25 stories by "Francesca Beckett"
The play begins with normal looking people scattered in freeze across the stage, a folk singer who looks liked she's turned up to the wrong gig, and bewilderingly early costume changes. A di…
Phillip Pullman once wrote that, "Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all," and it's very true. Stories are the way we communic…
Chris Cox is quite upfront about the fact that he can’t read minds. In fact, he bills himself as the mind reader who can’t actually perform. If that’s true however, then ho…
The Offshoots (in Association with Lancaster University Theatre Group) has had a great deal of success over the last few years, winning plaudits from publications such as The Scotsman, Briti…
A good character comedian is hard to come by. It’s seemingly difficult to create characters that are not only convincing and entertaining, but also have heart. Thankfully, Colin Hoult …
Everyone in comedy these days seems to be ‘hotly tipped’ for something, but I’d heard so much buzz around Delete the Banjax that I felt compelled to go and see if, this tim…
It’s a display of how weird the Fringe experience is, that yesterday I found myself waiting in a queue for a show surrounded by (what seemed like) hundreds of tiny, excitable children.…
You know that feeling you get at the end of a gig, when the band reaches their crescendo and everyone around you goes absolutely mental for three minutes? It’s always that one song tha…
It’s a good job Hannibal Buress is such a likeable performer; with a CV like his it’d be very easy to be jealous. At only 28 he has already written for shows such as Satur…
Simon Evans is one of those comedians who seem to be on the periphery of fame. A 'you'll know him when you see his face' level of recognition, if you will. He's been in the ind…
It is often argued that the best things in life are free, and in the case of theatre the free fringe is incredibly important. It allows practitioners to display their work without the worry …
Comedy nowadays has to be crude and shocking to make people laugh. Only those making jokes about risqué topics or making politically incorrect statements seem to have any success. Well, tha…
Impending fatherhood is the central theme of this one man show by Danny Benoliel, who delves into his past in an attempt to inform his future. But what has a murder committed in 1919 really …
'Life is a Cabaret' according to Liza Minelli, which I believe is not completely accurate. Thankfully life is not quite as weird as most of the things I witnessed at Jackson's Lane on Friday…
One of the joys of fringe theatre is occasionally stumbling across a little gem that no one else yet knows about. I like feeling confident that in a few years time you can smugly boast ̵…
There's a quote from Lenin that reads, “a single death is a tragedy, one million deaths is just a statistic”. It is impossible to identify with the sufferings of unimaginable num…
Of all the plays that might be suitably adapted into a musical, Hamlet seems the most unlikely. It is often seen as the ultimate tragedy; hours of horror after horror. So when I heard that t…
It's incredibly hard to review an excerpt from a work in progress. It seems wrong to be critical of something that's not quite finished, and not quite whole. However sometimes all you need t…
The Blue Elephant Theatre is starting to make a name for itself, with a brilliant selection of theatre, dance and comedy. On the agenda was a double bill by theatre company Lumenis, w…
It is often said that there are only seven stories, and The City Madam is certainly a good example. Borrowing from everything from Measure for Measure to the Prodigal Son, Massinger's play s…
Taking its name from an Emily Dickinson poem, And I and Silence is the last of three plays performed as part of ‘In Their Place’ – a three-month-long season of work …
In 1942, when Tennessee Williams first wrote the short story which became Kingdom of Earth, its content (exploring themes such as race and sexuality) meant that it wasn’t publis…
Welcome to The Empire, a strange world of music hall, madness and murder. Say hello to the cast of The Vaudevillains. They are a motley crew: Albert Frog and his 'companion' Mr Punchy;…
Photo courtesy of Theatre503 There's a longstanding joke about 'resting' actors in sales. Namely, that the profession is full of them. So Sold, the new play by award-winning writer Su…
It might seem strange to review a show without technically 'seeing' it, but unfortunately today I have no choice as I was blindfolded throughout the performance. No, I was not kidnapp…
