Katie Kirkpatrick - Page 2

Ambika Mod, of This Is Going to Hurt and One Day fame, is pretty perfect casting for the part. Exuding warmth and approachability, she handles the play’s demands with the ideal balance of humanity and confidence, putting audiences immediately at ease. She never feels like she’s fully playing a role, but rather telling a story.

Deaf Republic is a marvel of a show. Using puppetry, live video, aerial, and a combination of spoken English, BSL, and captions, this is the kind of theatre that steps not only out of the box but into a whole new world.

Unusual and unflinching, Dear Young Monster delves into the parallels between the creation of Frankenstein’s Monster as a ‘man-made man’ and the experience of a trans coming of age. Playfully incorporating horror and the gothic, it’s a queer hidden gem of this summer’s theatre offerings.

Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses has long been something of a YA classic. Rather than dreaming up a sci-fi future, however, this story presents instead an uncanny alternate present – one where discrimination and racial violence are worse than ever, but it's Black people who are the privileged ones.

This Bitter Earth, the UK directorial debut of Tony winner Billy Porter, is a play with a lot to say – about race, about activism, and about love. First produced in 2017, the show follows the twists and turns in the relationship between Jesse (Omari Douglas), a Black writer, and his boyfriend Neil (Alexander Lincoln), a white BLM activist.

#Pop Off, Michelangelo! might just be the gayest show in London right now. And that’s saying a lot. But this high camp new musical, overflowing with pop culture references, has to be seen to be believed. The show transports us to the Renaissance – no, not Beyonce’s hit album, the other one. When best friends Mike and Leo come out to each other, their main concern is that God might not be the biggest fan of gays. So what can they do about it? Talk to the Pope of course!

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.