Theatre review: The Hungry Ghost

What does a monologue for two people look like? In Mei Leng Yew's debut play The Hungry Ghost Mei Mac plays the Girl, a character in her twenties trying to figure out how to balance her need for independence with the demands of her family and her Chinese heritage. She's recently moved out of her parents' home to move in with her girlfriend of three months, Naomi, except she's not told her parents that: Every morning she tells Naomi she's going to pick up more of her stuff, before creeping into the house to pretend she's been sleeping there all night. In the middle of all this upheaval she forgets her mother's warning that it's the Chinese month when ghosts roam the earth, and picks up a coin from the street - a trap laid by a ghost (Isabella Wei) who latches onto her, hanging around in the background at first but increasingly possessing and controlling her body.

Theatre review: Dracula (Lyric Hammersmith)

We've already had a camp comedy version this year, a starry monologue version is coming to the West End in 2026, and in between the two we get the feminist version of Bram Stoker's Dracula courtesy of Morgan Lloyd Malcolm at the Lyric Hammersmith. Lloyd Malcolm's premise is that the original novel's story hinges on a couple of memorable women, but does tend to sideline what they actually think or say about the gothic horror story they've found themselves in, in favour of the men presenting themselves as heroes who save the day. Mina (Umi Myers) here becomes the narrator in a framing device that keeps breaking wide open: She tells us she's the sole survivor of the original story, touring the world with this cautionary stage show in which her troupe of actors play all the other roles.

Theatre review: untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play

Arriving on the Young Vic stage in a blaze of chaos to match the flurry of asterisks in its title, Kimber Lee's untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play is an Asian-American actress' equal parts angry, exhausted and exasperated look at the stereotypes around East Asian women that have persisted in Western art for at least a century, and one story in particular that won't go away. And although the version hiding in plain sight in the title is the one that's most notoriously caused controversy (especially on Broadway,) Lee's metatheatrical version of the story takes us back to the original, and walks us through Puccini's tragic opera Madama Butterfly. An ebullient narrator (Rochelle Rose) breathlessly takes us through the tale of Kim (Mei Mac,) a Japanese peasant girl whose mother (Lourdes Faberes) convinces her the way ahead is to seduce and marry an American sailor.

Theatre review: My Neighbour Totoro

Hayao Miyazaki's 1988 cartoon My Neighbour Totoro is a hugely beloved film that's totally embedded in Japanese culture, but the popularity of Studio Ghibli films worldwide means any new adaptation has the potential to be a hit anywhere - something the RSC's stage version had already proved to an extent before it opened, with record-breaking advance ticket sales at the Barbican. It still had to live up to those expectations of course, and this Japanese-British co-production sets out the "British" side of that deal from the start, with a visual gag correcting the spelling of "Neighbour" from the American dub of the film. Like the titular massive furry bear/rabbit/owl... thing itself, Tom Morton-Smith's adaptation has to be huge and unwieldy, utterly bizarre, a little bit creepy but strangely lovable. No pressure.