Hello, and welcome to my Substack, my idiosyncratic and slightly random selection of news and views on theatre, books, food and more. Thank you to all of my subscribers, free and paid – your support really does mean the world!
July was a quiet month for me, workwise (so a double thank you to all those kind folk who are paid subscribers!), which has given me a chance to do some writing just for fun, which I had sort of forgotten how to do. So I am starting the newsletter with this Bradbury quote about being a writer, though it is perhaps slightly ironic since I hate heights and am always the person standing three feet away from the edge going ‘Can you just step back? You’re making me nervous!’ to my braver friends. So please note, avoid actual cliffs, especially in this weather.
[Image description: cross-stitch on feather print fabric: Jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down]
This week’s theatre and what to book now
The theatre world’s attention turns to Edinburgh this month (if you are looking for tips on what to see, I recommend Fergus Morgan’s The Crush Bar Substack, which like this one is free). My own diary – since I am only doing a flying visit to the Fringe – feels weirdly empty, and I have taken my annual break from Twitter to avoid having too much FOMO. But there are plenty of great things coming in autumn…
One thing coming up in September that looks great is Curious Monkey’s Penguin, which is coming to Live and, I think, touring. Written by Hamzeh Al-Hussien, it charts his journey from Syria through Jordan to Gateshead. I’m a big fan of Curious Monkey’s work – I really enjoyed Here when it was on at Northern Stage – so I am looking forward to seeing this new production. Also, as a Theatre Company of Sanctuary, their Arriving project welcomes those seeking sanctuary in the UK and is very worth your support. (I was delighted to find out the Crowdfunder, which I mentioned previously and contributed to, was successful, so kudos to anyone who helped support that!)
I mentioned Luca Rutherford’s You Heard Me coming to ARC in September, and I see they also have the new show by Scott Turnbull, Unexpected Item in the Bagging Area. I saw Turnbull’s show Where Do All the Dead Pigeons go at Alphabetti ages ago, and I found his brand of gentle surrealism engaging, so this is definitely worth checking out.
Arts and culture
NOVUM
One potentially interesting happening this August is the new arts festival Novum, which is centred around Newcastle’s Civic Centre. A mix of art, music and performance with both family friendly and after-hours activities, it includes a Monumental Construction that audiences can help build.
You can find out more here:
IN/Visible Disabled Women’s National Arts Collective
Back to ARC again, All the Women We Could Have Been is a new exhibition of art by women in the Disability Arts Movement which opens online and at ARC Stockton in August before moving to London in September. Created in association with ARC, Arts Depot London and Little Cog, it’s a multimedia exhibition featuring art by women over the age of 50. It has been designed with accessibility in mind, but also to showcase the talents and ideas of people who are so often overlooked in any discussion of the arts, where a commitment to diversity too regularly excludes disabled practitioners and audiences (and still sees older women as ‘past it’). There will also be a series of workshops for older disabled women: check out the website for more details.
What to watch now
I was delighted to discover that one of my favourite shows has finally returned to Alibi this week, so have been bingeing on season 3 of Evil. I find it a hard show to sell to others, because it so firmly resists a pigeon-hole, but equally I find it compelling enough that I watched the whole season in under a week. Made by the creators of The Good Wife and its fantastic spin off, The Good Fight, it centres on the story of three people who work to prove or debunk the existence of the supernatural on behalf of the Catholic Church, a sort of X-Files meets Supernatural meets The Exorcist. It took me a while to warm to – I couldn’t figure out if it believed that supernatural existed in its own universe, which made some of the earlier episodes feel a bit half-hearted, but now it has fully committed to the bit and leaned into the batshit, it really is an enormous amount of fun.
Smart writing, spooky visuals and a top notch cast (Mike Colter, Katja Herbers and Aasif Mandvi play the three ‘assessors’, with Christine Lahti and Michael Emerson also on board) make for a slickly entertaining show that uses its premise to cleverly interrogate everything from incels to racism and exploitative capitalism (an episode where Herbers’ kids – by far the most annoying component of the show – think they see zombies but are actually only seeing exhausted delivery drivers is one of the best).
Another returner is series 2 of From. I binge watched all of series 1 in a couple of nights – be warned, it ends on a cliffhanger – and while I worry that it’s one of those ‘big concept’ shows that won’t know how to answer its own questions, the concept is enough to intrigue me. People from all over the US take a wrong turn and somehow, no matter where they started, end up in a small town that is plagued by terrifying entities that come out and strike at night. Deciding they can try to live a ‘normal’ life until they can figure a way out, or join a ‘we’ll all die soon so might as well party’ commune, the residents struggle to survive, guided by their sheriff (the marvellous Harold Perrineau), who is dealing with secrets of his own. It’s a smart, spooky show that really had me gripped: here’s hoping it doesn’t cop out with a Lost-like ending that leaves us more questions than answers…
What I am reading
I was in the mood for an easy read this week, so read the latest two in the Bronte sisters mysteries by Bella Ellis, The Red Monarch and A Gift of Poison. Ellis is the pen name of Rowan Coleman, whose We Are All Made of Stars I very much enjoyed, and while sometimes they can lean a little heavily into the foreshadowing, the books are a fun romp: there’s something hugely entertaining about imagining the three sisters as not just novelists but ‘detectorists’ out solving murders on the Yorkshire moors. The Red Monarch has the added appeal of being set in the London theatre scene, so got me where I lived twice over.
Something that requires a little more of a slow reading is Rebecca Solnit’s The Encyclopaedia of Trouble and Spaciousness. I’m a big fan of Solnit’s essays, which cover a wide range of subjects, from politics and history to the natural world, and her mix of unsparing attention with gentle optimism is a tonic to doomscrolling.
Speaking of books, Doll, No Love is This and Vampire in Edinburgh are all still only 99p on Kindle…
Thanks again for reading – please do share with your friends! And remember if you want to support my writing but a paid subscription isn’t for you (times are hard, I get it!), you can buy me a one-off Ko-fi or buy one of my books.
I leave you with this sage advice…
[Image description: cross-stitch: be More Dolly]
Remember: everything included is my personal preference / opinion, and while I strive to be accurate, I always advising checking with the relevant venue.