Franco Milazzo - Page 10

A gut-punching slab of immersive theatre that takes no prisoners may be just what the doctor ordered in these interesting times. The Big House’s Redemption doesn’t have the most enticing of titles but this layered drama takes place in a unique environment and punches well above its weight.

The late Nell Gifford, co-founder of Gifford’s Circus, wrote that 'a good circus is a sublimely existential thing, living acutely and only for the present moment.' And so it is with ¡Carpa! (Spanish for tent), the company’s joyful and life-affirming show currently sited in Chiswick House’s gardens. From magnificent clowning to acrobatics aloft a horse, knife-throwing to hair-hanging, this show has something for everyone.

August Wilson’s Jitney, a play about Black taxi drivers in Seventies Pittsburgh, last opened in London in October 2001. Cloaked in the resonance of 9/11 and a nation still in shock, it walked away that year with the Olivier award for Best New Play. Two decades on, thoughts run to the Obama presidencies, Black Lives Matter and a world almost unimaginable when this play was written in 1979.

Highly physical, beautifully danced and sexy as all hell, Sir Matthew Bourne’s acclaimed ballet The Car Man made its debut in 2000 and now returns to London with an imaginative new staging at the Royal Albert Hall.

“By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you will be happy. If you get a bad one, you will be a philosopher.” Socrates may not have actually said those words but, even apocryphally, they express a cynicism about marriage that pervades through history to the modern day.

Looking for something endlessly inventive, ridiculously energetic, child-friendly yet racier than an MP's browsing history? Machine de Cirque has it all.

On a summer night in West London, a blazing fire of a Russian opera did battle with the chill night air. The opera won (albeit on points).

any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones is most definitely not for the faint-hearted. For his latest production at Sadler’s Wells, Flemish choreographer Jan Martens has created in ways which will shock any sane person to their core a highly engaging and provocative piece of political theatre which examines what we mean by community and how society fights against oppression, inequality, and the climate crisis .

In this bloody tale of grief and revenge, the year is 2043 and Reem and her husband Sayeed have an apparently simple life: she cooks lentils and watches Arab Idol, he sells fruit and veg and, on Thursday nights, the pair pop out for a spot of al fresco group sex on contested land under the watchful eye of Israeli snipers.

Due to its intrinsically adult nature, cabaret as an art form is a revolution that cannot be televised. And nor should it be — like some other grownup activities, it is best experienced in the flesh, preferably in company and in dark, intimate surroundings.

Seven years in the making, this eye-popping show is the brainchild of International Space Station astronaut Tim Peake and Layer Cake composer Ilan Eshkeri in collaboration with the European Space Agency.

Revenge is a dish best served old seems to be the message in Age Of Rage, the latest of Ivo van Hove’s latest extreme theatre productions as he serves up seven Greek stories, all in gloriously guttural Dutch. Read our critic's review.

Anyway you look at it, the concept of The Vaults' Mulan Rouge – a dinner/cabaret mashup of Disney’s Mulan and musical Moulin Rouge – is both exciting and bonkers. But definitely bonkers.

This ambitious follow-up to the controversial and critically acclaimed Fairview is a kaleidoscopic view of race and women across time and space.

Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin may be famous for introducing the tune of “Here Comes The Bride” to the world but there’s much more here in this stirring tale. David Alden’s bold production debuted in 2018 to critical fanfare and now returns to the Royal Opera House with some excellent leads and immersive flourishes.

The Tiger Lillies return to the Soho Theatre with a vicious and viscous re-imagining of the classic Brecht and Weill opera, thick with murderers, thieves and all manner of villainy.

Poul Ruder's 1998 operatic take on The Handmaid's Tale takes flight once again at the English National Opera featuring a new production and the West End debut of Camille Cottin (Killing Eve, Call My Agent).

String v SPITTA might sound like a court case but is, instead, something far more serious: a battle between two children’s entertainers for supremacy of the London scene.

Eyre’s take on La Traviata quite rightly deserves to be seen as a jewel in ROH’s crown but Angel Blue lifts it to a new level. Read our critic's review.

Director Nadia Latif returns this month with the hotly anticipated Marys Seacole written by Jackie Sibblies Drury.