A Small Mind At The Theatre

In April this year, the first woman was convicted following a new domestic violence law introduction, and it couldn't, therefore, have been more timely to have seen this devastating performance from Periscope Theatre. As although at first, preconceptions suggest we are watching a man's abuse of a woman, it quickly transpires that Out Of Shot has tipped the scales in the opposite direction. What flagged it up for me, and probably for many in the audience, was a burn from an iron. Innocent enough, but enough to bring to my mind that we were to see the less acknowledged side of domestic abuse. From this moment, Out Of Shot began to turn into an extremely intimidating piece of drama, tense and disturbing. At the helm was a tremendous and extremely scary performance from Grace Stewart Hogg as Siena. Hogg was simply incredible spinning the innocence and sweet nature with a heavy suggestion of being the victim in the police interview scenes, and turning that on the head with the...

Long term sufferers of my reviews will have easily picked up the fact that the great Bard, Mr Shakespeare is not really my bag. Usually suffering his slings and arrows often to just continue to support the various groups that I now follow. Richard II represents also the most problematic of his works for me, the history plays. However I am always optimistic, and more especially with the University interpretations as they always do something different, whether bringing his stories into a different timeline, as they did with Romeo & Juliet 's 90s council estate last year, or some innovative casting decisions, Catherine Garlick for instance as Malcolm in Macbeth three years ago. This time they take the later style and in a much bolder move, casting vast swathes of ladies in the men's roles (possibly a necessity though having seen the gender balance this year). They didn't have to give us a female Richard though, but perhaps it was the crowning glory in this production th...