950 stories by "Laura Kressly"
We've seen "Mad Men," or at least heard the clichés about cutthroat ad agency types. Competition for clients, drug and drink fueled late nights, ruthless bidding for commissions regardless …
On Sunday night, theatre people ( and hopefully others) up and down the country tuned in to BBC Four to watch Battersea Arts Centre and Arts Council England take over the former BBC Televisi…
What do you do if your teenaged son's ex-girlfriend accuses him of sexual assault? What if her family refuses to go to the police and takes justice into their own hands instead? Di (Kate Mar…
Southbank Centre has a spiegeltent in residence under the Hungerford Bridge; it's a sexy, glam, velvet and mirrored thing miles away from shabby travelling circuses with tired acts. It's a f…
Nearly everyday we see news of refugees fleeing war torn lands in search of safety abroad. No matter how the press spins objective facts to suit their own agenda and their readers' opinions,…
If a play includes the BBC, lesbians and emotional instability within the arts, it would be fair to assume it's a contemporary text. The Killing of Sister George, written in 1964 by Frank Ma…
Ben Jonson's The Devil is an Ass is less about the devil and more about devilment, and Mercurius bring this farcical, Jacobean world to life with a snappy edit, good energy and some excellen…
Romeo and Juliet gets a modern, interspecies remix by Rita Kalnejais in the south London-set First Love is the Revolution. Awkward, lonely Basti (James Tarpey) is trying to make the best of …
Invisible Treasure has no script and no actors. It's not a play, but a playspace. For this hour long part-video game, part-puzzle, the audience/participants must work together to interpret t…
“Netflix and chill” takes on new meaning in Five Guys Chillin’. Well, the “chill” part does, and is also substituted with “chill out”. Rather than a…
Elyese Dukie is going to die tomorrow. Though she needs to get through tonight first, at least she's not alone. We're in there with her, in her cell on Texas' Death Row in 1959, as is John H…
Knickers, bras and other vintage undergarments (oh my!) dangle from the Hope Theatre ceiling in dim light, the discarded ghosts of sexual encounters long past. Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 Reige…
Any theatre festival programme is hit or miss if you aren't familiar with individual shows or participating companies. So far, the productions I've seen at the London Horror Festival have ra…
There's nothing quite like sibling rivalry, and the hatred you feel for your brother or sister is only matched by one thing. The hatred you often feel for your flatmates. It doesn't matter h…
This adaptation of The Tempest by Kelly Hunter was a one-off performance as part of the Bloomsbury Festival at the Bloomsbury Studio Theatre. Hunter specifically designed this piece to enabl…
In 1998, Thatcher introduced controversial Section 28 that banned promotion of homosexuality, publishing materials that supported it and teaching its acceptability in schools. Playwright Chr…
Sam, Dominique and Will don't always get on with each other. It doesn't help that they're under a lot of stress due to a zombie-alien invasion, and can't work out if any other people survive…
A lot of firsts are happening in Balham theatre at the moment. Theatre N16 has moved from N16 to a new home in SW12, The Bedford Pub. There is little theatre in the immediate area " Tooting …
I'm watching Ben Whitehead play a socially inept Victorian playing a half-walrus/half-man creature, indicated by the wearing of a hooded grey sleeping bag, blue swimming flippers on his hand…
Siblings Joanna and Lawrence live in 1950s New York City, a place brimming with promise and excitement for its younger residents. They don't take advantage of it, though. Lawrence never leav…
We never meet Joanne. We do however, meet four women who encounter her at different points over a crucial 24-hour period of her life, and one that remembers her as a child. We learn that she…
Hiding in a room above a pub in Camden, John is on the run from an archdemon that he initially believed was the angel Madimi, with whom he did a dodgy deal for his soul. This archdemon is so…
The sandman doesn't throw sand in your eyes to help you sleep, oh no. That's just what parents want children to believe so they aren't scared of the real sandman. The real sandman is horribl…
Way up in Manhattan, so far north that it's nearly the Bronx, is Washington Heights. You take the A or the 1 train to 181 Street to find this primarily Hispanic neighbourhood that's not on a…
Most Shakespeare I see is performed with the actors’ genders matching that of the characters they play. Sometimes I see token cross-gender or gender-blind casting within an own-gender …
