Cindy Marcolina - Page 28

The world's greatest dollmaker has just died and his family have come together to mourn the death of their father and husband. While their showbiz obsessed mother is grieving a man who wasn't exactly how people perceived him, three sisters start to untangle a series of secrets.

The nation of Mars is finally free. It's 2199, six cities have taken control and declared themselves republics after their oppressors left to go back to Earth after the revolution. Upstart Theatre's latest creation is an intriguing experiment that looks and feels more like a digital board game of sorts rather than a conventional performance.

It's very hard to distillate horror and put it on stage. Theatre works on the separation between audience and performers, and the surprising effects that one can successfully employ live in performance are relatively limited by the realistic nature of the mean, therefore companies usually only rely on well-timed but ultimately cheap jump-scares to achieve their frightening goals.

Julie (Jenny Walser) and Simon (Jack Brownridge-Kelly) grew up in a small fishing village at the end of the world, in Cornwall. While Simon is willing to dedicate his life to the ocean like all the men in his family have for generations, Julie is restless and wants more. In My Lungs the Ocean Swells is the delicate tale of love, friendship, and the slow decline of fishing villages.

On a morning in late January in 1989, Salvador Dalí was dying at the age of 84 after changing the art world forever. The sharp decline of his health and a few suicide attempts quietly led to heart failure while he was listening to his favourite piece of music in his later years. What happened in the mind of the great Surrealist while he was drawing his last breaths? Canadian theatre company 8ROJO have the answer.

Patricia has spent the past year recovering from an abusive relationship. She's had time to craft the speech she'd give to her ex and she's come to terms with her trauma. However, neither therapy nor time prepared her for the moment she accidentally bumped into him on the street, so now she's preparing to go to dinner with him.

VAULT Festival is notorious for its offerings of promenade and immersive shows. Every year companies gather to take audiences on the most disparate journeys all around the Waterloo area.

In Beijing, four expats at different stages of emigration are grappling with how Chinese society perceives them. Julian, a translator who's just moved (David East); Lisa, a British-born Chinese young woman (Siu-See Hung); Robert, a writer who's lived in the country for 20 years (Joseph Wilkins); and Ollie, a diplomat's son (Waylon Luke Ma) all crumble under the outer pressures of their shared colonialist past.

Ana Luiza Ulsig brings the result of a nervous breakdown to VAULT Festival. In The Journey of a Warlike Mind she takes on the character of Eva, a young woman who's struggling with the societal pressure she feels compelled to give into while harbouring the desire to break free.

After an acclaimed debut in Edinburgh last summer, Nathaniel Hall is bringing his autobiographical one-man show First Time to VAULT Festival before heading off on tour to tell his story of shame and acceptance.

Young property developer Frankie Foxstone has her eyes on the Waterloo area. With an over-the-top personality, a politician's attitude, and sharp ruthlessness she takes her audience on a walking tour of Leake Street explaining how she's working on gentrifying it even more than it already is.

Soph (Natalya Martin) and Jel (Monica Anne) love sitting in the dark reading creepypasta on the internet. Ellie (Melissa Parker) has just moved to their school and, while they welcome her in their group, she comes with some baggage and her own scary stories.

An acclaimed classical actor is struggling with his terminal diagnosis while preparing for the role of a lifetime. When Lunga Kunene shows up to take on the job of live-in nurse, they're forced to settle their differences through their only shared passion: Shakespeare's works. Written by John Kani last year to mark the 25th anniversary since the first post-apartheid democratic elections, Kunene and the King swings between the political and personal while giving a heartfelt lecture on the Bard and his King Lear.

The curse struck again on press night of The Watermill Theatre's London transfer of Macbeth, with Lauryn Redding (allegedly) dislocating both knees during Paul Hart's energetic opening. A hero was lying low in the audience. Emma Barclay, former Lady Macduff of the project when it was touring the country last year and a guest on the evening, took over and delivered the role and ensemble track flawlessly and seemingly off book. The show went on to be an electric and sexually charged revisitation of the tragedy.

A and B meet to recreate the feats of a famously homosexual serial killer who's haunting the streets of London. A, who's providing the service for a price, creates the scenarios of choice while B gets off on the pain and shame that comes from it. After a successfully sold-out run at The Glory, Alexis Gregory has taken Sex/Crime to Soho Theatre leaving one to wonder if audiences at the East End venue co-owned by Gregory's co-star Jonny Woo were seeing the same piece.

A nameless woman starts writing a novel in Mexico City. She is regularly interrupted by her family as she tells about a younger version of herself living wildly in New York and little known poets in need of translation. Her reality interweaves with memories from different, distant lives as she transcends narratives through exceptionally vivid storytelling. Valeria Luiselli's 2011 novel Faces in the Crowd (originally translated by Christina McSweeney) is directed and adapted by the Gate Theatre's artistic director Ellen McDougall in a quiet but intense production.

Every Tuesday night, four volunteers gather in a drab branch of Brightline taking phone calls from strangers facing hardship. Outside, the world is falling apart. As they try to help the callers, they attempt to conceal their anxieties and fears while trying to deal with their own personal catastrophes.

Helen is finally getting the artistic opportunity she's been coveting, while Phil is being dragged down by her own secret. When the painter is pressured to exploit her background and lifestory, she ends up endangering her closest friendship. OPIA Collective explore female understanding, not-so-inadvertent cultural insensitivity, and the importance of listening to each other in the stylish and cutting The Girl With Glitter In Her Eye.

The new year has officially seen the passing of the artistic direction baton from Matthew Parker to Kennedy Bloomer at The Hope Theatre. Opening the decade in style are 6FootStories with their rewriting of everyone's most beloved Prince of Denmark. Hamlet has hired three players to expose Claudius's diabolic plan. We meet them deep in rehearsals when the ghost of Hamlet Sr thunders in (in uproarious fashion, one must add) to request they avenge his death.

It's 1957 in Chicago. Four policemen, Stan, Rosey, Eulee, and Foxy share an office in-between stake-outs in a city slain by the mob and racial segregation. It's difficult, however, to find real themes in Tony Tortora's play among its misogyny, doughnuts, and Elvis. Sophomoric humour, endless conversations about menial and inconsequential matters, and tiresome boys-will-be-boys banter build a largely uninteresting piece of theatre.