fringe shows

Sick!: brave and insightful

Celebrated Canadian playwright Judith Thompson spearheads Sick!, a brave and insightful work (now playing as part of the Next Stage Theatre Festival) which gives voice to a myriad of young performers - some of whom are practiced actors, some not - but all of whom have a real ailment or non-medical condition which they share and parse for the audience.

It's a candid collection of personal stories told in direct address that move and resonate, partly due to the lack of pretence permeating the majority of performances, partly due to the often difficult details of the lives described. Sick!...

The Grace Project: Sick!

January 10th, 2011 · By Justin Haigh

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Tom's a-Cold: engrossing

This deceptively simple dark comedy from writer David Egan (playing now as part of the Next Stage Festival) is the kind of play that one knows is good if for no other reason than by virtue of the fact that despite its dramatic restrictions, one is just as engrossed at the end of sixty minutes as one is at the beginning.

Tom's A-Cold

January 10th, 2011 · By Justin Haigh

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At the Sans Hotel: a lot of things and nothing all

Indie theatre personality Nicola Gunn presents with At the Sans Hotel (on as part of this year's Next Stage Theatre Festival) a quirky and difficult to define one woman show about, well, a lot of things and nothing all simultaneously. Call it performance art, call it theatre, call it what you will, one gets the feeling Gunn could not care less about labels anyway.

Guiding the largely direct address presentation is Gunn's alter ego, Sophie, a skittish, flower-print summer dress wearing French import who charms with visual puns, a sprinkling of philosophical declarations, and stream of consciousness musings about...