REVIEW: A Girl In School Uniform (Walks into a bar) at the New Diorama Theatre

On walking into the space, your eyes take a short while to adjust to the dimly lit stage. Total darkness everywhere apart from the small playing space in the centre of the room; above, a series of lights of varying shapes and sizes. Sudden Darkness. Then we are introduced into a world not too dissimilar to our own, possibly set in the near future where blackouts are a regular occurrence of every day life.

Bell (Bryony Davies), a barmaid with a biting, quick and extremely dry sense of humor meets Steph (Laura Woodward), the ever-persistent schoolgirl who is looking for her friend Charlie/Charlotte who has gone missing during the mysterious blackouts.

REVIEW: In Our Hands at The New Diorama Theatre

Founded in 2009 by a trio of students at the Rose Bruford College, Smoking Apples is a promising young company that specialises in puppetry and visual theatre, which – while Britain holds its breath in the aftermath of the Brexit vote – finds the perfect timing to re-propose the 2014 production of In Our Hands.  The play – at the New Diorama Theatre for three days as a part of a UK tour –  explores the difficulties that Cornish fishermen had to face after the imposition of EU quotas on fish, which appear quite easy to manipulate by larger corporations.