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Eyes, hair, mouth: Darkie Armo Girl at Finborough Theatre

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Darkie Armo Girl, Karine Bedrossian’s electrifying one-woman show, commands attention from the moment it begins. First performed in 2022 and revived last year, it now returns for extra performance and it's an event not to miss. The show takes you through the thrills and horrors of a hectic life. She struts, shimmies, and taunts while revealing some horrific truths. She is such an irresistible storyteller that you find yourself hooked. The story is one of fame, glamour, abuse, self-harm, and suicide. If that subject matter doesn't sound like your cup of tea, you haven't seen it delivered with such high energy and provocation. It's currently at the Finborough Theatre . The show's title refers to a slur a popular girl at school once called her. Her ancestry is Armenian, and her parents were from Cyprus, where they fled the civil war and arrived in the UK with nothing. Shortly after she was born in Roehampton. The birth was an emergency C-section that left the baby and ...

For the birds: Outlying Islands @KingsHeadThtr


Life on Outlying Islands at the Kings Head Theatre is for the birds. Or  what happens on a remote island should stay on the island. David Greig's play is having its first revival. Buffeted by storms, death and primal forces even four weeks can seem like an eternity. But time flies in this expertly acted and imaginatively realised production.

Set ahead of the outbreak of the Second World War, two young men travel to this remote Scottish island to conduct a survey of the birds for the government. But even in the summer months the harsh conditions, isolation and boredom make them turn inward.

One of them, John (Jack McMillan), is a proper man. And a Scotsman. The other, Robert (Tom Machell) is a crazy idealist from London. Together they develop a special bond. There's another man, Kirk (Ken Drury) who has leased the land to the government and giving them a place to stay in a deserted chapel on the island. Puritanical and in search of profit he see's their mission as a way to escape his harsh life. He also has a daughter, Ellen (Rose Wardlaw) whose withdrawn nature evolves into something else as the men continue with their work.

The cast work to keep this piece moving throughout. Observations about the wildlife in this remote outpost impact on their own behaviour. Characters become as exposed as the island's birds, to heartbreaking results.


It's an evocative production. It's as if you are in the middle of the Atlantic rather than at the back of a pub in Islington. Sound designer Christopher Preece has created a soundtrack full of bird screeches and swirling winds. Set designer Anna Lewis has created a landscape that feels battered and blown.

Presented by Atticist and directed by Jessica Lazar, Outlying Islands is at the Kings Head Theatre until 2 February.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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