Anya Ryan

Sophie Duker’s fourth stand-up show, Hot Beef Injection, turns troubling and often intimidating encounters with men into sharp, purposeful comedy. The show explores women’s fear and discomfort around male behavior, including the question of whether it is safer to be alone with a random man or a bear. Duker offsets the darker material with breezy wit, audience interaction and vivid impressions, although the final payoff is judged slightly too neat. Overall, the performance is praised as intelligent, joyful and highly polished.

Keeley Hazell discusses her transition from Page 3 and glamour modelling to writing and performance. She describes entering the industry at 16 without adequate safeguarding, feeling exploited and emotionally numb, and later dealing with the trauma of a sex tape publication through therapy and writing. Her memoir, Everyone’s Seen My Tits, has inspired an Edinburgh Fringe show that combines humour with reflections on sexual violation, PTSD and reclaiming personal autonomy. Hazell also discusses her recurring role and staff-writing work on Ted Lasso.

Tia-Renee Mullings’s coming-of-age play follows Brianna and Armani as they prepare for a blind date through overlapping monologues. Zakiyyah Dean and Sheyi Cole give engaging performances, while Ewa Dina’s direction uses time stamps, spoken-word passages and rhythmic exchanges to chart the evening. The production vividly evokes south London and British Jamaican life, but its repeated comic mishaps become predictable and prevent the characters from developing beyond their carefully managed appearances. The result is an appealing but incomplete modern love story.

Julia Cranney’s monologue follows Mat and her partner James as they pursue early-permanence adoption, highlighting the emotional demands and uncertainty of the care system. The review values the play’s focus on adoption and its links between Mat’s difficult childhood and her approach to motherhood, but finds that it rushes through major life events, leaves her backstory underdeveloped and gives Paislie Reid too little emotional variation. The staging’s confetti metaphor is also judged heavy-handed; a sharper narrative could make the play’s themes more powerful.

Paula Varjack’s play Nine Sixteenths revisits the 2004 Super Bowl incident in which Justin Timberlake exposed part of Janet Jackson’s breast for nine sixteenths of a second. The production argues that gender, race and age shaped the unequal aftermath: Jackson faced industry blacklisting and career damage, while Timberlake continued to prosper. Through lip syncing, dance, multimedia, British Sign Language and puppetry, the cast connects Jackson’s treatment with wider examples of misogyny and racism, including abuse directed at Meghan Markle, Diane Abbott and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers. The review praises the production as energetic, powerful and necessary, while finding its final act less focused.

Jane Upton’s Scenes from a Friendship follows Jess and Billy, two theatre-obsessed best friends, from their school years in the 1990s through their 20s, 30s and mid-40s. The platonic, time-spanning story explores crushes, careers, breakups, marriages, children and betrayals while emphasizing the loyalty that repeatedly brings them back together. Katie Redford and Benedict Salter are praised for performances that sustain emotional investment across the decades, while Hannah Stone’s direction and Abby Clarke’s Polaroid-inspired design reinforce the play’s nostalgic mood. Although the 95-minute production leaves some family and relationship details underdeveloped, it is ultimately celebrated as a moving portrait of a complicated, enduring friendship.

The production explores Latinx identity, belonging and immigration through striking pop-concert imagery and a story about cleaners investigating a bank’s exploitative practices, loosely inspired by the 2012 HSBC scandal. Although the undercover bank heist contains moments of tension and inventive staging, the play’s multiple ideas, sibling conflict and late immigration subplot do not cohere. The review argues that its important representation of Latinx experiences is weakened by a lack of unifying dramatic focus.

Kemah Bob discusses FOC Fest, an expansion of their FOC It Up comedy club for femmes of colour into a full-day London event featuring workshops, masterclasses, industry panels and a show at Soho Theatre. Bob says the project offers an inclusive space for talent and uses humour to help people reclaim difficult experiences, while stressing that it is designed primarily for its target community. Despite growing visibility after the 2020 racial-justice protests, Bob argues that support for comedians of colour has often been temporary and performative. FOC It Up remains unfunded and largely self-financed, but Bob hopes FOC Fest will lead to sustained growth, international collaboration and greater support for independent comedians.

Katie Payne’s 70-minute monologue follows Phoebe, who returns from London to the Welsh valleys for her cousin’s wedding and is forced to confront old relationships, family tensions and a violent past. Payne rapidly shifts between characters while DJ Onai’s music drives the wedding-party atmosphere. The production explores alienation, regret, failure and the destructive cycle of anger, ultimately suggesting that Phoebe’s fury is deeply human even though it remains difficult to escape.

Louis Emmitt-Stern’s play Slippery reunites former partners Jude and Kyle in Jude’s Canary Wharf penthouse after years apart. As they revisit their hedonistic past and confront Jude’s grief over his partner Sam’s death, suppressed tensions, desire and personal deceptions surface. John McCrea and Perry Williams are praised for intimate, sharply attuned performances, while Matthew Iliffe’s direction and Hannah Schmidt’s set strengthen the production. The review finds the play an incisive examination of queer dating and bereavement, although its repeated revelations and shocks undermine its realism.

Georgina Duncan discusses winning the Women’s Prize for Playwriting for Sapling, a drama set in 1990s Belfast about a teenager living with the long-term effects of grief and violence during the Troubles. To research the play, Duncan undertook prison tours, explored Belfast by black cab and consulted Northern Irish actors, sometimes compensating participants with drinks and food. A former actor who appeared in The Mousetrap, she wrote much of Sapling on her phone during commutes after developing her craft through Soho Theatre’s Writers’ Lab. The £20,000 prize has given her time and confidence to pursue playwriting, while she argues that awards are vital for emerging writers and women whose work remains underrepresented on major stages.

Maria Bamford’s new show at Soho Theatre Walthamstow explores money, inherited wealth, mental health and personal loss through manic physical comedy, character work and rapid-fire jokes. The performance addresses subjects including healthcare, suicide helpline work, her mother’s death and the loss of her Los Angeles home in the fires. Although the reviewer finds the show less focused than some of Bamford’s earlier work, they praise her complete command of her craft, distinctive delivery and gloriously absurd stage presence.

Karim Khan’s play follows two widowed South Asians, Hema and Liaquat, who meet in a diabetes clinic and gradually find companionship through shared grief, food and illness. Shobu Kapoor and Rehan Sheikh are praised for their lively chemistry and natural multilingual performances, while the production captures the isolation of the characters’ later lives. The review notes an overlong running time, unresolved elements involving a house fire and the characters’ children, and problematic side-stage sightlines, but concludes that the Bush and Tara theatre co-production offers a timely, compassionate portrait of older South Asian lives often absent from the stage.

Miriam Battye’s The Virgins follows teenage friends preparing for a night of sex, with sexual experience treated as social currency and confidence masking fear and insecurity. Set across parallel rooms where girls and boys gossip, perform adulthood and navigate concerns about male behaviour, the production builds tension through short scenes, darkness and orchestral music. The review praises the script’s authenticity, the cast—particularly Anushka Chakravarti and Molly Hewitt-Richards—and Jaz Woodcock-Stewart’s horror-film-inspired direction, while noting that some rumours and character motivations remain underexplained.

Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary’s musical adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island brings the story to Bristol Old Vic through puppets, actor-musicians, sword fights, sea-shanty-inspired songs and an elaborate pirate-ship set. Adryne Caulder-James plays a gender-reimagined Jim Hawkins, while Jayde Adams makes her stage debut in multiple roles. The production is praised for its energy, vocal performances, inventive theatricality and strong connection to Bristol, creating a warm seasonal show without relying on traditional Christmas carols.

The Watermill Theatre’s Christmas production relocates Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale to Cornwall and presents it in an actor-musician style with live folk music. Annabelle Aquino plays Merryn, a mermaid who trades her voice for legs while searching for her missing brother and develops a romance with fisherman Cadan. The review praises the cheerful songs, strong performances, imaginative set and family-friendly magic, but criticizes the adaptation for lacking the darker jeopardy of the original story and Disney version.

Sonia Jalaly’s Lyric Hammersmith pantomime relocates Jack and the Beanstalk to a Hammersmith school threatened by a sinister computer system and the meat-eating Fleshcreep. The production is praised for its disco-pop energy, festive sparkle, choreography and especially Jade Hackett’s commanding Fairy Godfather, alongside strong performances from John Partridge and Sienna Widd. Although the adaptation sometimes lacks the familiarity and topical political humour of earlier Lyric pantos, its sinister villain, romantic subplot and exuberant staging make it an entertaining Christmas hit.

A production of the cult musical Ride the Cyclone at London’s Southwark Playhouse follows six high-school choristers killed in a rollercoaster accident as they compete in limbo for a chance to return to Earth. The eccentric show gives each character a distinctive musical number, including rap, aria and 1970s-inspired performances, and ultimately celebrates life despite its morbid premise. The production is praised for its originality, lively cast and imaginative direction, although the episodic structure leaves little time to develop the characters fully.

Sophia Griffin’s debut play After Sunday is set in a secure hospital in Birmingham, where occupational therapist Naomi runs Caribbean cooking classes for three men with troubled histories. The sessions create opportunities for connection but also expose tensions surrounding confinement, crime, family and the prospect of release. The Guardian praises the exceptional cast, especially David Webber, along with Corey Campbell’s movement-focused direction and XANA’s ominous sound design, while concluding that the unresolved ending vividly conveys a system in crisis.

Gayathiri Kamalakanthan’s debut play Period Parrrty follows Krish, a 15-year-old non-binary Tamil British teenager, as a first-period celebration forces questions about family, heritage and gender expectations to the surface. The production is praised for its warmth, humor, emotionally affecting friendship between Krish and Brenavee, shapeshifting set and authentic depiction of a British Tamil home, though its abrupt shifts between theatrical forms make the structure feel haphazard.