the country pub in which she was raised, worked and grew old—as she prepares to leave it for the final time. The building is about to be…
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Does loving someone give you the right to ask them to remember? In Sophie Davis’s Forget Me, Please, Andi and Sasha meet after concussions and build a life together. But as Andi’s mental health deteriorates, the memories holding their relationship together begin to mean radically different things. For Andi, memory preserves pain. For Sasha, the…
