LONDON CITY NIGHTS

Most people dread getting dragged up on stage during a performance. Not me. Sure it's scary in that "I hope my flies aren't undone" sort of way, but not once have I ever regretted sitting on the front row. That said, I had some serious misgivings when a smiling performer extended his hand and hoisted me up onto the gym mat. A couple of minutes later I was lying flat on my back with an acrobat balanced on my outstretched palms.

The experience cut to the heart of A Simple Space. Being inches below a woman standing on her palms, an intense gaze burning a hole in the stage, veins wrapped around her muscles like steel cables and beads of sweat mazing their way down her face cements the effort, concentration and toll that these gymnastics take.

Composed of seven young acrobats from Australian company Gravity & Other Myths, the show makes an austere first impression. The set is a square mat with a couple of lights at each corner and the performers are clad in khaki and pastel tops, creating an effect not unlike being trapped in a GAP advert. We soon realise that everything that's not vital to the performance has been stripped away- the company even do their own lighting cues live on stage.

Minimalist it may be, but the aesthetic heightens the many feats we see before us. These range from human sculptures that bristle with limbs, to performers balancing in shaky human towers, being whirled around the stage by their wrists, leaping onto each other's backs or being gracefully tossed in parabolic arcs towards each other. This is standard acrobatics fare, but it's still thrilling as all hell. There's something adrenaline inducing in watching someone plummet towards the ground, only to be caught at the last moment and bounce up smiling, or the wobbly intensity of a man balancing three people on his head.

There's a bedrock of skill here that all but guarantees A Simple Space will entertain, but what's most interesting is where they deviate from expectations.The classical acrobat show is all tassled outfits, vaseline smiles, safety nets, circus lighting and glitter, shooting for the goal of showing the performer as an effortlessly graceful automaton, an image that this company are keen to subvert.

They achieve it by emphasising anatomical and emotional effort. Key to this is the obvious fatigue; the performers going red in the face as their muscles shiver n' shake under the strain. All this is accompanied by a symphony of grunts, groans and moans - leaving us in no doubt as to the effort going into every motion. Another deviation from the norm is baking in elements of failure. Many of the acts are competitions between the company - the most eyecatching a backflip contest. Stood in a row, they take turns backflipping to a rhythmic beat, eliminating a person when they fall to the group.

Paradoxically, the constant sight of failure makes the show that much more impressive. It drums into us the effort, training and skill needed to do even the simplest gymnastic action, as well as allowing us to empathise with what's going on before our eyes. It all feels extremely modern - the scuffed knees and bleeding feet in perfect sync with a contemporary YouTube/Vine fails orientated audience.

As far as an hour's entertainment on the South Bank goes it's totally worthwhile. Sure, there's not a huge amount of depth to it - but then you don't go to an acrobatic show expecting a life changing emotional experience. For what it is, it's superb; a thousand thumps, gasps and smiles combining into a straight-up fun tapestry of tumbling.

A Simple Space is at the Udderbelly, South Bank until 24th May. Tickets here.

You'd expect the tale of a disfigured Holocaust survivor to be some damn grim dramatic territory. But Christian Petzold's Phoenix turns out to be less traumatising, and more eerily odd. Set in Berlin immediately following the war, we find Germany waking up a hangover from hell, comfortable Nazis now social pariahs, traitors trying to brush their crimes under the rug and, most affecting, the slow homeward trickle of survivors of the death camps.

Nelly Lenz (Nina Hoss) is one such survivor. Shot in the face during liberation of the camps, she's rushed to a plastic surgery clinic where her face is painstakingly reconstructed. After being shown potential 'new faces' (creepily recalling catalogue shopping), she requests recreation of her old face. In a miracle of surgery she ends up looking quite beautiful, though only passingly like her old self.

With the cinders of war cooling, Nelly resolves to track down her husband Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld). This is where it gets complicated. While Nelly loves Johnny, deep down she knows that he must have betrayed her to the Nazis. Nonetheless she tracks him down, but as Johnny doesn't recognise her, having assumed his wife died in Auschwitz.

Now, with every single member of her family dead, Nelly stands to gain a large inheritance. Johnny regards this inheritance with hungry eyes. He thus hatches a plan to get Nelly (now masquerading as 'Esther') to pretend to be Nelly, gradually transforming her into the person she actually is. Despite Nelly having the exact same handwriting, voice and mannerisms she did before the war, Johnny remains completely in the dark - not remotely suspecting that the woman he's trying to turn into his wife is actually his wife.

It's completely preposterous. That Johnny doesn't recognise his wife (who he last saw approximately a year ago) makes him look like a complete dilz. She doesn't even look that different than before the surgery, not to mention that she keeps dropping clanging hints about her true identity. It's one of those films where you want to reach through the screen, tap the character on the shoulder and whisper "uh dude, she's obviously your wife". I usually find it pretty easy to suspend my disbelief in a film, but my instinctive response here was feeling really embarrassed for Johnny and wondering just what the hell Nelly saw in this dunce.

Thankfully while the plot doesn't make sense on a narrative level it succeeds symbolically. In Nelly's gradual transformation we see a shattered human being struggling to reassemble themselves, haunted by the memory of their past self. Hoss, in a typically magnificent performance, plays Nelly as brittle and awkward, her floodlight eyes and rigid gait marking her as vulnerable and intrinsically 'damaged'.

Zehrfeld's Johnny works as a portrait of intense denial. Perhaps, deep down, he secretly knows that 'Esther' is really Nelly, but to acknowledge this fact would be to admit his crimes. Zehrfeld never tips the character into outright villainy; while Johnny isn't remotely sympathetic, we can at least understand his actions arising from a war-hardened desire to survive at all costs.

Both characters come to represent wider swathes of the postwar German people; Johnny is the archetypal civilian trying to come to terms with his role as the 'good man that did nothing' and Nelly is the quintessential victim whose mere presence arouses guilt. The period immediately following World War 2 in Germany is a relatively unexplored cinematic world, and Petzold demonstrates a firm psychological, aesthetic and humanist grasp of what lurks under these easy smiles.

There's also a wonderful sense of being within cinematic history as well. An obvious touchstone is the suspenseful psych-horror Les Yeux Sans Visage; the simple visual of a low-lit hospital populated by women with bandaged faces portrayed with limbo-like solemnity. Similarly, in Johnny's demented quest to recreate his former wife, there's big chunks of Vertigo. These, combined with a jazzy The Third Man-ish injured city struggling to reassemble itself (mirroring Nelly's plight), gives Phoenix a refreshingly different tone from the reverent holocaust film genre.

As good as all that stuff is (and it is really good), I can't get away from the silly central premise. The emotional core of Phoenix hinges on a suspension of disbelief that I couldn't quite muster. I wish I could, the closing scenes would hit like a cannonball to the chest, but what can I say - it left me cold. Fortunately almost everything else is great, which makes this a recommendation, albeit a reserved one.

★★★

Phoenix is released 8th May 2015

The eighth of May 2015 was a shitty day in almost all respects. At 6am the sun slithered over the horizon to greet the full horror of a Conservative Party majority government. On television, newspapers, the internet - even video displays on bus shelters - David Cameron beamed, the man turgid with excitement at the prospect of realising his darkest free market fantasies. I was coming off all an all nighter for the election; the experience hurling me through the Kübler-Ross stages of grief.

Having spent most of the day nakedly quivering in fear and disappointment underneath a duvet, I walked into the Brixton Academy with a heavy heart. But c'mon, if any band are going to cheer me up it's going to be the Super Furry Animals.

Led by affable polymath Gruff Rhys, the band are, for my money, the finest band to come out of Wales in the last 20 years (maybe longer!). Though they successfully rode the Britpop wave to success, they never quite rose to the heights of a Blur, Oasis or Pulp. Nonetheless, their unique combination of pop, psychedelia, surreal lyrics and experimentalism has aged beautifully. Now, this 'reunion' tour functions as a tour through Super Furry history, pulling dusty old costumes and props out of storage, running through the best tunes and reminding everyone just how damn good this band is.

The setlist draws from the first half of the career, with only one song from 2005's Lovekraft and nothing from Hey Venus! (2007) or Dark Days/Light Years (2009). Those albums are certainly no slouches, but this is essentially a greatest hits show, so damn near every single and famous album song from their early career is jammed into an extensive and well-curated two hours.

Obvious highlights are the electro surf-rock of (Drawing) Rings Around the World, with scratchy garage band riffs competing with ascending synth lines in the background as Gruff Rhys authoritatively sings "Earth will become Saturn II!" and references Shin'ya Tsukamoto's excellent freak-horror flick Tetsuo II: Body Hammer. Similar fun comes in the stupidly fun Golden Retriever, sending the crowd into a happy, sweaty, bouncy fit of pleasure, as does Something 4 the Weekend from their debut album.

Things take a turn towards low-fi pastoral in a lengthy segue through Mwng, their recently r-released 2000 Welsh language album. This marks the one point in the show where the audience calms down a bit. Mwng is an excellent album, but four peaceful sunset songs in a row drains a little energy from the audience. Plus, it's hard to sing along in Welsh. Even so, there's a perverse thrill in being at a sold out Brixton Academy gig watching a London audience enjoying a series of Welsh language songs.

But it's Receptacle for the Respectable, Slow Life, Mountain People and Run Christian Run! that left me most dazzled. These songs are epic musical adventures, switching up genres mid-song, willing to have extensive techno interludes and building to gargantuan, sensory overloading, maelstroms of sound and light. A gigantic projection screen playing snatches of blurred archive footage, remixes of their videos and what looks like recreations of the 'Beyond the Infinite' sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey. On top of that, a tiny spherical robot positioned at stage rear emits hypnotic laser rainbow loops. Slices of light revolve above us, transforming the slowly evaporating sweat of the crowd into shimmering, dancing fractal patterns. It's pretty far out.

My highlight of highlights was Hello Sunshine. This gentle Beatles-y number is one of their best songs and contains the immortally romantic couplet "I'm a minger. You're a minger too. So come on minger, I want to ming with you." It's touching, humble, sweet and funny all at once - the cherry on top of a perfectly happy pop song. But last night something weird happened. Midway through the song, the band paused before those famous lines and the crowd spontaneously went completely fucking bananas. This wasn't an ordinary cheer, more like some psychic release valve being opened. For me, after an incredibly shitty day it was the first time I felt a glimmer of hope pierce the misery. For the only point that night the band looked perplexed, looking over at each other and shrugging. With no sign of it abating, Gruff Rhys smiled and gave us a confused thumbs-up, allowing him to get on with the song.

With that, and the climactic mass mosh pit of The Man Don't Give a Fuck, I left the place cheered up. Unless you're a rich man the next five years are going to be a grim era of ashes and tears, but even in the midst of that there's still precious moments that we need to cling onto as tightly as we can.

It was a truly excellent gig, underlining the this band's place in the British musical canon and reminding us of the sheer wealth of pleasures contained in the band's songbook. Though Gruff Rhys, with his solo albums, side projects and documentaries, is far from a distant presence, I hope the Super Furry Animals project remains a going concern. There's an abundance of life, good cheer and joy in the Super Furry Animals - who're capable of putting a silver lining on even the most threateningly grey and gigantic of clouds.

Super Furry Animals play the Brixton Academy again tonight

All pictures used courtesy of Jason Williamson. www.jasonwilliamsonphotography.co.uk

Vote For Me has an unfortunate sense of timing. Coming after two months of British election fever, it plays to a country that's sick to death of political argument. Compounding matters is the unfortunate fact that for most Londoners, the election was a profoundly depressing occasion in which scum-sucking evil bastards received a mandate to ramp up their plans.

It's even badly timed for US politics, coming even before candidates have been selected for the 2016 campaign. Compounding this is that the show was first performed in 2010 at the New York Musical Theatre Festival - making it ever-so-slightly politically out-dated. All this added up to a performance where the cast easily outnumbered the audience.

Drew Fornarola and Scott Elmegreen's production reimagines a US Presidential debate as musical. We look on as thecandidates, Democrat Janet Tilghman (Emily Lynn) and Republican Buddy Rounsaville (Hans Rye), slug it out to win the most powerful job in the world. Backing them up are their partners; Buddy's wife Amy (Jennie Jacobs); and Janet's husband Roger (Arvid Larsen). Scurrying around in the background is a scummy spin doctor (Joe Leather), who flips a noteboard over as he switches sides, and the host of the debate -the cool but frustrated Robyn Fiedler (Lucy Grainger).

The show reward an intimate knowledge of US political trivia. I've always enjoyed following US politics and particularly their presidential campaigns - loving the histrionic barminess and usage of every dirty trick in the political handbook is deployed. So, the cast sing about the ACORN scandal, Reverend Wright's support of Barack Obama and the Benghazi controversy. You don't have to be a complete politics nerd to fully appreciate this blizzard of references, but nonetheless, going in blind would be a daunting prospect (though the programme does supply a glossary).

Soon, the show settles into a rhythm of light, bipartisan satire. So, the Hillary Clinton-esque Democrat is presented as a spend-happy, socially conscious politi-nerd with naive foreign policy goals. The Republican is a good-looking Romney-esque dimwit prodded towards candidacy by a power-hungry wife. He's so vacuous that he needs a lengthy binder that keeps track of what his opinions are.

It'd have been real easy to make the Republican a straight up supervillain, but Buddy Rounsaville quickly comes across as broadly and strangely sympathetic. Hans Rye, in a wonderful performance, effortlessly switches gears between a grinning, plasticated game show host and the paranoid man underneath, victim to a pushy wife and a ravenous party machine that will stop at nothing - nothing - to see him elected.

By comparison, the Democratic candidate written is a touch more two dimensional; her struggle is one of confidence - the geek paranoid that she'll never win the approval of the cool kids. Lynn's performance captures the eager swottiness of someone who is absolutely sure they have the right solution and will explain why at great length.

The climax of the show is the audience choosing between each of these candidates - then forking into two possibilities. Frankly I'd be surprised if the Republican candidate ever won this battle - a metropolitan theatre-going audience isn't exactly the right crowd to pick a warmongering, anti-abortion maroon (even a fictional one). But this potentially interesting dramatic device ended up a damp squib when I attended - it's hard to build tension when there's just five people voting.

That aside, at 90 minutes the show feels a touch bloated. I can't fault the impressive number VOTE! (For Me), in which Grainger's disgruntled debate moderator performs an impressive act of memorisation in listing the 139 countries that have higher voter turn-out levels than the US, but narratively it's wheel spinning and the politically it's rather simplistic. Worse, as the minutes tick on, the backroom dealings threaten to descend into soapy melodrama. A nagging sensation grows: the idea of a musical presidential debate is a good one, but perhaps one that'd work better pared back into an hour - or even 45 minute - show.

Vote For Me is a difficult to show to genuinely dislike; it's performed with energy, skill and there's an obvious love of politics at its core. But it's a bit flabby around the edges and lacks bite, especially in comparison to contemporary political satires like The Thick of It/In The Loop and Veep. Admittedly it would have most likely have worked better with an audience above single digits, but them's the breaks.

★★

Vote For Me is at the Eel Brook until the 23rd of May. Tickets here.

The 1960s are the most obnoxious decade of the 20th century. Fetishised to death and back, they've become a bottomless mine of nostalgia. Baby boomers purr in happiness as pop culture paints a picture of halcyon summery days where the music was matchless, the politics were right-on and the slang was groovy, man. I'm sick of this shit; the myth of the sixties primarily functioning as an excuse for old farts to nurse a superiority complex over today's youth.

The Beatles' jukebox musical Let It Be solidified this in my mind. That show is a shameless cashgrab in which four waxworks soullessly churn out hits to a backdrop of overplayed stock footage and swirling psychedelic flowers. I figured Sunny Afternoon would be cut from the same cloth, a shrinkwrapped nostalgia pill for tourists eager for a simulation of swinging London.

I was glad to be proved wrong. With a story by Ray Davies and written by Joe Penhall, Sunny Afternoon proves to be acerbic, cynical and unnervingly honest. It's able to do this because unlike the Beatles, The Kinks have largely resisted being mythologised - their biography is open to interpretation rather than just recitation. This allows Davies to bemoan the lie of swinging London, explaining that the pretty girls with flowers in their hair on the King's Road were a smokescreen for millions of working families struggling to put food in their mouths.

Over nearly three hours, we follow The Kinks; Ray Davies (John Dagleish), Dave Davies (George Maguire), Mick Avory (Adam Sopp) and Pete Quaife (Ned Derrington) as they develop from a backing band into world spanning, number one hit-makers. Though a decent amount of time is devoted to Davies' artistic ambitions, what really powers the narrative is his all-consuming desire to get paid fairly. This financial backbone neatly undercuts all the wishy-washy hippy shit, and, though not particularly inspirational, is least sincere.

On paper, Davies' obsession with getting his slice of the pie risks looking like the myopic obsessions of an aging rockstar who's more familiar with dodgy tax arrangements than he is with a plectrum. But Sunny Afternoon dodges this by grounding damn near everything in class politics. The predatory contracts the teenage Kinks signed, granting their manager the rights to their songs in perpetuity, are interpreted as a wider expression of the bourgeois unfairly exploiting the labour of the working class.

This stall is set out in Dead End Street - "We are strictly second class / we don't understand."The song is indignantly sung by Davies' father, taking the primly coiffed managerial team in a tour of the crumbling household. It's a wonderful performance, the lyrics as relevant now as they were when they were written. More is to come as the band engage in legal battles and contract negotiations - one of the most dramatic moments is Davies serving a writ on his manager. Later, on American TV the band react badly to being shaken down by McCarthyites and Bible bashers, angrily and proudly exclaiming that they're "Muswell Hill socialists!"

There is, to put it mildly, a smidge of hypocrisy in an internationally famous rock star on a world tour moaning about how miserable his life is and how everyone has screwed him over. There are moments where Father Ted's acceptance speech at the Golden Clerics springs to mind "And now, we move onto liars..." Lip service is paid to how ridiculous this all is, and the show just about squeaks by as a result. Helping matters is that Dagleish's Ray Davies has charisma to spare, mixing up the troubled genius with jack-the-lad, troubling the fourth wall with an assortment of winks and cheeky struts for our benefit.

Of course, the show would be nothing without the music of The Kinks. Unlike other jukebox musicals where the songs feel crowbarred into place in service of the plot, Davies' lyrics slot eerily well into a continuous narrative. The big singles; You Really Got Me, Till the end of the Day, Lola are appropriately amped up and energetic - jangling garage rock that hasn't dated a minute. But most impressive are numbers like Too Much On My Mind, The Strange Effect and Sitting In My Hotel, in which character development takes place in the songs rather than, as is sadly traditional in jukebox shows, around it.

The only fly in the ointment is an occasionally leaden script. When characters look directly at the audience and say things like "You wouldn't catch John Lennon lying around in his bed with his wife all day!" I can't help but cringe. I don't even know if these qualify as 'in-jokes', but either way they're crushingly unfunny in their clunkiness.

Other than that Sunny Afternoon is politically, performatively and musically top notch - proof that the jukebox musical - the most bastard of West End productions - can be genuinely great. Granted much of this stems from the fact that Ray Davies' autobiographical lyrics are easily assembled into a coherent narrative, but backing it up is that Sunny Afternoon is plainly about something. That sense of purpose puts this head and shoulders above its West End contemporaries - it's a damn good show.

★★★★

Sunny Afternoon is at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Tickets here.

Thanks to Rebecca Felgate at Official Theatre for the tickets!

Danny Collins is the kind of movie you end up watching on a long haul flight when you've run out of things. It's not so much bad as unremarkable, aiming and succeeding at creating a mild diversion. It's a curiously tranquillised flavour of art; broadly competent, safe and with a dopily dog-like desire to please.

The story is developed from a real-life "and finally" news tidbit. In 1971 British folk singer Steve Tilston was interviewed in an obscure magazine in which he bemoaned the toxic effect money has on artistry. John Lennon read the article, sent Tilston an encouraging letter and invited him to chat on the phone. The courier, recognising the letter's value as a collector's item, nicked it. 34 years later Tilston finally learned about the letter's contents, leading to a moment of reflection on how his life may have changed had it reached him.

Danny Collins grabs this news nugget and runs with it. The obscure folk singer becomes the eponymous Collins (Al Pacino). After a promising start in the early 70s, Collins has morphed from Bob Dylan into Barry Manilow - spending his nights arthritically gyrating his hips to auditoriums packed with grey-haired old ladies. Sure he's rich, popular and successful - but is he happy?

He is not. It turns out that a fleet of luxury cars, a palatial house, a mountain of coke, lakes of booze and a zoned out bimbo girlfriend induce intense existential fatigue. Truly, the woes of this insanely rich celebrity are practically Shakespearian. A capper is put on things when Collins' agent Frank (Christopher Plummer) surprises him with the letter from John Lennon. This lights a fire under Danny, and he resolves to a) clean up his act, b) write some new music and c) reconcile with his estranged son (Bobby Cannavale).

This all happens in broadly predictable dramatic strokes, the film tossing in an adorable moppet with a medical condition, a weepy-of-the-week cancer scare and a flirtatious but chaste romance with Annette Bening. The film settles on a quietly conservative morality early on, chiding Collins for his ostentatious materialism and treating it as an enormous development when he eventually settles for regular brand materialism.

Fair play to Al Pacino though. You'd imagine that casting him as an egocentric rockstar would result in overacting so strong it'd figure highly on the Nick Cage-sacle. In fact he severely reins it in, playing the character surprisingly quietly and realistically, with big heaping dollops of pathos in his hangdog expression and slumped posture. In fact, he's so willing to look like a tasteless idiot that he becomes a bit Alan Partridge-y, not helped by his long-term residence in a hotel and flirtations with the staff.

A-ha!

Broadly speaking, everyone else in the film acquits themselves well. Then again, Christopher Plummer and Annette Bening aren't going to let you down. Bobby Cannavale impresses with a likeably stolid, Italian-American portrait of masculinity, as does Jennifer Garner as his wife - who has the stressed surburban mother role locked down these days. Nobody's going to win any awards for this, but hey, it's a paycheque right?

But it's not an actor or director who comes out of Danny Collins looking best - it's Hilton Hotels and Mercedes-Benz. Product placement is one of those things it's best to accept in films, philosophically annoying, but easy to accept as a necessary evil as long as it's not in your face. Not so here; the film may as well be a feature length ad for Hilton, featuring people repeatedly saying how great their hotels are, their logo all over the place and many of the characters working for them. Similarly, the Mercedes badge is front and centre throughout, exterior shots looking eerily like car ads for some gull winged luxury monstrosity.

As a film that could probably be adequately reviewed with a non-committal shrug, Danny Collins isn't exactly a must-see. Still, it's not bad bad, and though its morality is skewed in favour of small-c conservatism, consumption and materialism that's far from unusual in mainstream cinema. Still, if you do end up seeing it, there's far worse shite out there and anyway, by the time you're walking out of the cinema you'll have already started to forget it.

★★

Danny Collins is released 29 May 2015

After a stunning series of trailers, each more cataclysmic than the last, I'd prepared myself for disappointment. After all, I've been fooled by trailers before and these were so great I suspected the film had blown its visual wad too early. Boy oh boy was I glad to be proved wrong. Fury Road is a two hour symphony of destruction, a visual and sonic feast so intense that it approaches abstraction.

Set in a post-apocalyptic Australia of "blood and fire", 'Mad' Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) is a guilt-ridden desert wanderer. A solitary, silent and stoic figure, he's focused on one thing: survival. Not five minutes into the film he's captured and imprisoned by desert warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). Joe, with control over water, fuel and bullets, has established himself as a God figure at the centre of aperverse dictatorial society.

Legions of white-painted, suicidal 'war boys' carry out his violent bidding, while women are either sex slaves or perpetually pregnant human cows hooked to milking machines. A notable exception is Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), badass supreme and trusted leader of Joe's war parties. But the mistreatment of Joe's wives has gotten to her, and soon she's leading an escape party across the desert, hotly pursued by a swarm of war boys in modified death-machines. Max ends up chained to the front of one of them, and so the stage is set for carnage.

Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne)

It's difficult to emphasise how satisfying this action is. I have no aesthetic or philosophic axe to grind with regard to CGI, but Miller's practical effects are viscerally astonishing in a way that a render farm couldn't hope to capture. From the moment the first rusty metal hulk rumbles on screen we implicitly understand it's simple reality. As these these spiky, juddering, roaring, flame-spewing hunks of metal clash amid clouds of dust, the film transforms into a kaleidoscope of chaos. It's the kind of action that drops your jaw to the floor - more you wonder 'how the hell did he film that?!'

The adventurousness continues into the score, which makes fascinating use of diegetic sound. JunkieXL's score is rhythmically accompanied by the throaty growl of engines, metal clanking against metal and the screams of the participants. The best example is the incredibly barmy war-machine-rig that accompanies the villains on their raids. On the rear are several drummers beating out a rhythm, on front is a red-clad man furiously shredding on a double-necked guitar. Which is also a flamethrower. Sonic strands weave in and out of the action in dizzying combinations; the confusion between what's diegetic and non-diegetic, combined with the visual overload leads to cinematic synaesthesia.

I'd be over the moon with just that, but Fury Road isn't just carnage. George Miller, arguably the creator of much of what we consider 'post-apocalyptic', loads the plot with social relevance and pointed gender politics. All too often, post-nuclear settings are used as right-wing libertarian playgrounds where life has reverted to a rugged 'natural' form once the corrupt liberal society have been blasted away.

Miller understands that this is bullshit, the world of Mad Max is less a place of freedom and more a place where the societal desires, needs and instincts are stronger than ever. The people of the wasteland desperately need gasoline, water and security, and so do we. The only difference is that we've insulated ourselves from the processes needed to supply it. Miller's world is the epitome naked, vicious capitalism, the rabid competition between warlords underlining the fact that cooperation, kindness and empathy stand in eternal opposition to free market philosophies.

That point of view leads into the specifics of what Fury Road is about: sex slavery, rape and the broad objectification of women. Told in broad feminist strokes, the film shows us a battle of the sexes - domineering men seeking to possess, control and dehumanise women who have the gall to declare that they're no-one's property. The prime mover in this is the Theron's impossibly badass Furiosa, who with a shaved head, robot arm, bad attitude and penchant for smearing oil over her face looks like a grown-up, pissed off Tank Girl. Furiosa is right up there with Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor, essentially sharing top-billing with Max himself. She's a wonderful creation, Theron mixing up rock-hard militaristic meanness that's punctuated only by brief, but touching glimpses of anguish and trauma.

Fury Road isn't at all cryptic about any of this - going so far as to daub its message on the scenery at times. Nonetheless it's gratifying to see a straightforwardly, unselfconscious feminist film that also has people getting their faces ripped off, flaming tornadoes and rad fire-guitar solos.

Whoever gave George Miller $150,000,000 to crash cars into each other in the desert deserves a medal. No action film is going to top this in 2015, so get yourself to the largest screen you can as soon as possible!

★★★★★

Mad Max: Fury Road is released 14 May 2015

Avenue Q is Sesame Street for discombobulated twenty-somethings. But whereas Big Bird and company teach children the alphabet and basic numeracy, the felt characters of Avenue Q guide its audience through ennui, disillusionment, heartbreak and poverty. Sounds like pretty rough stuff? Not when delivered by a googly-eyed puppet with someone's hand jammed up its arse.

Opening off-Broadway in 2003 and transferring in 2006 to the West End (where it stayed for five years), Jeff Marx and Bobby Lopez' show has lodged itself firmly in the stage musical firmament. This touring production feels like a victory lap, the audience I attended with greeting the characters, songs and one-liners like old friends. This was my first time seeing it, but I was buoyed up by the mountains of positive press and a near cult-like reverence towards the material. "You'll be humming 'Everyone's a Little Bit Racist!' for weeks!"the ysaid. Well alright.

Set in the titular avenue, we open with the arrival of 23-year old graduate Princeton. Clutching an English BA he hopes to make his mark in the big city, but almost instantly winds up indebted, unemployed and depressed. Some sun shines in the form of lonely heart teacher's assistant Kate Monster, whose neediness fits Princeton's neuroses like a jigsaw. Local flavour is provided by the other residents, closeted Bert n' Ernie analogues Rod and Nicky, comedy Japanese stereotype Christmas Eve, her obnoxious but good-hearted husband Brian, porn-crazed pervert Trekkie Monster and building superintendent Gary Coleman.

Their various problems: finding a job, poor money management, commitment issues in relationships, lack of direction in life and simply finding a place to live, are immediately recognisable to a young metropolitan audience. It's difficult not to feel a twinge of sympathy as the characters plaintively wish they were back in college, waste their money on booze or simply mope around miserably as their dreams deflate into a saggy mess.

Those blues are offset by the fact that, well simply, they're being experienced by puppets. With the performers visible on stage at all times, there's an pleasant DIY nature about the production. This feeds into the fact that it's just plain ludicrous to see muppets engaged in hardcore sex, contemplating suicide or grappling with their sexuality. Combine that with witty lyrics and precision-tooled deployment of swearing, and you've got a show that broadly hits its comedic marks.

This is where my problems begin. You see, while Avenue Q is undoubtedly funny, it's not that funny. For example, the basic concept of a perverted Cookie Monster is solid, but it's a character whose single joke is repeated ad nauseum. The show is peppered with these one-gag characters, so repetitive that they almost (but not quite) wear out their welcome. It's a tricky one to pin down: I can't deny that I laughed, I just didn't laugh quite as much I thought I would.

I suspect this is due to the particularly American core of cloying sentimentality that lurks at the heart of Avenue Q. It promisingly flirts with genuine misery, explaining to the audience that they were lied to as children, they're not special, their dreams will go unfulfilled and that life is a nest of vipers waiting to swallow you up. Sure that's a bit of a downer, but hey, that's life. But it undermines this by eventually succumbing to a hugs n' tears happy ending. Even the puppet that got her head ripped off came back! Granted, my sadistic lust for puppet misery and pain is probably at odds with making a wildly successful international stage hit, but I prefer my comedy to come with a blackened, corroded heart.

Saying that, there's no fault to be found in the performances. The obvious stand-out is Sarah Harlington, switching effortlessly between the polar opposites of Kate Monster and Lucy the Slut, puppeteering the hell out of them and singing beautifully. There's no weak links here, each performer cramming the felt characters with oodles of personality, pathos and humour.

Given the rapturous standing ovation that greeted the end of the show I can only assume that fans were left satisfied. I can't deny I had a good time; impressed by the dynamic, adventurous lyricism, the skill of the puppeteers and the show's willingness to dip its toe into murky waters. But it's not quite the show for me, the shock factor felt muted and the 2003-era material ever-so-slightly dated.

Also, though this isn't Avenue Q's fault, the Greenwich Theatre should fix its leaky roof. I had water dripping on my head throughout the show!

★★★

Avenue Q is at the Greenwich Theatre until 24th May. Tickets here.

The vocal power and attitude of Motown is often in curious opposition to the lyrical content. Strong, bold and dynamic women strut across the stage, yet all too often they're plaintively offering themselves in submission to their men, asking Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, explaining that they Ain't Too Proud To Beg and even to the the masochistic self-justification of He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss).

This weird dichotomy frames Richard Cameron's new play The Flannelettes. Set in a Yorkshire mining village, the show centres on a shelter for women escaping domestic abuse. This safe haven is run by the kind and practical social worker Brenda (Suzan Sylvester), part therapist, part best friend and part mother to all those that need her services. Just arriving (and sporting a painful looking black eye) is Jean (Celia Robertson), who's escaping nearly 20 years of mental and physical abuse. Hovering at the periphery are two men; pawnbroker and sometime drag queen George (Geoff Leesley) and hapless Community Support Officer Jim (James Hornsby).

Also arriving is Brenda's niece Delie (Emma Hook), lead singer of the titular Flannelettes. Delie is a curious character; described as having the body of a 22 year old and the mind of a 12 year old. She works as a litter picker for the council and is so fastidious about her work that she's just received a trophy from the Mayor. The characters exists in a curiously honest limbo, blurting out whatever's on her mind and simply trying to do what little good in the world she can.

But shit is about to go down. We're introduced to the fragile Roma (Holly Campbell) - coerced into prostitution by her manipulative drug dealer boyfriend. Soon events are piling on top of one another, exposing the squalid seam of abuse, corrupt and sexual exploitation that lurks just below the surface of society.

The Flannelettes isn't an easy watch. There's several deeply uncomfortable passages that recount horrific instances of physical and sexual abuse. These are all the more powerful for being told in retrospect, implicating the audience by forcing us to stage them in our imaginations. This is underlined by some disturbingly effective makeup work; angry purple bruises suddenly appearing and gradually healing - horrible patterns of smashed capillaries shifting across the character's faces like cumulonimbus clouds across the sky.

Cameron is also successful in conveying the psychology of abuse; grappling with the paradox of women remaining devoted to men that have knocked seven shades of shit out of them. It's an incredibly thorny issue - the instinctive reaction to a character happily returning to a man that fractured their skull and literally dumped them in the rubbish is to assume she's utterly deluded. Yet The Flannelettes explores this intelligently; showing us the mental processes by which you can become convinced that your abuse is due to your failings and that you can do better.

This isn't exactly the feel good stage hit of the summer, but these are the kinds of important issues that theatre should be tackling. The show is aided by some juicily complex performances, particularly Emma Hook's Delie, who occupies a weird no-man's land between childhood and maturity. Also excellent is Celie Robertson, who throws many class subtleties into her performance, gently separating her from the rest.

That said, for all its intelligence and social conscience, this is a rather unimaginatively staged production. A great deal of scenes are two person conversations, generally blocked in an static fashion with the characters parked in position or sat behind a table. More problems come in some quite clumsy scene transitions, which, considering that this is mostly set in one location and the scenery consists of a table and chairs, seem bizarrely awkward. There came a point when I closed my eyes and imagined this as a Radio 4 Drama of the Week, which it may as well be in this form.

It's unfortunate that The Flannelettes stumbles a bit with regards to staging. There's a remarkably clear-eyed thesis on the links between economic depression and a rise in common cruelty tucked away in here, and for brief moments the power of this shines through the morass. Similarly, the 'Greek chorus' of Motown is a fine idea, but proves to be a seriously undeveloped one. A worthwhile experience but far from an essential one.

★★★

The Flannelettes is at the King’s Head Theatre, Upper Street, Islington until 6 June, evenings at 7pm. Tickets here.

I've got to admit, I wasn't exactly looking forward to Sense of an Ending. While I love theatre that grapples with weighty subjects, I couldn't quite imagine how the horror of the Rwandan Genocide could possibly be translated on a fringe theatre stage above a pub. Then again, Theatre503 are vying for the top position in my personal Premier League of London theatre; I've never seen a bad play here.

I still haven't. Ken Urban's Sense of an Ending is an extraordinarily powerful piece of theatre that approaches this most difficult of subject matter with confidence, intelligence and a surfeit of humanity.

Based on a true story, we follow New York Times reporter Charles (Ben Onwukwe) as he investigates the involvement of two Benedictine nuns in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Sisters Justina (Lynette Clarke) and Alice (Akiya Henry) are about to be sent to Belgium from Rwanda to stand trial for crimes against humanity and homicide. The accusations are that the nuns, who are both Hutu, were faced with hundreds of Tutsis seeking sanctuary from the horrific ethnic cleansing sweeping across Rwanda. When the Interahamwe Hutu militia arrived, the charges allege the nuns them with petrol and looked on as thousands of men, women and children were burned alive.

Aiding the reporter are soldier and guide Paul (Abubaker Salim), deeply suspicious of this uninformed outsider globally broadcasting his views about something he has no direct knowledge of. We also soon meet his friend Dusabi (Kevin Golding) who, as the only known survivor of the massacre, might be the key to the truth of what really happened.

Charles functions as our viewpoint character, his opinion and emotional state roughly linked to that of the audience. His role, as laid-back impartial interrogator, is to unearth some truth behind the multiple stories he's presented with. Understandably, his initial reaction is to doubt that two nuns could perpetuate such an atrocity, figuring that they're merely useful scapegoats for wider crimes. But the more he learns the more his opinion changes, the aloof reporter gradually charting a moral black hole from which no light escapes.

The staging is minimalist but high impact. A wooden floor demarcates the edge of the stage and a semi-opaque series of plastic boards partially conceals the rear. The effect is that the scenery almost appears to bleed into the audience space, subtly eroding the fourth wall and emotionally involving us. The rear of the stage functions as a hazy window through time, dead characters appearing as hazy memories.

It's a hugely effective way to separate past from present, ably aided by Joshua Pharo's ambitious and perfectly executed lighting design. It's usually a bad sign to discuss lighting in a theatre review - generally suggesting you've run out of things to say - here it's an integral part of proceedings, with key characters lit in bold, primary coloured chiaroscuro. Elsewhere, subtle touches abound, from the gently moving lights flickering through wooden slats, to gradual dimming as we work through trauma, through claustrophobic sudden darknesses that coincide with emotional peaks.

But ultimately, all this top notch stagemanship comes in service to the uniformly extraordinary performances. It'sdifficult to single anyone out for special praise, but even so, Lynette Clarke and Akiya Henry as the two nuns are jawdroppingly amazing. The characters are an apparently paradoxical mix of spirituality, femininity and horrific cruelty, elements that seem impossible to knit together. Yet the two manage it swimmingly, gradually peeling back layers of deception and delusion to reveal their corroded souls.

Credit too to Kevin Golding, whose recounting of the massacre is so disturbing and evocative left the audience so stunned you could hear pin drop. Dusabi is a broken man, his rheumy eyes and slumped posture speaking of a man who is almost literally the walking dead. When he finally launches into his testimony the lighting drops, he asks the reporter to close his eyes, and walks 'us' through the experience. As he did so the hair stood up on the back of my neck and my palms became clammy. Anything that achieves that is something special, a moment up there with anything I've seen on stage in the last few years.

Outright recommending Sense of an Ending is a tricky proposition. This production has the power to ruin people's nights. As I lay down to sleep last night I couldn't get it out of my head and it was the first thing I thought of when I awoke. But it's a stunningly effective piece of drama, exploring the very limits of human behaviour, morality and, eventually and blessedly, forgiveness. This is by no means an easy experience, but it is a tremendously important one.

★★★★★

Sense of an Ending is at Theatre503 until 6th June. Tickets here.

Writing about an athletic event isn't my usual style, but I think people would like to know what running a 61 mile ultramarathon is like. I've been running for about ten years, doing alright at various 10ks, half marathons and marathons over the years. But, I'd never exhausted myself to such a degree that I had to stop moving. I'm curious as to where, precisely, my body's physical limits are. Presumably there's some moment where I've consumed every bit of energy available to me, where my muscles give up the ghost and I collapse to the ground in a unconscious boneheap.

Finding that moment was why I entered this ridiculous 61 mile ultramarathon from Richmond Park, London to Brighton Race Course. I applied for entry way back in August of 2014, the lengthy wait making the idea of actually running that far feel like a mercifully distant prospect. Yet, as 2015 hove into view I had to start making plans.

Setting aside my Sundays, I embarked on a lengthy, time-consuming training programme that saw me run back to my house in Central London from every terminus on the London Underground and spend countless hours bobbing about on woodland tracks on the periphery of the M25. Finally, with more than 400 miles of training under my belt I was (according to what I'd read) physically ready.

Doing something like this isn't some lazy run in the park - you've got to be prepared. I did my research and drew up a list of things I'd need in every eventuality. You can see the extensive results above, including many disgusting glucose gels, sports flapjacks, head lanterns, water bladders, painkillers, anti-friction creams and specially designed long distance running socks. It's a lot of stuff, but you don't want to be caught short 40 miles in and realise a £3 hat could be saving your life right now.

Similar levels of preparation had to be directed at my body the week before the run. My start time was 06:10, meaning I had to be awake at 04:30 to get a taxi to Richmond. This necessitated a week of waking up at 5am and mooching around in the morning twilight waiting for the day to begin. I also had to jam as many carbs down my throat as possible and avoid booze and anything especially gut-troublingly spicy.

Eventually, all the prep was done and I found myself at the start line at 6am on Saturday morning. The sun was just under the horizon, the ground dewy and the temperature pleasant. I ignored the zumba warmup happening near the start and focussed on the sign saying 'Brighton: This way'. The final few minutes seemed to zoom by as I set up my GPS tracker, music playlist, stopwatch and pedometer. And them, before I knew it, I was away.

The first ten miles were easy street. The sun was shining, I was surrounded by happy runners and watching the sunrise glitter off the Thames. I kept reminding myself to enjoy this easy bit as much as I can, to slow down and conserve energy for later. The elite runners swept past me off into the distance, as did many others. Every ultramarathon guide I read had advised me to 'run my own race', not to compete with others or let them dictate my pace. So I ambled along, pleasantly watching the numbers on the distance markers tick upwards.

All too soon I found myself a quarter of the way through, at the 15 mile rest stop. I was in good spirits though trying to ignore a faint discomfort in my left knee and the bridge of my right foot. Experience had shown me that these aches and pains come and go as your body warms up, but even so, feeling even a glimmer of pain at this stage can't be good. After all, things are only going to get worse before they get better.

A welcome sight.

By the time I'd run my first marathon of the day I could definitely feel the first symptoms of fatigue setting in. My calves and quads were tightening up in a familiar way, no doubt anticipating what would usually be the end of a long run. But I had a long way to go yet. Buoying me up was a rest stop fully stocked with treats - though I couldn't stomach half of them. I settled for a couple of slices of fresh pineapple - the most delicious pineapple I've ever tasted. Then, back to the trail.

As the sun rose in the sky I approached the halfway point, tendrils of tiredness making their way around my body. For the first time I began to experience psychological trouble as well - by this point I'd run 30 miles and felt like I'd come an awfully long way. Now I had to do that all over again. I grimly gulped down an absolutely foul sports flapjack and pressed on, switching up my gait in an attempt to stretch my calves out.

Tiredness setting in.

At the 34 mile mark I hit the big mid-point rest-stop; Tulley's Farm. I stopped for 15 minutes, retrieved my backup bag and restocked my pack with snacks and water. There was a canteen set up with a buffet of delicious looking hot food, piles of pastries, a salad bar and sweets. I settled for a scoop Mediterranean curried pasta, some coleslaw and some cucumber. Unfortunately my numbed sense made it thick, goopy and cardboard-like - the pasta sticking to the roof of my mouth like glue. I swallowed what I could, disposed of the rest and headed back out.

It was here that I switched up my music choices. Prior to this I'd stuck to low-key indie and film scores - music to lull myself into a trance. I wanted to try and disassociate myself from what was happening to me. But, frankly, the droning apocalyptic rhythms of Clint Mansell's score for The Fountain were getting me down. I made an informed and intelligent decision to switch to The Prodigy's 2010 live album World's On Fire.

With Maxim Reality's demented MCing ringing in my ears I had a burst of energy. Suddenly I felt like the king of the world! My misbehaving legs suddenly decided to cooperate and I sped off through the woods. This coincided with a some delusions of grandeur. As I air-boxed, jumped up and punched the air and yelled out Prodigy lyrics, I realised I hadn't seen anyone else for a while. Maybe.... I was winning this race? Maybe I could go at this speed for the next 40k? Maybe, just maybe, I was invincible, indefatigable - that I had unlocked some kind of inexhaustible superhuman energy reserve inside myself...

It turned out I hadn't. My bloated ego came a quick cropper at about the 50 mile mark, all vigour leaving my body like the last dregs of juice being sucked out of a drinks carton. Halfway up a gigantic hill my muscles polled themselves and unanimously decided to go on strike. I was reduced to a red-faced sweaty shuffle, feeling the beginnings of a light-headedness. I weaved a little on the trail, and as I reached the top I stopped for a moment to eat a chocolate bar and compose myself.

This was bad. Worse than bad, but I didn't have far to go. Over and over again I told myself that each puny, slow step was one more towards the finish line. Spiky shard of pain were making a comprehensive world tour of my body, with lengthy stops on my back, kidneys, lungs, hips and groin. Even my teeth hurt! Worst of all, my traitorous legs were somehow beyond pain, more like lead weights under me; I'd never felt this damn tired before. I began distractedly muttering to them; "Look guys, I know I haven't treated you well these last few months, but I just need you to cooperate for a couple more miles and you can rest..."

Things carried on in this vein until the last few miles. Now I could see the sea ahead of me and, in the distance, the stand of the race track. I squeezed my eyes closed and pressed on as fast as I could, trying to convince myself that experiencing this exquisite exhaustion was the whole damn reason I'd signed up for this in the first place. Knowing that didn't help a great deal, but still, I inched ever closer to the end.

Final stretch...

Finally I made it onto the Brighton race track. I had family and friends waiting for me, and I didn't want them to see me in knackered agony. From somewhere, god knows where, I found some unused burst of speed, some injection of adrenaline as yet unused. I picked up to a sprint as I entered the final straight and, weirdly, it felt smooth, easy and relaxing - like gliding effortlessly through the air. I finished, got my medal, a glass of Cava and hugged my family and had some photos taken.

I was a bit dislocated, but happy to not be running any more. After an absolutely excruciating massage I began to shiver uncontrollably - though a hot chocolate sorted that out. Later, I hobbled out of there, pleased with myself for running 61 miles, but a bit numb and blown out. Though it'd taken me 13 hours to get here it felt strangely compressed, the trail melting together into one long procession of trees, runners, snacks and hills.

My hope for the race was that it'd show me some part of my personality I'd never unearthed before, some primal, universal exhaustion that lies under all the civilisation. This didn't happen - I was switched on and felt like 'myself' all the way round. I still don't even know what my surrendering point is - maybe I can't reach it through running.

Two very sore legs.

Still, I do have the satisfaction in signing up to do a preposterously tough physical challenge, training my body to cope with it, preparing my equipment, organising myself and executing the plan without giving up. I finished it without blisters (thank you Trail Toes cream), without suffering any permanent injury and without consuming a single painkiller (which felt like cheating). I now know that I can do this kind of thing, and that I can push my body pretty damn far - which theoretically means I don't have to do it again.. right?

This wasn't some world-shaking spiritual experience. It was 'merely' an extraordinarily long, extraordinarily painful race - one that I can quite happily fit into the same continuum as every other race I've run. But it is extraordinarily satisfying - as far as challenges go I'd recommend every serious runner tackle an ultramarathon at some point, it's an experience like few others.

Truly, the world was crying out for a PG-rated Whiplash. The Choir (aka Boychoir) is a tranquilliser pill with a slick and sugary coating that follows genre beats with slavish adherence and, appropriately for a film about a choir, ultimately settling for vanishing unseen into the cinematic crowd.

Working the classical a rags to riches template, our hero is tousled-hair moppet Stet (Garrett Wareing). He's literally a kid from the wrong side of the tracks - trains run right past his house. Stet is a troubled kid in that Hollywood sort of way, getting into fights at school and caring for his unconscious alcoholic mother. She's perfunctorily dispatched in a car crash about five minutes in, and Stet falls into the care of his father (Josh Lucas).

Unfortunately for Stet, it turns out he's the secret product of a one-night stand and his father absolutely does not want his 'real' family discovering his existence. So, in an unlikely twist, he's dispatched to the megaposh 'Boychoir School'. Stet has oodles of raw vocal talent, but is way behind the other children. But, under the tutelage of perfectionist Carvelle (Dustin Hoffman), snippy British teacher Drake (Eddie Izzard) and ex-student Wooly (Kevin McHale), there's a chance, a superslim chance, that just maybe, he could become the best damn choirboy they've ever seen.

The problem with The Choir isn't one of construction and technique. By and large this is a decent looking film, the school itself is an attractive location and David Franco's cinematography makes a point of finding the most interesting framing, backgrounds and shot set-ups.

I can't pick any bones with regard to the performances either. Garrett Wearing is obviously an actor to watch, brimming over with an extremely River Phoenix-esque inner tension and making the transformation from bad kid to boy angel broadly believable. Hoffman and Bates both perform precisely to spec: both effortlessly good, though neither remotely stretching themselves. Izzard also impresses, managing to find something interesting to do in practically every line (although his close-eyes-wave-hands-in-the-air musical appreciation schtick gets a bit old by the end).

Neither does it trip up on the musical front. If you're really into lots of prepubescent boys singing in absurdly high-pitched voices, The Choir more than has you covered. Even if that doesn't float your boat you can't deny the film sounds great, particularly the moments when Carvelle deconstructs the choir and shows the audience how everything fits together.

Sadly, the real crimes here are ones of extraordinarily limited ambition. From the moment Stet arrives at the school you can tell precisely where all this is going, right down to individual character beats. You might assume that a film that telegraphs what's going to happen so baldly might make a surprise swerve in the final act - no such luck. Like a freight train juddering down the tracks, The Choir is going to end up at it's intended destination right on time with a minimum of fuss.

Knackered plot device after knackered plot device is deployed: a half-assed rivalry with a posh kid, the stern teacher with a heart of gold, a training montage, the aversion of last minute disaster and so on. The effect on the audience is one of mild boredom, not helped by a script that assumes the audience are morons. "This is really hard music!" exclaims a moppet while looking at the morass of notes Stet must wring from his throat. Yeah, no shit kid, we can see that.

The Choir is even more disappointing given that this is directed by François Girard, whose daringly structured Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould is one of my benchmarks of cinema about music . There, Girard was at pains to emphasise that musical virtuosity couldn't be adequately captured using traditional cinematic forms - a lesson he appears to have forgotten in churning out this sentimental doggerel.

Most obviously, the film suffers in comparison to last year's Whiplash, which tells broadly the same story but far, far, far more interestingly. Hoffman's Carvelle isn't fit to lick Simmons' Fletcher's boots, despite both being cut from the same mold and professing the same philosophy. Whiplash feels like you're drinking a triple espresso - The Choir feels like you're drinking lukewarm, unpleasantly milky tea.

Probably destined to be forgotten, The Choir could perhaps make a footnote in history as a promising role for its child star. Whatever 'it' is, Garrett Wearing has it, and his performance elevates what could have been teeth-grindingly crappy into mere safe, fuzzy mediocrity. That's not a huge improvement, but hey, I suppose it could have been worse.

★★

The Choir is released 10 July 2015.

Or The Secret Diary of Jesus Christ, Aged 14 3/4. Tucked away in the top room of the pleasantly lefty Bread and Roses Pub, Alexander Nye's Son of Man makes an effort at tackling some weighty metaphysical questions. What is the true nature of the Christian God? How does he relate to other deities? What was Jesus up to during his difficult teenage years? What informed the philosophies and teachings of this most influential of religious leaders?

Set in 6AD, we meet a teenage Yeshua (Jesus' original name) dealing with some pretty familiar growing pains. He's falling out with his family, butting heads with authority, struggling to define his own identity and becoming quietly convinced that there's something indefinably special about him. Given the mysterious nature of his parentage, his blue eyes and light hair, most treat him as Mariam's (Claire-Monique Martin) bastard Roman child, making him a pariah unable to participate in Jewish religious ceremonies.

The background to this is the relationship between the twin towns of Nazareth and Sepphoris, separated by just three miles. Nazareth is strongly Jewish, while Sepphoris is a cosmopolitan, Roman-controlled worker's town that tolerates freedom of religion and other, more salubrious, activities. Prime among them is a brothel, staffed by the atheist prostitute Ishtar (Thalia Anagnostopoulou). Itinerant religious teacher Eli (Michael Musa Idris) is a reluctant friend of Ishtar's, spending his downtime in the brothel when he's not preaching his visions of an awe-inspiring 'Christ Angel', through whom God made the universe.

Eli, Yeshua, Mariam and Ishtar and others soon become entangled, each representing differing religious perspectives. As the characters bounce off one other, the young Yeshua begins to gain perspective on his actions, philosophies and ethical code - eventually setting himself on the path to become the badass zen-terrorist Messiah we're all familiar with. It's basically Batman Begins with less ninja training and more epistemological debate.

It's also a tale doled out with a whiff of self-satisfied blasphemy. So, the virgin Mary ends up unhappily working as a prostitute, devoted proto-Christian Eli ends up in a passionate gay tryst with his student, the prostitute Ishtar spends part of a scene rubbing her "cunt" (a word enunciated here with particular relish) on someone's head and, perhaps most heretically of all, it's heavily implied that Christ's divinity arises from epilepsy rather than God. I've got no beef with any of that, but in concert they feel like a somewhat juvenile attempt to shock.

But it doesn't succeed at shock, instead landing at camp. For example, when a character is traumatised upon learning their penis has leprosy it rather undermines the thoughtful spiritual questioning and instead brings to mind a Bible translated by John Waters. This campness is further sustained by the characters taking any opportunity to descend into histrionics. Damn near everyone goes balls out crazy at some point, replete with loud yelling, threats of violence and megalomaniacal ranting.

Still, at least that means that Son of Man isn't boring. There's nearly always something eye-brow raisingly bonkers happening on stage, and a couple of the characters and performances are genuinely interesting. The two best are Michael Musa Idris' Eli, combining a beardy masculine forthrightness with genuine intellectual curiosity. In terms of sheer physicality he deeply impresses, constantly tearing up bread and banging his thick wooden shaft against the stage. Anagnostopoulou's Ishtar, memorably described as a "philostitute", is also great fun to watch; finding a spiky, lascivious moment in almost every line and injecting much needed upbeat femininity into a tale of angry, serious men.

Entertaining as all that is, trying to work out what Son of Man is actually about turns out to be a bit of a headscratcher. There's an unfocussed quality to the writing - one moment we're exploring the Jewish right to Israel, the next homosexuality and Leviticus, the next colonisation under a foreign power, the idea of feminist prostitution and many, many more.

Most significantly, we're pummelled with all sorts of competing religious viewpoints; that the God of Israel and the Creator God are separate deities, that the various pantheons of Roman, Greek and Canaanite religions are reflections of characteristics of the one true God, the importance of the 'Christ Angel' in Messianic prophecy and so on. What I took away was that while Christianity might present itself as a straightforward truth, the realitylies in a deeply confusing knot of competing ideas and visions, only some of which found their way into the modern Church.

It's certainly an interesting piece of theatre, though not a truly successful one. Still, I can't fault the ambition in trying to recreate Biblical Nazareth above a pub in Clapham. The best praise I can give is that it successfully held my attention, primarily through curiosity at which weird philosophical direction it would spin off in next.

★★★

Son of Man is at the Bread and Roses Theatre from 26th May to 13th June at 7.30pm. Tickets here.

No-one can deny that they've crammed an awful lot of talent into the top floor of the Drayton Arms Pub. The Theory of Relativity, a loosely constructed chamber musical by Neil Bartram, works as a beautiful showcase of what these impressive young talents can put together. It's always a pleasant sensation to spot familiar performers on stage, even more so when they're generally among the stand-outs of their various productions.

Structurally, The Theory of Relativity is a series of vignettes centred around the, interconnected lives of a group of college-age Americans - their fears, passions, histories, ambitions and desires. For example, a woman sings out a bad relationship, a man experiences melancholy at life at home moving on whilst he's at college, a nervous physics major prepares for a date, someone deals with their cat allergies and so on.

But.... *deep breath*.

This is gloopy, sentimental, mawkish-as-all-hell BULLSHIT! Listening to college kids moaning about their parents getting divorced, worrying that their parents want them to be an electrician or simply yammering out syrupy, Hallmark card level rubbish about how much we all need each other jams on my annoyance button like few others. It's not just that it's painfully North American in that moronically sincere starry-eyed 'aw gee we're all super wonderful, folks' kinda way, it's that these are the epitome of 'white people problems'.

Worse, it's swaddled in layers of pseudoscientific claptrap in which, say, Newton's laws of motion, or Einstein's theories used as metaphors for human relationships. I reserve an especially acrid place in my heart for this kind of thing, literary devices that are as cliched as they are unimaginative. Now, I'm not some stone-hearted cynic - I don't mind the occasional dab of sentimentality - but this is about as fun as being forced to smoke a whole pack of cigarettes.

*and exhale*

Having said that, I can't pick any holes in this particular production. These are performers so talented that it's a tiny bit awe-inspiring to spend an hour or so in the same space as them. In concert, they project an incredible confidence and charisma, looking like nothing less than the future shock troops of the West End. They carry themselves with the subtly unconscious ease you see in people who are not only naturally gifted, but have the discipline to elevate their talent through countless hours of practise and toil.

I was pleased to see Joshua LeClair, who impressed as Arpad in She Loves Me back in February. Sure, the metaphor for sexuality at the centre of Apples and Oranges is, to put it mildly, torturous - but he performs the hell out of it, crowbarring every nugget of emotion and personality he can.

I also got a tiny little thrill when I realised Natasha Karp was in this, who stood out a mile at the recent You Won't Succeed On Broadway If You Don't Have Any Jews revue. She was the best thing there and one of the best things here, mixing up a rat-a-tat vocal style with believably frazzled physicality in Cake and, in The End of the Line, one of the more palatable (by which I mean crueller) songs, affects a quick and effective physical transformation alongside Ina Marie Smith.

As a demonstration of talent, The Theory of Relativity is hard to find fault with. The jaunty, upbeat book covers a wide range of styles - from Sondheim-esque word salads right through to hyper-emotional torch songs. This gives every performer space to excel, making for a truly egalitarian show where all are on equal footing. It's just a damn shame that the tone of the show is so pukemakingly cheerful - with just a sprinkling more poison and a little pinch of malevolence I'd have found it much more palatable.

★★★

The Theory of Relativity is at the Drayton Arms Theatre until 13th June. Tickets here.

Dogs of War is high concept stuff. The conceit is a young man bedevilled by invisible dogs. Everyone else can see them, he can't. It feels borne of 5am insomnia, an idea kindled into a powerful and bizarre play. The result is a weird cocktail of down-at-heel kitchen sink drama, warped hallucinogenic comedy and social commentary - hard to pin down or neatly categorise.

Set in rural Northern Ireland, we explore the woes of a troubled family who've escaped England for the peace and anonymity of the countryside. Mam (Maggie O'Brien) suffers from long-term mental illness, manifesting as paranoid delusions and aggressive lashings out at her family. Dad (Paul Stonehouse) is more carer than husband, a man who's been visibly eroded by the stress of caring for her - finding refuge in dodgy carpentry and endless cups of tea.

Our starting point is the return of their son Johnny (Richard Southgate). He's just completed the first year of a history degree, and is obviously rather nonplussed at having to trek all the way to the middle of nowhere to his parent's new house. Spiky and snobby, he stands aloof, preferring to retreat to his bedroom and play an online military conquest game.

Yet soon he finds his deepest worst fears realised - his mother's mental illness is manifesting in him. The first terrifying inklings are his being unable to perceive the family's three boisterous dogs. Later he begins to suffer delusions of grandeur, having tripped out conversations with a Northern Irish accented apparition of Cleopatra (Melanie McHugh). As tempers and sanity fray at the edges, ominous portents mount. In the second scene someone is cleaning an antique shotgun - is everyone going make it out alive?

Maggie O'Brien and Richard Southgate

The malleable reality and emotional tension make for immediately compelling theatre. This is aided by a detail-orientated set with a dog motif, shabby wallpaper and ever-so-slightly off kilter geometry. The Red Lion Theatre isn't the largest performance space, but Robert Darling's set shrinks it even further - squeezing the audience's noses right up against the fourth wall. As we descend into hallucination the cast invade the audience space, squeezing in and out of the old pews, sitting on the audience's laps and perching at the extreme corners of the room.

This makes for an intense atmosphere, aided in no small part by light and sound design that succeeds at both creating a dowdily realistic world of hissing electric kettles and an expressionist inner-world of neon, high contrast electric lighting and striking spots of colour. Most memorable is a sense of the family kitchen as a bubble of reality - when the character's cross the boundary there's a flash of lights and high-pitched squeal, as if the theatrical medium itself is protesting.

It's that playfulness with the medium that most struck me about the tale. Theatre commands its audience to suspend its disbelief more than nearly every other medium. The very act of watching actors perform on stage requires you to overlook the many artificial elements surrounding them. Most of the time this is done entirely unconsciously - we can take mime in our stride - if the actors behave like something is there, for all intents and purposes, it is.

Dogs of War screws around with the fundamental theatrical notion, the invisible dogs existing in some indefinable half-reality between the perceptions of characters and audience. Johnny straddles the two, making frequent trips into the audience space to observe his family from our removed viewpoint. As I saw it, mental illness here is a symptom of being a character in a play. After all, being observed, judged and laughed at by a silent, invisible crowd would make anyone paranoid.

Richard Southgate and Melanie McHugh

This is sophisticated metatextual gristle, but there's a nagging suspicion that Dogs of War is exploiting mental illness to make that point. To give it due credit, there's a decent wodge of stuff in the programme explaining precisely how the play addresses real life concerns, that the play supports the Rethink Mental Illness campaign and urges us to rethink stigma and bolster our compassion.

That's all gravy, but ultimately, having a mentally ill character hallucinate a comedy take on Cleopatra and gradually lapse into a Julius Caesar delusion is uncomfortably close to the knackered mental illness stereotypes of believing you're Napoleon. Fortunately, succour can at least be taken in the sensitive and empathetic writing that emphasises the pain of loss of self-control, strained social relationships and the assault on dignity that mental illness can cause.

So a tricky one. Dogs of War is a wonderfully performed play - Maggie O'Brien gave me literal goosebumps at some points - and excellently turned out in all respects. But I'm still not quite sure precisely what it's getting at. My cynical side says that it's sensationalising mental illness to entertain, but my optimistic side looks to the mile-wide streak of kindness that runs through every inch of the material. Perhaps it's that tension that makes it such an idiosyncratic experience. I can recommend it purely on that basis - at the very least it provokes debate.

★★★★

Dogs of War is at the Old Red Lion Theatre until 20th June. Tickets here.

The Landor is an awfully dusty theatre. So dusty that, at the end of The Clockmaker's Daughter, a mote got in my eye, producing a few involuntary tears. Now, don't think for a second that this musical made this stony-hearted, cynical theatre critic cry - perish the thought!

....Oh who am I kidding? Anyway, judging from the sniffles going around the theatre I was far from alone in getting all teary-eyed and wobbly-lipped at the climax of this wonderful new musical by Michael Webborn and Daniel Finn.

This is a very rare thing; a brand new fairytale that somehow feels as if it's been with us all along. Set sometime in the 18th century, we meet the residents of the bucolic village of Spindlewoode. Renowned local clockmaker Abraham (Lawrence Carmichael) is at a loss following the tragic death of his beloved wife. Wracked by grief he creates a clockwork replacement that, by some miracle, comes to life.

Shocked and amazed at what he's accomplished, he names her Constance (Jennifer Harding) and treats her as if she's his own daughter. Yet all too soon the bright lights of the nearby village draw the curious Constance towards them like a moth to a flame. After an innocent accident results in a prized wedding dress falling into a well, Constance resolves to replace it - turning out an exquisite dress in a matter of hours.

Now she's the toast of the town, providing beautiful dresses to all and sundry. This draws the ire of egotistical local seamstress Ma Riley (Jo Wickham), who's understandably paranoid that Constance's generosity will wreck her business. Matters are further complicated when her son Will (Alan McHale), begins to fall for this mysteriously talented newcomer. But dark clouds soon gather on the horizon. After all, how will this superstitious village react when they discover that no heart beats under Constance's skin, just the metronomic tick-tock of clockwork?

There's chunks of Edward Scissorhands here, combined with the atmosphere of Beauty and the Beast, a touch of Blade Runner philosophy and myriad tiny elements plucked from the folklore canon (Pinocchio, Frankenstein et al). Despite these influences, there's a core of originality that makes The Clockmaker's Daughter firmly its own story, one that can just about stand alongside the classics of Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm.

More than anything, the specific sense I got was that I was watching some forgotten Disney animated classic. Not some winks-to-the-parents, postmodern money churner, but one of those old-school solid gold animation classics - a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella or The Little Mermaid. Comparing something to Disney feels like a backhanded compliment, the House of Mouse rapaciously mining, sanitising and commodifying the fairytale. But this is like Disney at it's best, that unmistakable style running right through the core of this show: from the scheming, extravagant villain, to the characterful supporting cast, to the effortless switches in tone between comedy, tragedy and romance, right down to the simple purity of the heroine's soul.

It's all buoyed up by an impressive book that had me tapping my toe throughout. Most obviously impressive are the bombastic numbers featuring the entire town. Market Day is an explosion of exuberant energy, with the various villagers dancing around each other proffering their wares. A darker energy is present in the ominous A Town Meeting, the music perfectly conveying hysteria and building malevolent.

But my favourite moments came in Jennifer Harding's solo performances. A Story of My Own is a fantastic summation of Constance's desires, peppered with sincerity and recognisable desire. The real virtuoso moment comes in the climactic Clockwork. The show has been great up to this point, but things get kicked up a notch here - Harding stunning the audience with a visceral vocal performance that takes the show to unexpected emotional heights.

All that is built on a bedrock of smart, solid and confident direction of Robert McWhir. The Landor Theatre's performance space isn't particularly huge, yet even with this large cast things never feel cramped. In the crowd scenes he gives each character has something to do, their stories being quietly woven into the village backdrop. This is further elevated by David Shield's impressively detailed and versatile set, able to be reconfigured in many different ways. The Landor has a reputation for it's production values, this is up there with the most impressive I've seen in fringe theatre.

The Clockmaker's Daughter is a hugely impressive achievement from top to bottom. It's got gigantic success written all over it, of all the productions I've seen lately it's the one I can most easily imagine making a jump to the West End stage. This is the kind of thing audiences go bananas for, a classically tinged original fairytale with top-notch songs, universally excellent performances and expert and intelligent direction.

And it made me cry! Me! Cry! Who would have thought?! Take your children! Take your girlfriend! Go on your own if you have to!

★★★★★

The Clockmaker's Daughter is at the Landor Theatre until 4th July. Tickets here.

If you're even peripherally involved in theatre, Stop! The Play will be extraordinarily satisfying and absolutely hilarious. If you're not, it's only hilarious. Theatre attracts preening narcissists and bloated egos like shit attracts flies. Theatre is what happens when public adoration and the veneer of artistic integrity, entangles with limited means and time pressures - a minefield that can be lethally exhausting.

Stop! The Play aims to show precisely how 'the worst play ever' sprang into being. That play, Banksy Ain't Gay, is a nonsensical tale of a couple who wake up one morning to discover that the modish guerilla artist has painted his latest work on the side of their house. The sudden media interest draws predatory characters from the woodwork, which in turn causes the couple to dramatically discover their homosexuality. It's a bone-headed bit of theatre peppered with atrocious similes, gratuitous sex, half-baked characters and hammy monologues.

But oh man is it ever familiar. I've seen some stinkers in my time; plays written to demonstrate that the writer is the new enfant terrible of theatre. I've watched plays through my fingers, teeth gritted and butt aching; always wondering - how the hell did anyone ever think this was a good idea?!

Well, that's what David Spicer's script uncovers. Before our eyes we watch as a worthy kitchen sink drama about a struggling artist gradually morphs into this pretentious psychodrama. We experience this primarily from the point of view of the cast and crew, suffering under daily, drastic rewrites.

Leading man Hugh (Adam Riches) gets it worst, his character downgraded from monologuing, troubled hero to human scenery. Everyone else is shuffled like a deck of cards; ditzy ingenue Gemma (Hatty Preston), consummate professional Linda (Hannah Stokely), old ham Walter (James Woolley) and last minute 'urban' addition Kryston (Tosin Cole) wondering why he's even there. This bitchy rabble is held together by trustafarian arsehole director Evelyn (Ben Starr) and put-open, monkey-scratched stage manager Chrissie (Charlie Cameron).

In concert this gaggle of stage stereotypes confirms every nagging suspicion I ever had about what goes on backstage when cast and crew scent blood in the water. Everyone is out for themselves, either paranoid about their parts being reduced or focussed on their paycheque. Though everything is heightened to farce, it rings true. I've met many an actor - and I sympathise with Alfred Hitchcock when he recommended treating them like cattle.

So I felt a certain cathartic smugness in watching them helplessly sink deeper and deeper into the quicksand of humiliation. Even if you don't have a bone to pick with thesps, you're still going to enjoy Stop! The Play because, simply, it's very very funny. The script is packed with great one-liners, ably shored up by a cast for whom a simple narrowing of their eyes or confused sidewards glance is enough to elicit gales of laughter. It's rare that I've heard an audience enjoying themselves so much - various jokes tickling different sections of the crowd as if we're being conducted like an orchestra.

I'm loath to spoil any of the best gags, but I particularly loved Tosin Cole's painfully cliched American rapper character who sprinkles "naam sayn"entirely too liberally. Similar pleasures come in Adam Riches' throwing himself with gusto into a nonsensical monologue about a meaningless day and Hatty Preston going for her Oscar moment with a bizarre half-whispered, half-bellowed kneeling confession. And it'd be remiss of me not to mention the wonderful origami body language of Ben Starr.

Perhaps the only flaw on the comedy side is a reliance on torturous similes. Characters are described as entering "like a swan landing on its favourite millpond", "like a child lost in a supermarket" or "like a frightened gazelle on a waltzer". They're all basically good, but the repetition gets a tiny bit much, eventually feeling a touch like mad-libs.

Somewhat more serious is the imbalance in quality between the first and second acts. The first act is downright hilarious - primarily due to the stressed out, paranoid cast worrying about opening night. This drains away a bit in the second, as during the play itself they have all apparently stopped giving a shit. I wonder whether the show would benefit from mirroring the writing process - showing us the finished play first, then flashing back to the rehearsals.

Quibbles aside, it's difficult to argue with a play that elicited so many belly laughs from the crowd. Both cast and audience appeared to be having an equally good time, it's an easy recommendation.

★★★★

Stop! The Play is at Trafalgar Studios until 27th June. Tickets here.

There's a righteous anger burning at the core of Dirty Special Thing. It shows us, in straightforward terms, what makes its young cast tick. Over 75 minutes we cover (among other things) class discrimination, financial woes, fear of the future and, simply, trying to enjoy life as your responsibilities are piled ever higher.

This is the work of the Future Stage Company, composed of actors that have spent the last year training at Generation Arts. Generation Arts is one hell of an organisation, targeting disadvantaged young people with free, high-quality drama training. Their target student is someone classified as 'at risk'; those in receipt of benefits and without any prior qualifications.

In this predatory society, where, sadly, the sole metric of a person's worth is their wealth, these are the people spat upon by right-wing media, demonised as scroungers by politicians and daubed as some terrifying 'other'. Most people don't want to see them, or are terrified that they'll become them. Giving them a platform to voice their fears, ambitions and opinions is vital - standing in a sharp contrast to a London stage all too often dominated by wealthy white men.

The show is a series of interconnected vignettes, presumably developed from discussions as to what keeps these people awake at night. So we see the philosophies of a young cabbie working his way through 'the knowledge', the stress of a harried young nurse, students struggling to focus on UCAS applications, the philosophical leanings of a Big Issue seller, dealing with neighbours moaning about loud music and the misery of working a mindless call centre job.

With minimalist staging, my enjoyment mainly came from watching the cast bounce off one another. There's an abundance of personality in this company, the scenes accentuating each performer's best traits. One of the most successful was the monologue exploring what it means to know the knowledge; from the growth of the hippocampus that results from learning the layout of 25,000 streets, to the interpretation of the tangled road layout as a metaphor for life here. This is neatly visualised by taping a pattern to the floor, subtly linking the characters between scenes. Also, while I'd like to think I know the majority of London's 'hidden' secrets, I had no idea about the Ferryman's seat on Bankside.

Similarly excellent is Moneer Elmasseek's mordant Big Issue seller. He explains that people have spat on him, assaulted him and even thrown dogshit at him - though at least this means they're not ignoring him. With his hangdog, stoic aura it's difficult not to feel for the guy, especially as he's insulted and degraded by a sadistic banker. I'd like to think that this scene is an exaggeration, but frankly I wouldn't put any cruelty past a coked-up ex-public schoolboy.

Other treats were a heartbreaking scene where Nestor Sayo's Abu receives a letter from the Home Office informing him that his right to remain in the UK has been revoked, with deportation looming. I often deal with appeals against deportation orders (when I'm not reviewing theatre), so I found it both interesting and depressing to see the reaction of someone actually opening a Home Office letter.

Due to the nature of the production, it's to be expected that things are often a little rough and uneven. There's a musical number that doesn't work quite as well as it should and a few plotlines that could use a bit more development. Though there's a definite sense of interconnectivity between the scenes, I'd have liked that aspect to be developed a little more.

Even as it is you get a sense of both the personal issues facing the characters and the wider societal ones. There's a refreshing anger running right through the show - this is an unfair society that rewards greed and punishing kindness - something argued against with a heartwarming defence of public services and altruism in general. Most touching was a pointed coda in which a character recovers from an injury "thanks to the NHS" - a line that's greeted with uproarious applause.

Generation Arts are doing outstanding, important work in giving these performers a boost towards further training and eventual careers. With their track record of getting auditions in major London drama schools they're giving the City's theatre scene a transfusion of life, putting viewpoints that're all too often drowned out by commercial considerations at centre stage.

Dirty Special Thing is at the Platform Theatre until 6th June 2015. Tickets here.

The Legacy is a bad play. This is, I think, inarguable. From the dull staging to the half-arsed characterisation to the crummy dialogue it stinks pretty bad. Worse, it's one of those bad plays created with good intentions; namely exploring misogyny, gender stereotypes and class conflict. Problem is, it goes about communicating that in the most boneheaded of ways.

Set within a solicitors office, we follow three characters awaiting the reading of their father's will. We first meet Adam and Rebecca Booth (Jim Mannering and Lucinda Westcar). Painted as the epitome of aspirational middle England (he works in the City, she makes hummus), the Harpenden-based duo are a pretty gruesome twosome. Adam constantly objectifies and infantilises his wife, giving her cute nicknames and explaining to her her likes and dislikes. Rebecca bears this with bovine stoicism, apparently having convinced herself that these are the slings and arrows she must suffer in order to maintain her materialist lifestyle.

But hello! Who's this? Why, it's Esther (Claira Watson Parr), crusading feminist art-protester and newspaper columnist fresh off the mean streets of New York City! Having left the UK following a storm of media protest over a radical piece of performance art (not that this really makes a lick of sense but hey ho). Now, after 12 years, she's back. So what happens when this switched on feminist agitator rubs up against regressive conservatism?

Well, to be honest, not much. Esther and Adam are quickly defined as polar opposites. She's liberal, progressive, socially conscious and empathetic, devoting her life to challenging gender norms and battling misogyny. He's Conservative to the marrow of his bones: reactionary, money obsessed and brayingly sexist. This leaves Rebecca as the battleground to fight over; Adam tugging her towards a traditionally wifely 'shut up and look pretty darling' role and Esther urging her to stand up for herself. This process is marked by dramatic revelations - each more shocking and unexpected than the last.

Now, I've got to be fair. There is one aspect of this play that deserves straightforward praise, and I'd be remiss not to mention it. It's just an hour long. This refreshing brevity functions as a lifeline - it quickly becomes apparent that the play is bad - but you can at least take solace in the fact that at least your suffering will be mercifully brief.

The Legacy's fundamental problems are baked into its script: to say these characters are two-dimensional is an insult to dimensions. They should be normal people working through a difficult emotional situation, instead they're flimsy scarecrows written with the sole purpose of having ideology projected upon them.

The most extreme example is Adam, in whom patriarchy is concentrated way beyond believability. I have no doubt that there are people who share his viewpoints, but he's caricatured so far that he ends up as more punching bag than person. This are compounded by the similarly implausible Esther. It is not exactly difficult to get me to root for an outspoken women's rights campaigner, yet Esther's Christlike goodness, wholesome charity and tendency to spout statistics quickly rankle.

That this dynamic feminist is so annoying throws up two possibilities. The first is simply that Esther is poorly written. If we're supposed to be rooting for her the character fails, the end product eerily similar to right-wing fantasies of forthright feminist demagoguery. The second, (more troubling) possibility is that Adam's misogyny and Esther's feminism are being equated as two sides of the same coin - each at fault for trying to define Rebecca according to their politics. This South Park-ish 'maybe the truth is in the middle' argument is straight up intellectually dishonest bullshit. Whatever it is the core problem remains - you don't give a toss about these people.

I should point out that the cast are largely blameless. There isn't an actor alive that could rescue this, but these three do their best, nobly suffering through the overly melodramatic reveals and tin-eared dialogue like the professionals they are.

That's about all I've got to say about The Legacy. I could go on, but frankly this isn't even fun to criticise. It's just a bog standard bad play without even the decency to be particularly interesting in its badness. At least it's short.

Thank god it's short.

★★

The Legacy is at The Hope Theatre until 13th June. Tickets here.

Attractive twenty-something acrobats flying through the air to Radiohead? I suppose there are worse ways to spend a Wednesday night. This is Traces, the current show from Les 7 doights de la main / The 7 Fingers, billed as "the world's coolest contemporary circus company." For once it might not be hyperbole; Traces is a laid-back, stylish and fashionable show filled with feats that conjure up constant involuntary gasps.

In recent years, acrobatics shows seem to have banished sequins, tights and vaseline smiles in favour of earthy, low-key authenticity. Autumnal pastels, natural fabrics and indie rock are the name of the game, all part of a mission to ground the acrobats as regular people (doing amazing things). The implication being that, crazy though these feats are, with enough practice and dedication you or I could be twirling majestically through the air.

This crusade to get the us to identify with the performers means they can't just be stony-faced acrobat-automatons, they've got to be likeable. Fortunately, The 7 Fingers have a surfeit of charisma - their personalities practically radiating off the stage throughout the performance.

For most of the first part of the show their individuality is repeatedly underlined. They introduce and describe themselves, giving us a potted history of their lives to date. Then, as if competing for our attention like naughty children, they barge and jostle amongst each other for the spotlight. At times they even square off against each other and for a brief moment, it seems that fists might fly in annoyance.

This makes a decent chunk of Traces weirdly melancholic, a peculiar contrast to the intense physicality of the performances. This all feeds into a subtle psychic misery that suffuses the cast - are these flips, dives and tumbles a manifestation of some inner woe? After all, who hasn't been so annoyed that they've felt like they're climbing the walls? By the time they're climbing poles to Radiohead's dour masterpiece Talk Show Host (with the repeated refrain "I wanna be someone else") you pray they're going to snap out their funk.

They do - if half of the show shows insecure jockeying for attention, the other fuses the company into one organism and develops bonds of trust. Perhaps the clearest example is when a giant see-saw is produced. With two cast members perched on a scaffold, a third stands opposite them. The two jump down onto the see-saw, propelling the third into an impossibly high parabolic arc. As he spins gracefully through the air, the rest of the cast catch him on a large cushion, which he hits with a satisfying *thump*.

The slightly depressive mood of the first half makes these explosions of energy that much more uplifting. It's this carefully considered emotional core that sets 7 Fingers apart from the rest. Sure it's awe-inspiring to watch someone bending their body into a gravity-defying pretzel high above a hard stage, but it's even more intense when you genuinely care about that person.

Even without all that on top, the simple skill in Traces would make it a more than worthwhile watch. Just watching someone put their body through this, firing themselves through tiny hoops with laser-guided precision or doing a mind-bogglingly complex diabolo routine. My personal favourite bits were the aforementioned Radiohead routine, the pleasing-to-the-eye 'Cyr Wheel' and an awesomely cool, gymnastically excellent segment set to UNKLE's Burn Your Shadow.

It's difficult to imagine much else topping this in terms of circus in London this summer. A wonderful watch from start to finish, topped off with heaping dollops of élan. Recommended.

★★★★

Traces is at The Peacock Theatre until 12th July 2015. Tickets here.

'A Simple Space' at the Udderbelly

'Phoenix' (2014) directed by Christian Petzold

Super Furry Animals at Brixton Academy, 8th May 2015

'Vote For Me: A Musical Debate' at the London Theatre Workshop, 9th May 2015

'Sunny Afternoon' at The Harold Pinter Theatre, 11th May 2015

'Danny Collins' (2015) directed by Dan Fogelman

'Mad Max: Fury Road' (2015) directed by George Miller

'Avenue Q' at the Greenwich Theatre, 14th May 2015

'The Flannelettes' at the King's Head Theatre, 19th May 2015

'Sense of an Ending' at Theatre503, 20th May 2015

The London 2 Brighton Challenge 2015, 23rd May 2015

'The Choir' (2015) directed by François Girard

'Son of Man' at the Bread and Roses Theatre, 27th May 2015

'The Theory of Relativity' at the Drayton Arms Theatre, 28th June 2015

'Dogs of War' at the Red Lion Theatre, 29th May 2015

'The Clockmaker's Daughter' at the Landor Theatre, 1st June 2015

'Stop! The Play' at Trafalgar Studios, 3rd June 2015

'Dirty Special Thing' at the Platform Theatre, 4th June 2015

'The Legacy' at The Hope Theatre, 8th June 2015

'Traces' at The Peacock Theatre, 10th June 2015