By Pete Lawler on 19/06/2014
almieda, islington, mr burns, pete lawler, Theatre
Theatre Reviews

Do not feel the need to adjust the lights. Remain calm. You’ve just entered the post-apocalypse. And the post-apocalypse has entered the stage in this almost riveting piece by American playwright Anne Washburn. Of course, it isn’t the first play to be set after the end of the world as we know it (Hello?Endgame?!). […]
By Pete Lawler on 15/01/2014
kingsland road, little red staircase, shoreditch, viet grill, vietnamese food
Food & Drink, Restaurant Reviews, shoreditch

The Little Red Staircase capitalizes on the Hackneyite’s – and by extension the Shoreditchised Londoner’s – fondness for the strip of homely, inexpensive and frankly delicious Vietnamese eateries that line the Kingsland Road. And when I say capitalize, I mean capital ‘S’ for Saigon, as in the barely postcolonial feel of this ‘micro’ cocktail bar […]
By Pete Lawler on 26/10/2013
Blood Wedding, Federico Garcia Lorca, hoxton, Tanya Ronder
Theatre Reviews

You’d think that seeing Lorca’s Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding) twice before would give me some authority and make me feel uber-qualified to pass judgement on any new production. But it is a testament to the richness of the work that neither the off-broadway production that I saw in Spanish nor the intense and intimate […]
By Pete Lawler on 16/10/2013
Theatre Reviews

Barely a week after the last Tory MP has drank the last drop of Bollinger left in Manchester playing the turbo round of the conference cliché drinking game, days after each party has vied with each other to sound more xenophobic than the other two, onto the stage above the Hen & Chickens dashes The […]
By Pete Lawler on 16/10/2013
ghosts, The Almeida, theatre reviews
Theatre Reviews

Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts, currently on at The Almeida, fierce, courageous, unflinching and at times bitterly painful exploration of grief, suffering, the necessity of deceit, and the willingness to sacrifice for loved ones. Having said all this, if you’re looking for the uplifting, life-affirming moment, the pregnant-with-meaning, didactic glow at the of this great theatrical ‘journey’ […]
By Pete Lawler on 10/10/2013
Theatre Reviews

Based on the experiences of political agitators kept in Rawson political prison during Argentina’s dictatorship in the 1970s, and primarily of Teatro Malayerba company director Aristides Vargas’ brother Chico, who was an inmate for ten years, La Razón Blindada (The Bulletproof Reason) is an intense exploration of the condition of imprisonment, loneliness, of fear, […]
By Pete Lawler on 19/08/2013
Kids Activities, Parenting

The biggest children’s festival in the UK has once again stormed through three days of kids entertainment and attractions, this time helping to baptize the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and establish it as a venue in it’s post-Hellenic legacy. I have to admit, even for a hardened cynic like me, it is quite a […]
By Pete Lawler on 12/07/2013
Theatre Reviews

The Wrong Crowd’s creative team love to draw on myth, folklore and fairytale and utilize puppetry to tell stories on the stage; but if you were expecting a children’s story from their current offering, The Girl with the Iron Claws, you would be shocked, awed, and enchanted in an hour of theatre that gives so […]
By Pete Lawler on 10/07/2013
arcola theatre
Theatre

The Girl with the Iron Claws rounds out its UK tour in Hackney’s own Arcola Theatre this week, having premiered in the Edinburgh Fringe in 2011 to rave reviews and an award nomination from Total Theatre. Here, writer and director Hannah Mulder takes some time out from rehearsals to talk to us about the production. […]
By Pete Lawler on 31/01/2013
Theatre Reviews

I wouldn’t say they had me from the off. Which is not to say I wasn’t very much looking forward to Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s adaptation of the chilling novella, The Turn of the Screw by the famously obscure American writer Henry James. And I can’t say that sense of anticipation wasn’t heightened sitting […]