Mark Ludmon 
This powerful production, sharply directed by Orla O’Loughlin, is a highlight of this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe and another demonstration of Smith’s skill at capturing the struggle and hope of everyday lives.
It is a powerful show that leaves you with unforgettable images and an uncompromising vision of old age and dementia.
Solidly directed by Russell Bolam, the production has less of the anarchy and exuberance of some of Comedians Theatre Company’s previous shows but it offers a fresh, modern twist on a Russian classic.
Ah, Wilderness! Young Vic 4 stars In his 1932 play Ah, Wilderness, Eugene O’Neill returns to familiar themes such as family life, alcoholism and thwarted idealism but it stands out among his work for having a lightness of touch and event moments of comedy. Set in Connecticut on July 4 in 1906, it is a nostalgic family drama that is said to be O’Neill’s reinvention of his own less than happy childhood brought up by a distant, drug-addicted mother. In Ah, Wilderness!, the central character of 17-year-old Richard Miller is roughly the same age that young Eugene would have been in 1906. But, instead of a dysfunctional family, there is a sweet, loving mother and a father who is stern but a big softy underneath, both proud of their poetry-loving son. The play’s charm is beautifully captured in a new, trimmed-down production directed by Natalie Abrahami at the Young Vic. … Read more
With the audience sat and stood around three sides, the action regularly erupts off the stage, from projectile soiled sheets to splashes of murky toilet water. At 65 minutes, it moves along at a cracking and sometimes disorienting pace that leaves you staggering out of the theatre feeling like you’ve been assaulted (but in a good way).
Zinnie Harris’s How to Hold Your Breath is a perplexing play, but not necessarily in a bad way. With a shifting tone from comedy to horror, it takes you in different, unexpected directions so you never quite know where you are going or what is happening.
With an energetic and talented ensemble, the show gives the audience everything they came for, from the much-loved songs to comedy bordering on campness. You get inflatable sheep, singing camels and dancing Egyptians alongside musical pastiches with line-dancing cowboys, gospel choirs, calypso singers and Edith Piaf-style cabaret.
Merit has a timeless quality, examining themes relevant to any society going through economic upheaval. It also explores broader ideas such as our responsibilities towards others when money is short: Patricia questions Sofia’s decision to give to charity when people are losing their homes just as many people question whether countries in recession should continue to give aid to the developing world.
