A Small Mind At The Theatre

While some issue plays tend to miss the point of providing fun and entertainment as well as making their point on a relevant issue, FEET is certainly not one of them. Written, produced, directed and performed by the two-person team of Emma And Lawrence Wrote A Play, this is clearly a labour of love of the two, full names Emma Brown and Lawrence Smith, it is fun and engaging throughout. It's "issue" is loosely about selling your body for money or art and how far you might be willing to push it. Lucy Winwood (Emma Brown) is your typical young actress, struggling hard to get those money making roles, or roles in general, and in need of money she stumbles upon the world of feet fetishism (as you, of course, would) and slowly from just images of her feet sold online, it becomes feet in jelly and then finally personal meetings with clients for full on feet interaction. The path that FEET takes is that is this denigration of your body in selling your feet actually worse than...

It is perhaps worth going to the theatre to be educated as much as be entertained, and the Fringe like my home grew Flash Festival seem to have a lean towards plays wishing to make a point. The Invisible Condition from Last Word Theatre is very much one of those, its theme is mental health, and perhaps more specifically the NHS approach to it. The play itself offers us to a certain extent the two sides of treatment, we have the psychologist (Anna Demetriuo) trying to deal with a problem through observation and discussion, and then we have the psychiatrist (James Pearse) who goes by the solution of throwing tablets at the patient. While the whole piece is very worthy and putting over a tremendously important subject, The Invisible Problem gets bogged down in too many facts and ends up being more a series of case studies than a piece of theatre. This influx of data leaves it difficult for the audience to ever create much of an emotional connection with the numerous characters that the...

My first ever Fringe experience fell at the more than adequate hands of White Slate Theatre and their witty, carefree and yet actually quite educational Re: Production . Housed in the lovely little studio space above The Oxford Arms in Camden Town itself, it seemed the perfect way to experience the Fringe for the first time as our two performers welcomed us cheerfully to the venue, either knowing many present or at least appearing to know them at this their first performance this year at the Fringe and willing to challenge those who choose to sit at the back. I never got to use my line, "I followed them" though. The show is a little about reproduction and IVF, but much more about love and attraction as our two characters, Karen and Tom (first drawn in stick person form) are introduced to us. The playful fun nature of the play continues for a while as we go through the potential meeting opportunities of two possible love matches. Along the way, we are treated to a lovely...