@sohoplace

A love letter to theatre. A love letter to Philip Glass. A meditation on creativity and Taoism. There isn’t really a way to describe this show without making it sound naff or dull.But that’s to underestimate the great Phelim McDermott who, with his company Improbable, has made some of the most extraordinary work of the last couple of decades, as well as West End hits like My Neighbour Totoro and big operas like Philip Glass's epic Akhnaten. That last one is important here, because it’s where McDermott – long a Glass lover – finally met his idol.Tao of Glass – which premiered in Manchester in 2019 – starts with McDermott remembering what he calls the ‘ghosts of theatre’ that live within him: the memories of seeing Laurence Olivier, Albert Finney.Then he turns this show into a kind of ghost too. McDermott was meant to work with Glass on an adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen, but Sendak died before it could happen. ‘There was going to be puppeteers…musicians’, says McDermott, his delivery style TED talk meets CBBC presenter with a dash of Ken Campbell eccentricity thrown in.As he speaks, puppeteers and musicians appear. Then he tells us about a show he was meant to see as a little boy – Billy’s Wonderful Kettle – until he fell ill and couldn’t go. It became an idealised production in his head. Cue the kettle…So we’ve got a show he didn’t see and a show he didn’t make, being made up for here with tissue paper, sellotape, puppets and music. And what a making...

The first major West End revival of Edward Albee’s classic play in a decade has a cast to die for, as Billy Crudup and Gillian Anderson play the iconically awful George and Martha, an acidic middle aged couple who invite George’s young colleague Nick and his wife Honey over for a bizarre evening of weird and problematic game playing. And @sohoplace is a wonderfully intimate venue to watch the horrors unfold. The catch is that the show is heavily sold out, though at time of writing there were a decent number of more expensive tickets available across the run. The great Marianne Elliott will direct a cast that’s rounded out by Josh Dylan as Nick, and Phoebe Horn as Honey.