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Iron Maidens: Iron Fantasy at Soho Theatre

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Two women chase the elusive six-pack in Iron Fantasy, only to embark on an unexpected journey exploring what it truly means to be strong in today’s world. In a culture that demands visible strength and power, they subject themselves to lifting, protein powder-guzzling, and raw-egg drinking. Interestingly, consuming raw eggs elicited many squeamish reactions from members of the audience. None has obviously been to Cabaret to see Sally Bowles guzzle prairie oysters. But in the search for the attributes that make someone strong, a little more is revealed about being a young woman in the modern world. And that strength comes from a number of ways. It’s currently playing at the Soho Theatre .  It’s part performance, part musical, and part interviews, as writer-performers Shamira Turner and Eugénie Pastor, who make up the theatre performance duo She Goat, don a variety of silly costumes and play a range of musical instruments on their journey researching strength, fighting, and pumping i...

Wicked thoughts: The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd @OrangeTreeThtr

The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd at The Orange Tree Theatre is an exciting start to new season at the Orange Tree Theatre. The audience is made to feel as if they are eavesdropping on the drama in this working cottage where a family is falling apart.

Set in the Nottinghamshire mining community in 1914, DH Lawrence has created a moving piece of working class woman in an abusive relationship.

After an evening where he brings home two ladies after a night of drinking she wishes he was dead. She soon gets her wish and then suffers guilt.


It's evocative, if a bit laboured, particularly in the second half where the death, guilt and shame for wicked thoughts and being above one's station is the focus point of the story.

But it is also nicely acted, particularly with Ellie Piercy as the righteous Mrs Holyroyd.

Jordan Mifsud, as the slightly hunky electrician (a job above the position of her husband) delivers a subtle performance as a man who tries to convince her to leave with him.

Perhaps a prelude to the upheavals of the twentieth century and further rights for women, it is a fascinating portrait of a community and way of life that has been lost to time and industrial development.

It runs at Richmond through to 4 October.

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