325 stories by "Jake Orr"
When Purni Morell took over the artistic direction of The Unicorn Theatre there was an air of excitement over the work and artists which she could bring across from her time leading the Nati…
Ipswich wouldn’t be the first place you’d call to mind when thinking about the hotbed of contemporary theatre talent that the UK is nurturing. The city might only be a short trai…
It seems to me that if I am to write or respond to anything that the theatre world has to offer me, it has to come through the conditions of my being. It feels impossible to see the world th…
Can Themba’s short story The Suit, depicting the black cultural hub of Sophiatown, Johannesburg in the 1950s, is given a touching and honest adaption and direction (by Peter Brook a…
In a collaboration that sees the theatre cultures of England, Estonia and Germany clash, divide and mold together, Three Kingdoms at Lyric Hammersmith, part of World Stages London, is a whir…
Uninvited Guests is inviting audiences to scour newspapers for all that is bad in the world before pushing it into a performance space and, like the evolution of man from his primitive ape d…
I’ve been thinking about Melanie Wilson’s Autobiographer which I reviewed here during the week. It would perhaps be fair to say that I didn’t give it a glowing review, and …
Melanie Wilson’s Autobiographer is a poem about life, loss and the slipping away of memory as Flora, the central character split between four performers, struggles with dementia. In it…
I’ve been thinking a lot about the digital in theatre, and how this affects us as an audience, and as industry professionals and theatre makers. At the moment, it’s all about the…
As I was sitting watching Gross und Klein (Big and Small) at the Barbican Theatre I couldn’t help getting lost in the humour and tangential nature of Botho Strauss’s play, albeit…
In David Byrne’s The Dark Room we witness the rise of Ruth (Madeleine MacMahon) as she asserts her power in the new school she has joined. From bottom of the classroom pile, she plots,…
In January 2011 I sat in the Pleasance Theatre watching Curious Directive’s Return To Silence. It wasn’t a perfect performance but the potential from this emerging company was cl…
With a running time of less than an hour, Squint’s Broken News at the New Wimbledon Studio Theatre packs in an energetic production with a compact story fit for the micro-narrative soc…
In this production of Mercury Fur by Philip Ridley, playing in the intimate Old Red Lion Theatre, audiences are crammed in tight and asked to be forgiving of the warm atmosphere. But it̵…
You will not find a harsher critic than me when it comes to Rogers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! Period. It's a musical very close to my heart as it was the first musical I performed at Univer…
Hayley Squires's debut play Vera Vera Vera, part of the Royal Court's Young Writers Festival, is about the grief and hope that arises when a young solider, Bobby, is shot whilst fighting for…
Our friends at Lyric Hammersmith have given us a pair of tickets to the hit show Mogadishu which is returning to the Lyric this week. To get your hands on the tickets skip below to find out …
Mikhall Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, an epic novel which tells of the Devil visiting Moscow and interacting with its inhabitants, is considered to be one of the best novels of …
Philip Ridley’s tour de force of a play, Shivered, is the story of a family torn apart by the beheading of their soldier son after he is taken hostage abroad. In true Ridley fashion, i…
Political correctness. Freedom of speech. Extremists. Belief. Islam. Muslim. Multicultural. Racism. Britishness. These are all words that have become more prominent in recent years, and …
The launch of the annual Sprint Festival at Camden People’s Theatre took place not in a theatre as expected, but in the living room for an intimate audience of ten people. Birmingham-b…
“I didn’t know whether to masturbate or to vomit,” a bemused Chris Bailey declares during Made In China’s We Hope That You’re Happy (Why Would We Lie?) at Batte…
The production of Julius Caesar staged at the Jack Studio Theatre (at the Brockley Jack) was a visual spectacle. The grungy feel of Rachel Cartlidge's costumes placed this production outside…
Sitting in the rehearsal room whilst Dirty Market works towards its work-in-progress piece is a rollercoaster ride. My presence in the process is a complicated one. The company has been kind…
From the moment I entered the Garrick theatre the excited squeals of children were audible. They had seemingly come expecting the charming wit of Terry Deary and the joyous mirth of the tele…
