Katie Kirkpatrick - Page 2

A journalist writing a story about death and terminal illness finds out she herself is dying. The irony is off the charts, and it’s undeniably a fascinating set-up. Edinburgh Fringe hit Outpatient turns this premise into a witty one-person show, now running in Park Theatre’s studio space.

Rumours are flying, people are fucking, and the queen’s been taken to the tower. Ava Pickett’s debut play 1536 tears through a story of female sexuality and male violence, bringing a distinctly twenty-first century language and sensibility to the era of Anne Boleyn.

In this version of the familiar story, we are whisked away to the 1800s American West. The sparring young men are now gun-touting cowboys, the ball is a barn dance, and the soundtrack is all banjos and whistles. It’s a bold transposition of the star-crossed Verona lovers, but one that works surprisingly well. 

When physical items take over your life, what space is left for real people? Personal Values, the debut play from Chloe Lawrence-Taylor, seeks to answer this question, digging through boxes and bags to examine family, grief, and memory. What it uncovers is intriguing, but doesn’t quite hold together. 

It would be fair to say Weather Girl was the talk of last year’s Edinburgh Fringe. With a Scotsman Fringe First, a Lustrum Award, and a queue stretching back into the Summerhall courtyard, it was only a matter of time until this sweltering success got a much-anticipated London transfer. Now fully sold out at Soho Theatre, it’s clear to see why this show had audiences talking.

Drenched in eerie green and red light, Wet Mess’ Testo is a unique, subversive fever trip through masculinity, transness, and queer identity. A hidden gem of last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, this inventive piece fuses drag king performance with verbatim and cabaret, incorporating the voices of people who have started taking testosterone.

One room, two people. A murder case, as yet unsolved. Jamie Armitage’s An Interrogation takes a simple premise and layers it with questions of gender, class, and responsibility.

Bedazzled with sequins and bouncing with 90s pop, Bright Places is a technicolour journey through a Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis. Heaps of educational fun, it imbues what is at its core a tough, life-altering experience with energy and creativity.

A film that’s all one shot of one colour may not sound like much, but Derek Jarman’s Blue is a rich, intricate tapestry, and a landmark piece of queer filmmaking. For World Aids Day 2024, the film has been reimagined as a live performance, with the voices of queer actors and poets, and a new live score.

Expendable, written by Emteaz Hussain, all takes place in a family kitchen. As the play begins, we meet Zara (Avita Jay) – a Pakistani mother living in northern England – as she chops onions. This environment of domestic familiarity is quickly disturbed by a knock on the door, and a buzz of tension and fear descends on the scene. From this starting point, the show develops into a morally complex examination of the intersection of sexism and racism in British Muslim communities. 

Colourful and full of detail, Eleanor Tindall’s Tender is an engrossing evening of theatre. Combining the sweetness of a contemporary queer rom-com with the dark underbelly of body horror, the play showcases two excellent performances and some stunning design work.

There’s no shortage of shows about death in the London theatre scene. None, however, reach the same level of raw vulnerability, honesty, and heart as Sh!t Theatre, Or What’s Left Of Us. Laying themselves bare, amid a rousing repertoire of folk songs, duo Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole deliver a show that’s hard to forget. 

Now this is how you do historical theatre. Eccentrically re-imagined yet alarmingly real, James Fritz's The Flea is masterfully made. The show is a quirky retelling of a forgotten piece of queer British history: in an unlikely chain of events, the secrets of a gay brothel threaten to bring down some of the country’s best-known politicians and royals.

Based on Ali Smith’s novel, Autumn is a curious blur of images and ideas, which weave in and out of each other with varying success. At the centre of it all, however, is an unlikely friendship, originally formed between an eight-year-old girl and the elderly man next door.

Digging deep into human nature, Oli Forsyth’s Brace Brace combines the pace and excitement of a thriller with an unexpectedly perceptive intelligence. Ambitiously designed and skillfully directed, it’s a deeply engrossing piece of theatre writes our critic.

On the press night for My English Persian Kitchen, the smell of chopped onion, mint, and garlic wafts down the stairs of Soho Theatre. Hannah Khalil’s atmospheric play, combining true storytelling and live cooking, turns these scents into stories rooted in real life. Fresh from the Traverse programme at Edinburgh Fringe, the show comes to Soho for its London run.

At once intimate and expansive, The Real Ones follows the friendship of Zaid and Neelam from age nineteen to thirty-six. Once kindred spirits, moving in sync, they fall out of step when the harsh reality of adult life sends them in different directions. Waleed Akhtar (Olivier winner for The P Word) pens a sharply observed look into whether platonic love can last.