The Lyric is in Another Castle: Poetry and Video Games
Intro: Huge thanks to a number of people I’ve bored to death in talking about this without...
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Category: Homepage Featured
A Warning Against Fetishising the Domestic Goddess: ‘Home I’m Darling’
Judy and Johnny dress in typical 1950s fashion, live in a typical 1950s house and have a typical...
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Great Exhibition of the North 2018
You’ve heard of the “Northern Powerhouse”. You’ve heard that “it’s grim up north” and that you...
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Trauma, fearlessly embodied: ‘A Monster Calls’
You know a show is something special when you’re disappointed to reach the interval. As the lights...
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#UsTogether: Poetry Against Harrassment
Deborah Alma, on editing #MeToo- rallying against sexual harrassment- a women’s poetry anthology...
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Cynhebrwng Aer: A Poetry Air Burial
On the 1st of July in the Baptist Hall in Ledbury, Rhys Trimble and I will enact a ritual ‘air...
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Split Britches: Unexploded Ordnances (UXO): or how I learned to stop worrying and love.
Let’s be honest, the world right now is a little hard to manage. The political unbalance is rife,...
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More than a Boozy Pantomime: Shit-faced Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’
It is difficult to write extensively on a piece of theatre which can be aptly summarised in three...
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Stranger Places and Country Homes: ‘The Remains of The Day’ by Kazuo Ishiguro and ‘The Little Stranger’ by Sarah Waters
The early Kazuo Ishiguro novel, The Remains of the Day, published in 1989, is a story that...
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The Absurdity of Division: ‘Puckoon’ by Spike Milligan
Puckoon is a strange book. This is not really a useful thing to open any criticism with, I’m...
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Making Something New: ‘RED’ at Wyndham’s Theatre
Though figuratively they may speak volumes, paintings don’t tend to literally speak for...
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Ed Byrne: ‘Spoiler Alert’
Ed Byrne has been an acclaimed stand-up (with audiences and critics alike) for 20 years now. His...
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A 21st Century Farce: The Game of Love and Chai
The first thing that comes to mind when going to see a farce, especially one that has been updated...
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“Did You Hear the Rumour?”: The Immersive World of ‘Isle of Dogs’
For a certain type of person, the past month has most likely been filled with Isle of Dogs fever....
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Composing Modern Musicals: In Conversation with Dougal Irvine
Teddy the Musical is transforming London’s Vaults beneath Waterloo into Elephant and Castle...
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We Could Be Hero: ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ at the Rose Theatre, Kingston
Going into Much Ado About Nothing, my expectations were modest. No disrespect to the play — in...
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Podcast Spotlight: ‘You Must Remember This’
To listen in to You Must Remember This head to their website or download directly from ITunes You...
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‘Is that your final answer?’: James Graham’s ‘Quiz’
As we begin to settle in our seats an overly-enthusiastic warm-up comic bounds on stage in a...
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‘A not so moudy tale’: Cheek by Jowl’s ‘Pericles’
Pericles is one of Shakespeare’s lesser known plays, one that would give you a particularly...
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Bowie Book Club: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
The second installment of Duncan Jones’ #BowieBookClub is the influential The Fire Next...
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Multiple Spotlights: In Conversation with Carrie Hope Fletcher
Carrie Hope Fletcher. Musical theatre star, best-selling author, internet star, and now releasing...
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Just Horse Play?: ‘Ex Anima’ by Théâtre Équestre Zingaro
The circular theatre was dark. Swamp creature noises played over the sound system. Slowly we...
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A Spectacle of Horror: ‘Macbeth’ at the RSC
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has a habit, it seems, of relying on crowd pleasing. In 2016,...
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Season 3 of ‘Love’ and the Lessons on Toxic Masculinity
Have you ever had that thing where you give a guy the benefit of the doubt, only to find out later...
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Tragicomedy and Coping: ‘The Cherry Orchard’ at the Bristol Old Vic
Anton Chekhov’s final play, The Cherry Orchard, is about the transition from the old to the new...
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Bowie Book Club: Peter Ackroyd’s ‘Hawksmoor’
In December 2017, film director Duncan Jones, also known as David Bowie’s son, began the...
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Chiaroscuro in ‘The Night of the Hunter’
The setting of Davis Grubb’s 1953 novel The Night of the Hunter represents a mythologised...
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Visualising Music: ‘Colours’ by Dimitri Scarlato
In his new project Colours, composer and conductor Dimitri Scarlato journeys through an aural...
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The Domestic Horror Stories of ‘Inside No. 9’
As half of The League of Gentlemen and the creators of Psychoville, writer-performers Reece...
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International Women’s Day: The Badass Women of Horror
Women have been raped, abused, and butchered in horror films for as long as permitted by...
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Putting the ‘Smart’ in Independent Film: ‘Welcome to the Dollhouse’ and ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’
Independent films are those which defy the conventions of traditional Hollywood cinema. ‘Smart’...
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International Women’s Day: Bernard MacLaverty’s ‘Midwinter Break’
In her review of Bernard MacLaverty’s latest novel Midwinter Break, Irish author Anne Enright...
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Searching for Bodhisattva Guanyin in ‘Journey to the West’
Before I read Journey to the West, I was intrigued by the syncretic worldview common to Confucian...
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‘Girlfriends’ at the BFI: Curating Female Relationships
The BFI is now moving into the second month of a season dedicated to film depictions of female...
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Continuing Restoration Battles: Hannah Cowley’s ‘The Belle’s Stratagem’
“All I know is whatever we do – it must be twice as well as men to be thought half as...
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Carson McCullers: A Reading Recommendation for International Women’s Day
This year, 2017, marks the centenary of Carson McCullers’ birth. It seems appropriate then that on...
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Scarier than Fiction: Bête Noire’s production of Father of Lies
True crime is something of a nomadic genre. Aside from comedy, no other type of narrative...
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The Best of All Possible Narratives: The Storytelling Secrets Behind the Success of Netflix’s ‘Dark’
The “x meets y” formulation is one of the most efficient ways to pitch an idea. Nowhere have I...
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Complicated Families in Post-War Japanese Film: Yasujiro Ozu’s ‘Tokyo Twilight’
At the time of their release, the films of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963) did not have...
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Bathroom Pathos in ‘Grief is the Thing With Feathers’
Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter is a contemporary depiction of loss and mourning in...
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The Anonymous Face of the Net: ‘The Believers are but Brothers’
“At the edge of our decaying bodies lies a network of power greater than any tyrant has ever...
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Got Plans for Armageddon? Marching To ‘The End of the World’ with Cat Loud
This is the end, hold your breath and count to ten. The Vault’s performance space is a fitting...
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Braving the Horror: Danse Macabre’s “Nightmares in Progress”
Horror despite its potential has often found itself avoided by theatre practitioners despite...
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Pick of the Vaults Festival 2018
In what has been dubbed “London’s answer to the Edinburgh Fringe” The Vaults in London are...
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A Labour of Love: In Conversation with Jennifer Kirby
Actress Jennifer Kirby has had an illustrious stage career, working with the Royal Shakespeare...
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A Career in Two Parts: In Conversation with Annabel Scholey
Annabel Scholey is an actress most recently acclaimed for her performance in the Netflix hit...
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Hashtag Art: In Conversation with Tabloid Art History
Tabloid Art History is a Twitter account with a simple premise – tabloid photographs paired with...
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The Endurance of Monologues: ‘Heretic Voices’ at the Arcola Theatre
Seeing three monologues on the trot throws into sharp relief both the possibilities and the...
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Culturised’s Top Theatre of 2017
2017 was a huge year for theatre with revelations rocking its core, new portfolio organisations...
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Intellectual Snobbery? – Limiting the Brontës to the world of classic literature
It is the classic dichotomy; old vs young, tradition vs innovation, the classical vs the modern. ...
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