Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a weekly newsletter about theatre written by me, Fergus Morgan.

Until mid-March, this newsletter is focusing on VAULT Festival. Every Monday, I am sending out issues featuring five shows worth seeing at VAULT that week - this is the second of those - and on Fridays, I am sending out your regular, in-depth interviews, plenty of which will focus on artists performing at VAULT, too.

A quick reminder that you can support this newsletter by becoming a paid subscriber for just the price of a cup-and-a-half of coffee a month, via the button below. If you want to find out more about The Crush Bar - including promo opportunities - then click here. If you are interested in promo opportunities around VAULT, then click here.

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That’s all for now. More from me at the bottom, but first: five shows to see at VAULT Festival this week!

Five shows to see at VAULT Festival this week.

Scratches - Plain Heroines

Female-led theatre company Plain Heroines have featured in The Crush Bar before: its production of co-founder Kate Reid’s play The 4th Country was a hit at VAULT Festival in 2020, and transferred to Finsbury Park’s Park Theatre last January, when Reid featured in this newsletter.

Now, the company is returning to VAULT with a new show, Scratches. Written by Royal Court Writers Group member Aoife Kennan and directed by rising star Gabriella Bird, it is on at the festival every evening this week, with an additional afternoon performance on Sunday.

A two-hander, it sees Kennan and actor Zac Ghazi-Torbati play a girl and her best friend. It is, the blurb promises, “a funny and honest story” of “self-harm, recovery and reaching out to friends”, told “with a song and a dance, a microphone and confetti. So much confetti.”

Book tickets here

Thirsty - Bruised Sky Productions

London-based company Bruised Sky Productions have been staging new writing since 2009, with recent shows including Sarah Milton’s 4 and Chantelle Dusette’s Dolly, which were both performed at the Park Theatre’s Come What May Festival last Spring.

Now, the company is arriving at VAULT Festival with a new one-woman play. Written by Stephanie Martin and directed by Scott Le Crass (who is also staging Ben Fensome’s Buff this week – see below), Thirsty promises to explore “womanhood, sexuality, motherhood, queerness” and more.

It sees actor Louise Beresford play a newly single woman in her mid-30s, struggling to recover from the end of her first queer relationship, and her life-changing introduction to submission and kink. Catch it every evening this week, and at a matinee performance on Saturday afternoon.

Book tickets here

Blink - Joz Norris

If you have never seen a Joz Norris show, then you are in for a wild ride. The alternative comedian has been a fixture at the Edinburgh Fringe for a decade, and his shows are reliably, wonderfully weird. That is absolutely true of his current hour Blink, which I saw – and loved – back in August.

The concept is that Norris has given up comedy to become a serious magician, but happens to be totally useless at magic. What ensues, then, is an entertaining hour of failed tricks and stupid sketches, all delivered by the maniacal, madcap Norris and his co-creator, Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee Ben Target.

Why have I put it on a list of theatre shows to see? Well, it is silly, surreal comedy – but there is something metatheatrical going on amid the mayhem, too, although exactly what is quite impossible to put your finger on. Have a read of my review for Fest here – and go see it for yourself on either of its two performances at VAULT on Friday and Saturday.

Book tickets here

Buff - Ben Fensome

Written by actor and playwright Ben Fensome, whose previous works have been longlisted for the Bruntwood Prize and shortlisted for the Papatango Prize, and directed by rising star Scott Le Crass, Buff is a funny and poignant one-man play about body image in the world of online dating, which shines a spotlight on the kind of character that rarely takes centre stage in LGBTQ+ theatre.

Irish actor David O’Reilly – who has been in The Book Of Mormon and Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, and recently appeared in Netflix’s Christmas At Mistletoe Farm – stars as a gay, plus-sized, 32-year-old primary school teacher, who has recently been through a bad break-up and is forced to start navigating online dating, while simultaneously sub-letting his flat to an Instagram model.

“The play came from a discussion between me and Scott about gay plays, the type of actors cast in them, and what they were usually about,” writer Fensome explains. “We wanted to make a show that centred a gay character usually left on the sidelines. We are producing it ourselves at VAULT, with the help of a kickstarter, but we would love to connect with producers, and maybe book a longer run or a tour for it, too.”

This is promotional content.

Book tickets here

Dog Hair - Seventh Sense Theatre

Seventh Sense Theatre was founded by actors, writers and co-artistic directors Philip Jones and Rachel Thomas to create “class theatre without the divide”, to break down class barriers in who gets to access theatre. Their first show, Memory Soldier, was staged to acclaim at Camden People’s Theatre in 2018.

Dog Hair is Seventh Sense Theatre’s second show. Written by Jones, produced by Thomas, directed by Karan Desai, and initially developed through Wildcard Theatre’s Four Of A Kind programme, it focuses on a son, who returns to the post-industrial town he grew up in for his nan’s funeral, the mother who still lives there, her new boyfriend who wants to leave, and the tension between the three of them.

“Dog Hair has been ready to go for a year and a half, but this is the first time we have been able to stage it because of the pandemic,” Thomas explains. “This is not a full stop for the show, either. We would love to do a longer London run somewhere. We would love to take it on a regional tour to the audiences it was written for, and we are even open to performing it in non-theatre spaces, too. That would be the dream.”

This is promotional content.

Book tickets here

That’s it for now. I’ll be back in your inboxes on Friday with an in-depth interview, then again on Monday with five shows to see at VAULT Festival next week.

One final reminder about the various ways you can support this newsletter: you can share it with anyone you think might be interested, you can become a paid subscriber using the button at the top, or you can get in touch with me about using it for promotional purposes.

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That’s all. Thanks for reading. If you want to get in touch for any reason, just reply to this email or contact me via Twitter - I’m @FergusMorgan. See you in a week!

Fergus

The Crush Bar

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