With a screwed-up face and the exclamation “you look like an owl”, Olivia’s friendship with neighbourhood rebel and outcast Kay begins, along with her transformation into ‘Owl’. Jon Keevy’s rich and evocative text is a classic bildungsroman; a narrative that chart’s Olivia’s arrival into a new town, new school and growth into a teenager. The [...]

Ever heard Grendel sing the blues? Seen an academic transform into a dragon? Or heard Beowulf describe himself as a sexy motherfucker? BBB’s unconventional Beowulf has all of this and more, as it rattles through one of the most famous epic poems of all time. It’s a riot of musical styles and silliness, managing to [...]

Jenna Watt’s delicate one-woman show kicked off Mayfest for me, offering up its bittersweet mix of hope and hate in a delightfully unselfconscious manner. Essentially, Flâneurs tells us the story of her friend Jeremy, who was the victim of a vicious assault. Except it’s so much more than that: it’s a musing on what it [...]

Kate Tempest is blazingly good. Everyone’s been telling me this for ages, and she won the Ted Hughes Award in March, but to see her take the stage and do her thing is mind-blowing. Using Greek myths as her starting point, Tempest elevates the everyday lives of a fictional group of South Londoners into the [...]