Review: Bedtime Stories, London Wonderground
I have often heard older millennials like me bemoaning a recent slump in the quality of live children's entertainment on TV. Our parents had Crackerjack, and we had SMTV Live, but kids nowad…
I have often heard older millennials like me bemoaning a recent slump in the quality of live children's entertainment on TV. Our parents had Crackerjack, and we had SMTV Live, but kids nowad…
Image via bjaglin on Flickr. Dublin's Abbey Theatre, considered Ireland's national theatre, hosted a meeting last Thursday that finally gave voice to years of frustration for women…
Image via Piero Fissore from Flickr I'm currently working on an extremely high-profile, multi-million-dollar feature film. For real. I'm on an incredible outdoor set, acting with real, prope…
In an artistic climate that celebrates the interweaving of different art forms and media, it is strange that we don't see exciting collaborations like the RSC and Garsington Opera's producti…
Image:Â Arild Andersen at Creative Commons Apparently concerned that not enough of the world is quite as much in love with the sound of my own voice as I am, I recently produced my own aud…
After winning the LOST Theatre's One Act Festival in 2014, an expanded version of By Virtue Fall appears at The Space for an extremely limited run this week. While approaching a very interes…
In our latest honorary Mate guest contribution, theatre blogger and co-operative agency actor Briony Rawle provides a step-by-step guide on how to break into the acting profession – li…
There is something terrible happening to girls and women all over the world, of which we are only just becoming aware. Female genital mutilation is a practice carried out every day, across m…
"So I'm asking you to marry me," I said to the twelve other people in the room. They were smiling, but I wasn't sure whether or not they would say yes. In the end they did say yes, and follo…
After Electra is the result of a commission of April de Angelis by the Theatre Royal Plymouth, to write a play that would showcase the badly underused talent of older actresses. Commendably,…
Image Credit: Tax Credits @ Creative Commons The little-known legal facts that could see thousands of filmmakers in court Disclaimer: Briony Rawle talks big, but is not a trained lawyer. Her…
Following the London riots of 2011, the media began to be aware of the term 'domestic extremist', which had been coined by the Metropolitan Police, ostensibly to describe people it was watch…
A while ago I wrote a blog post pompously entitled 'How to make better films.' I wrote it because I thought if I came across one more casting brief asking for "Curvy Thin Sexy Brunette, 20-2…
It is with Verdi's maddeningly beautiful melodies still trilling round in my head that I write this review of the ENO's La Traviata at the company's home, the London Coliseum. In Verdi's 185…
Bat Boy: The Musical is a joyful curveball of a programming decision by the Southwark Playhouse: a classic Beauty and the Beast (sorry, Beauty and the Bat Boy) story, dressed up in trashy B-…
Image by Martin Tember Heckling So here I am again in panto. It's like fondly looking back on an embarrassing memory from your past, except it's happening right now. Thankfully there is no c…
Hardcore Gothic fans will be pleasantly surprised by the comprehensiveness of the British Library's Gothic exhibition. Beginning with Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, generally agreed…
Stumbling out into the acting world and realising that 87%* of the world's population is now made up of actors (*official figure estimated by me), can make new actors panic a little. We are …
The annual London Horror Festival is a celebration of everything dark, gory and scary in film and theatre in the run-up to Halloween. Throughout October it will bring London's scariest acts …
"Hi there, I'm your Equity representative," said the shy, chipper, and palpably redundant chap who popped into my non-Equity panto rehearsal a couple of years ago. "I know this is a non-Equi…
German director Thomas Ostermeier is on an odyssey through Ibsen. "Roughly every two years [since 2002] I have directed an Ibsen play," he states in the programme, and his production of An E…
In case you weren't already aware of this little-known fact (I have been keeping modestly hush-hush about the matter), I am currently part of a show called Shit-faced Shakespeare, a producti…
Two days since I collapsed onto a southbound train at Edinburgh Waverley, and still the ghostly voices of the Fringe flyerers haunt me whenever I close my eyes: "Four-star physical theatre s…
In my last blog post I wrote about the inevitable and recurrent meltdowns that actors should expect from time to time, when they've not had any work for so long that Equity have tried to fin…
Jonathan Kent's brave production of Puccini's classic opera has opened with a stellar lineup that includes the Royal Opera House's famed resident music director Antonio Pappano conducting, t…