Little Death Club is a cabaret of the late night variety, a kind of seductive circus of misfits and certainly not for the prudish.

Bernie Dieter and the Band in Little Death Club at Underbelly Festival Southbank - Photo: Alistair Veryard Photography

Introduced by the catsuit and feathers-wearing Bernie Dieter the club, we are told, is all about looking up from our phones, really seeing each other and throwing inhibitions to one side.

To demonstrate she heads into the audience to be stroked and touched, in a cringe-a-long experience that perhaps goes on a bit longer than its entertainment value justifies.

Bernie reappears between acts with bawdy songs - one is themed around a dick pic she was sent (which she shares). 

Fighter's message is punchy and it's an important story to be told.

 Libby Liburd and David Schaal in Fighter. Photo: (c) Alex Brenner

Set in a boxing gym, Libby Liburd's play Fighter opens with girls and boys (from Fight for Peace's Newham Academy) training alongside each other.

The year projected on the wall at the back of the stage slowly dials back to 1998 and as it does the girls slip away. When single mum Lee (Libby Liburd) enters the gym, she is stepping into a man's world.

At this point in time, women have only been allowed to box as amateurs in the UK for two years and Tommy (David Schaal), who owns the gym, says he only trains men. 

He points Lee in the direction of the nail bar down the road.

"You'll get the drama of a fight night coupled with the laughter of a comedy night."

Fighter (Stratford Circus Arts) is the story of a single mum who decides to take up boxing. Set in a boxing gym with cast that includes young boxers, I asked writer/performer Libby Liburd and performer Cathy Tyson about the inspiration behind the play and what it's like to perform.

Libby Liburd. Photo by Jon Holloway

Tell us a bit about Fighter and what inspired you to write the play?

Libby Liburd: Fighter is the story of Lee, who finds herself plunged into the world of boxing, and through finding herself in a world that doesn't yet embrace women in the ring, she finds her 'happy place' where she feels she belongs and is alive.

It's about literal and figurative fights and changing through challenge. Most of the show is set in 1998, which was super important for me as the late 90's was the era when women in Britain were finally able to fight.

Up until 1996, there was a ban on women boxing in the Amateurs and it was only in 1998 that the first professional women boxers were licensed in Britain.

So, that research, my own experiences as a boxer and conversations with our Ambassador Cathy Brown (the 2nd ever licensed Pro female boxer in the UK) inspired the story of Lee and her journey.

Why is a story like this important and why now?

Libby: I think theatre generally should tell exciting and unheard stories. Certainly, I think we're used to seeing boxing as an inspiration for theatre, but I've never seen the kind of story I'm telling in Fighter.

It's elevating themes of motherhood and womanhood but the story of courage, resilience and overcoming obstacles is universal. It's a story that everyone can relate to whilst at the same time, exposing a truth and aspects of history that we might not be aware of.

All My Sons is a gripping play, a slowly unravelling emotional thriller with masterclass performances

Colin Morgan's Chris Keller has angry tears rolling down his face.

He's just discovered the truth about someone he holds dear, how he has lived with a lie - or was it, deep down, denial?. It is almost too much to bare adding to multiple layers of guilt he already feels.

Chris Keller in Arthur Miller's All My Son's feels like a character and performance Colin Morgan was destined to give and he gets to perform it alongside the exceptional talent of Hollywood giants Sally Field and Bill Pullman.

Secrets and lies

He is a complex character - as are all the Kellers - in a play about secrets, the lies we tell ourselves and in which Miller questions the price of the American Dream.

It is a couple of years after the war and Chris is working for his affable, humorous, peacekeeping dad Joe (Pullman) at his factory.

Top Girls is a curious play, a mixture of moments that had me mentally punching the air, feeling angry and a little frustrated.

Caryl Churchill's 1982 play Top Girls has currency today but the shoulder pads and back-combed hair aren't the only echoes of the period in which it was written. 

Its themes of women's role in society, their career options, the expectations, sacrifices and prejudices have echoes in today's exposure of the gender pay gap and lack of representation at board level.

A restaurant dinner with a fantasy guest list opens the play, the singularity of which is only revealed as the story progresses. 

It is hosted by Marlene (Katherine Kingsley) who is celebrating a promotion to a senior position at a recruitment agency.

She is joined for dinner by a collection of notable but perhaps unfamiliar women from history and folklore.

A German Life subtly asks important questions about culpability and responsibility.

When Maggie Smith heads to the stage it is undoubtedly a big draw but I think the play, A German Life, is equally worthy of the attention.

I've long been fascinated with stories from the Second World War told from non-traditional perspectives.

A German Life is based on the life of Brunhilde Pomsel who was one of Goebbels secretaries. 

Smith's Hilde sits at a kitchen table, glasses in her hand and tells us about her life and how she came to be working at the Reich's propaganda ministry at the end of the war - something for which she spent five years in prison.

Telling forgotten details?

She tells us up front that she doesn't remember much - is it telling where she can recall details and where she cannot?

It is an exceptional story of someone extraordinary in their ordinariness.

My first trip to New York, prompted by Ben Whishaw making his Broadway debut was pre-Rev Stan's Theatre blog (yes there was a time).

He was in The Pride at Lucille Lortel Theatre with Andrea Riseborough and Hugh Dancy and there was an encounter with Ben Whishaw afterwards which I wrote about on my old blog.

Having hinted at said encounter in a post on Rev Stan's Theatre Facebook page (check it out/like etc) I've been asked for the story (link to the original post is here).

This has been mildly edited because I know better now:

Yesterday was another mammoth walkathon clocking up about 16km (pedometer decided to reset itself halfway through the day). Did the International Center for Photography in the morning then walked down to the Empire State Building and onto the Flat Iron Building which has to be my favourite of everything I have seen.

Emma Dennis-Edwards has created a character that gets under your skin - you laugh with her, feel for her and desperately want someone to ask the right questions and be there for her.

Funeral Flowers by Emma Dennis-Edwards. Photo: Kofi Dwaah.

Angelique's boyfriend Micky is in trouble with his gang leader and wants her to help him out - if she doesn't he says she'll be making his funeral flowers.

The 17-year-old at the centre of  Emma Dennis-Edwards' play is living with a carer while her mum is in prison, learning floristry at college and dreams of setting up her own business.

A cascade of flowers down the back wall of the performance space together with buckets of flowers give the theatre a hint of that wonderful florist's scent and Angelique a place to escape the outside world.

It is a superb play and one that can be cogitated over and debated but which in a perverse, bloody way is also highly entertaining.

Cyprus Avenue at the Royal Court has long finished its run but it's such an extraordinary play that I wanted to get some thoughts down as I didn't get a chance to review it at the time.

It's not an easy piece to describe but if I was pinned down I'd say it is an absurdist, surreal, existential drama and pitch black comedy set in Northern Ireland.

Unionist Eric (Stephen Rea) thinks his baby granddaughter looks like Gerry Adams which sparks an intense internal debate about who he is.

Therapy session and flashbacks

The story and the nature of his inner turmoil unfold during a therapy session with a black psychologist Bridget (Ronkę Adékoluęjo) with 'flashbacks' to key events.

Eric begins to unravel questioning his beliefs, his Britishness and history, his unionism and much more besides.

Sounds Like Chaos is a youth theatre group co-founded by Roisin Feeny and Gemma Rowan and their latest piece, Wow Everything Is Amazing, imagines the digital world in 50 years time.

Roisin Feeny

I spoke to Roisin about the inspiration behind the piece, the use of multi-media and whether theatres should embrace digital media more.

Tell us a bit about Wow Everything Is Amazing and what inspired it? 

Wow Everything Is Amazing is a sci-fi hallucinatory madness set in the church of the future.

In this new world, sermons are stored on servers, and data has replaced deities.

Lead by our new AI leader, Godhead, it asks the congregation to trust in progress to be saved, as the boundaries between humans and tech become ever-more blurred.

The story is told through music, film and movement in an explosion of energy from the young performers.

There is an underlying discomfort about who is represented in this new world, with ideas around race and gender embedded in the fabric of the piece, in part through experimentation with audio description