Sound system
This scorching, sweaty nightclub is an intoxicating exploration of identity through dance. Ayden Brouwers and Lizzie Morris interviewed transgender and non-binary people between the ages of 18 and 25. Far from the assumptions and expectations involved in being seen, the interviewees speak freely; his incorporeal words are revealing, insightful, and emotional. With synthesizers and talks, her audio discovers the performativity of the genre in dance, the constant awareness of how they are perceived and the decisions they have to make in nightclubs to stay safe. Read the full review. KW Pleasance Dome, August 23-29.
She’s bleeding
One of the reasons we go to the theater is to feel. It’s that tingling sensation in the skin, which speeds up the pulse and expands the heart that comes from being together in a room sharing stories. This particular feeling awakens almost immediately with Lauryn Redding’s cheerful new solo show. Continuing with the beer in hand, toasting with the audience before grabbing a guitar, Redding has the arrogance of the musician and the confident tone of the narrator. What follows is a classic chalk and cheese love story. Read the full review. CLTraverse, August 4-28.
My son is weird (but what can you do?)
A decade before the selfie culture began, Rob Madge was a kid ahead of the curve, demanding his family video on every extravagant performance they ever did in their Coventry living room. So did they: these videos have driven Madge (who is not binary) through social media celebrities to her own individual autobiographical show. Madge, an Alan Cumming from Midlands in a vest and pants, plays the acts and home theater of her youth, but over time, this childhood diva fades into the background and her loving family emerges as protagonists. of the show. Read the full review. BL Underbelly, Aug. 4-29.
Jordan Brookes a This Is Just What Happens at Soho Theater, London. Photo: Tristram Kenton / The Guardian
Jordan Brookes: That’s what happens
It’s a whole project, to turn what Jordan Brookes does on stage – experimental, unstable, disconcerting – into something that “would work on Live at the Apollo.” But that’s Brookes’ stated ambition with his first show since the award-winning I’ve Got Nothing, three summers ago. Its strangest excesses are curbed here, in what, apart from the usual formal deception, is at least recognizable as a standup. But let’s not get carried away: this is still a comedy drawn from the darkest subsoil of a disturbed soul, delivered by a man whose warmest smile still stirs a tincture of discomfort. Read the full review. BLMonkey Barrel, August 3-28.
This is Paradise
Kate Regan is a woman defined by the men in her life. There’s her kind Belfast father, disappointed by the company she maintains, there’s Big Joe, the teenager she lost in a reckless accident, and there’s her attentive but unexciting husband, Brendy. Above all, there is Diver, a charismatic bassist over 20 years older than her, whose desire for life coincides with his desire for destruction. If that makes Kate sound like an insult to Bechdel’s rehearsal, there’s no point in Amy Molloy’s excellent performance. She is a woman absolutely at the center of her own story. Read the full review. MFTraverse, August 4-28.
Tim Key: Mulberry
Mulberry is “the story of a sealed celebrity,” describing Key’s professional crisis, through a growing thirst for craft beer and surprise appearances in television contests. His confinement companion, a five-foot teddy bear, stars in a handful of the funniest phrases, while mentions of his past glories become a pleasant return. Key’s gift, which is why his shows always have a great rhythm, is his poetry. It balances the fast and the silly with a more languid, even poignant prose. Whenever we turn to pandemic troops, there is a poem to redirect us. Read the full review. RHPleasance Dome and then Pleasance Courtyard, August 3-28.
Nish Kumar at Your Power, Your Control at the Soho Theater, London. Photo: Tristram Kenton / The Guardian
Nish Kumar: Your power, your control
At a 2019 charity concert, with anti-Brexit gags on, Nish Kumar threw a loaf of bread at him before being booed off stage. The incident, heavily embellished in the press, triggered death threats, which in turn caused Kumar to be held accountable for his frail mental health. His mental fragility has seldom been mentioned, especially because (as he says in this program) he totally denied it. But the main note here is still boisterous and mocking, as the 36-year-old opposes a relentless ridicule. Read the full review. BL George Square Assembly, August 22-28.
The Click
Taking over the Edinburgh Festival in 2004, La Clique was the show that ushered in the new wave of alternative cabaret in the 2000s, and its spiegeltent welcomed everyone, from singer Camille O’Sullivan swinging in a trapeze to Bath Boy, the Meow Meow singers. and Le Gateau Chocolat, and hula hooper Marawa the Amazing. Director David Bates is still looking for the nude-cabaret scene from around the world for a bold, sexy and cheerful show full of dizzying emotions and celebration. Read the full review. LWUnderbelly’s Circus Hub in the Meadows, August 5-27.
Listening
If this were a regular program, it would be something like One Million Tiny Plays About Britain. Eavesdropping’s characters include an exploited care worker, a woman in sexual arousal, and a partner who remembers the clubs and pubs of her youth. Together, they form a snapshot of urban life. But this is not a regular show. Rather, it’s part of ThickSkin’s Walk This Play franchise, which is in addition to the Manchester, Ancoats and Huddersfield versions, in which you listen with headphones as you tour the city for an hour. Set in a sliding way, it is a colorful walk in the company of strangers. Read the full review. MFEdinburgh city center, August 5-28.
Cara Withers, Josie Underwood and Jack Wakely in Godot Is a Woman by Silent Faces at the Pleasance Theater in London. Photo: Tristram Kenton / The Guardian
Godot is a woman
Madonna released her album Like a Prayer the same year Samuel Beckett died. The singer’s shrill sexuality heralded a new female confidence the playwright would never see. Had she done so, the Silent Faces theater company argues, she might not have banned women from acting in anticipation of Godot. Why does this matter? Because it excludes that half of the world’s population is reflected in an existential parable that speaks on behalf of all mankind. In a hilarious song and dance show, this is both a hot #MeToo theme and a cheeky, geeky reflection on the patriarchal structures of copyright. Read the full review. CAPleasance Dome, August 3-28.
Destiny
Destiny is gearing up for a great Thursday night in rural Wiltshire. He takes us to his local nightclub, Karma, where drinks are 50 p. and the night will finally get worse, putting her on a path of desperate longing for love. Although its existence is fraught with misfortunes, such as distant parenting, limited finances, and sexual abuse, it is full of hope. It’s hard not to warm up with Destiny, written and performed by Florence Espeut-Nickless. If her story is one we’ve probably heard before, it makes her no less authentic, and it’s captivatingly told in the West Country vernacular of the Destiny community. With an endearing personality, he makes them proud. Read the full review. ARUnderbelly, August 4-28.
Catherine Bohart: This is not for you
Catherine Bohart turns lovelessness into a very attractive comedy as she tells the story of her journey from the satisfied couple to the breakup and through a year of social isolation, in which her OCD increased and her friends left her. attack with terrible tips on emotional recovery. Or was it terrible? Here you learn as Bohart understands his own role in his romantic fall after a show that pours entertaining contempt on the bromides “learn to love yourself.” Read the full review. BLMonkey Barrel, August 4-28.
Donuts, choreographed by Jamaal Burkmar. Photo: Tristram Kenton / The Guardian
Donuts
Program notes for the Jamaal Burkmar show cite scenes from Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Scrubs, and The Office, a taste of the sitcoms of the ’90s and’ 00s that inspired Donuts. There are no clues or jokes here, but there is something warm, fun and very visible. It is based on three friends, sitting at home. They play and tease, they make a very conversational and very well-observed choreography: the delicate dynamics of friendship and the way interactions take place, how energy moves around a group and we reflect on people as we connect with them. Read the full review. LWAssembly George Square Gardens, August 3-14.
Bloody Mary: Long live!
You may have considered the full life of Mary Tudor, the first queen of England, for a long time before thinking: standup comedy. But this is the leap that Olivia Miller has made with this punk solo, performed for the first time in her hometown of New York. Reimagine Mary as a Gen-Z teenage girl in the face, back from the dead to repeat her frightening life story, defend her name, and justify this little affair of 280 living burned heretics. Read the full review. BLPleasance at the EICC, from 3 to 29 August.
Far behind
“Will you favor me with your eyes, your ears, and your voice?” asks John Rwothomack, the writer and performer of this intense and atmospheric monologue. He invites us to play a child’s play while we are in the character of a boy with a squeaky voice. But his questions turn into orders and take on creepy connotations as he begins his story about Okumu, a Ugandan boy abducted and forced to become a soldier and executioner. As bleak as the result may be, Rwothomack proves to be a captivating performer with a powerful story to tell. Read the full review. AAZoo Southside, August 5-20.
Jack Docherty at the Soho Theater in London. Photography: Antonio …