AVENUE Q at Bristol Hippodrome

Online reviews for this show range from ‘I have been to see Avenue Q three times and STILL came out desperate to see it again,’ to ‘Favourite moment: Leaving at interval.’ While not quite falling into the second category, I have to admit it failed to appeal . . . Yes there were some catchy, quite witty if moralistic songs but the whole thing relied heavily on our remembered love of puppetry classics such as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, and that’s where it fell down for me.

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REEL LIFE at the Ustinov Studio, Bath

I’m always encouraged and delighted when a writer finds some fresh way of getting their ideas across, some novel way to use the empty space and offer the patient audience a new key to somebody else’s world. Alys Metcalf’s new offering is a stride in the right direction . . . The scene is a small riverside jetty where Jo, a writer and recovering cancer patient, is trying to teach herself to fish . . .

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THE HOURS BEFORE WE WAKE at the Wardrobe, Bristol

Tremolo Theatre’s The Hours Before We Wake is a little gem of a show, multi-faceted and polished to perfection. It begins in balletic slow-motion, with a young man swimming in dangerous waters. After evading snarling monsters he triumphantly dons a superhero cape and… wakes up. It is 2091 and almost all is well in Ian’s world . . .

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THE MARKED at the Everyman Studio, Cheltenham

I saw Theatre Témoin’s last piece at the Everyman Studio, The Fantasist, two years ago and rated it very highly. Their current offering, a devised play entitled The Marked, is presented as a work in progress and, as I understand it, has been developed in the Everyman Studio and previously at the Camden People’s Theatre in London.

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MMM HMMM at the Ustinov Studio, Bath

Like a newly anointed politician smartened up for public consumption the show has had a makeover since its first iteration at the Wardrobe Theatre, prior to an outing at Edinburgh. Some glitzy shoes and smart designer bag-dresses have allowed the show entrance into polite society. The concept does the rest: what starts as a kind of musical/theatrical joke soon becomes hypnotic. Like any worthy art it creates its own world the exploration of which gives us new insight into our own.

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THE PERFECT MURDER at the Everyman, Cheltenham

The plot takes us behind the suburban closed doors of unhappily married couple Victor and Joan Smiley whose loathing for each other is convincingly demonstrated by a good half hour of bickering at the start of the proceedings. Smiley by name, but sadly, not by nature. Victor finds solace in regular visits to a Croatian tart (or sex worker as I believe they are now called) nicely played by Simona Armstrong. In fact Victor is quite smitten with Kamila and plans to murder his wife and run off with her.

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