After fielding thirsty DMs and (tragically) paying retail, theatre critic Reda Belhadfa takes her seat at the Trafalgar Theatre for Cole Escola 's Oh, Mary!  — a madcap Mary Todd Lincoln biopic that’s equal parts camp, cabaret, and a mid-Atlantic meltdown worthy of the First Lady herself. Solicitous and perverted messages notwithstanding, going by my DMs, this has been the most hotly anticipated play for me to review. Now, normally, I would request (see: beg, additionally: s

Valentine’s Day, a cinema full of spinsters, and a two-hour lesson in meandering, self-important, tone-deaf excess: critic Reda Belhadfa reviews Wuthering Heights  and wonders if St Valentine’s stoning might be preferable to Emerald Fennell ’s latest. Courtesy of Warner Bros/YouTube I am not entirely certain that we aren’t in purgatory. Certainly, with headlines of late, one might be forgiven for believing we are being divinely punished for our sins. And, after having sat th

Critic Reda Belhadfa is not in the habit of giving easy wins. Here, she reflects on why Josh Gordon's Go Feral Like the Big Dogs at the Union Theatre earned one anyway for its unsparing portrait of work, loneliness, and moral compromise in contemporary London. Have mercy on me, people of Rome! Gladiatorial blood sport that theatre review may well be, every once in a while we have to mercifully tuck in our thumbs and give a positive review. Yes, there shall be no blood toda

Where do the boundaries between consumption and desire begin to blur? Zoë Goetzmann looks back at APPETITE , held last year at Maximillian Wolfgang Gallery , to explore how closely sex and food are entwined in our visual language of want. Photography courtesy of gallery Last fall and winter, Maximillian Wolfgang Gallery ’s exh ibition, APPETITE   (November 2025, featuring artists Angel Qin, Adrián Coto, Barney Pau, Guta Galli, Parks Sadler, and Rachel Alexandrou )   presente

Reda Belhadfa looks back at the now-ended Christmas production of Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson  to dissect how the cannibalised feminism of Kate Hamill's retelling of Conan Doyle's classic evacuates both the art form and the movement of any material force. Photography courtesy of Arcola Theatre/Alex Brenner At first glance you might assume - from it's title at the very least - that the Arcola Theatre production of Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson would be a (very) simple 21st century

What happens when a museum stops pretending to be above the world and starts behaving like part of it? Arts of the Earth  at the Guggenheim Bilbao gets its hands dirty enough to suggest that even greenwashing can, occasionally, grow something real. writes Victoria Comstock-Kershaw. Isa Melsheimer, Wardian Case , 2023. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris. There’s a moment walking into Arts of the Earth when the Guggenheim Bilbao stops feeling like a titani

According to my iMessage history, the only text I sent during the first and only time I saw rockstar-cum-author Kieran “Saint” Leonard in...

Sultry, raunchy, and nail-bitingly agitated, the female-led powerhouse of Full Frontal Theatre 's To Watch a Man Eat  is a salivatingly...

Agnès Houghton-Boyle reviews the playful, independent post-lockdown films of the Saigon Experimental Film Festival , curated by Phạm...