The Nova Exhibition Comes To London

A burned out car wreck, recovered from the Nova site  (c)Nova Exhibition

October 7th 2023 saw Hamas terrorists from Gaza enter Israel to murder 1,200 souls and take a further 250 hostage. At the time of the terrorist attack the Nova Music Festival, a celebration of dance and trance was in full swing just a few miles from the Gaza border.

As the sun rose on that terrible October day, the terrorists swarmed the festival massacring 413 predominantly young people and taking 44 hostages. Many hundreds more were wounded leading to the Nova Festival becoming perhaps the bloodiest of that day’s countless atrocities.

This week the Nova Music Festival Exhibition opened in central London. A remarkable tribute to that day’s victims, the exhibition  “06:29AM – The Moment Music Stood Still”, conceived and curated by artist Reut Feingold, offers a thoughtfully created recreation of aspects of both the festival itself, alongside deeply respectful displays of the day’s unimaginable barbarity.

Arriving at the exhibition, visitors are first ushered into a short movie screening describing the essence of the festival. The joy, happiness and exhilaration as the young people danced the night away is vividly recreated. As the sun rose over the Negev that morning, the carnival was to become carnage and visitors to the exhibition leave the screening room to enter what has been recreated as a typical festival campsite.

Trees and sand make up the room’s landscape, with individuals’ festival pop-up tents amidst the palms, all strewn with the messy mundanity of young people camping out for a couple of days … books, magazines, tubes of toothpaste, a backgammon set…the usual clutter. It’s a brilliant creation, for nestling within these tented collections of discarded personal trivia – all genuine artefacts, recovered from the Nova site – are video displays and mobile phone screens playing looping clips of the day’s violence in actual footage that had been recovered by the IDF from both the terrorists’ Go Pro cameras and the victims’ mobile phones. Within the clips the deceased have been treated with respect, these harrowing rolling extracts being blurred where necessary so as not to identify the victims.

A wall, lit by flickering memorial candles, displays pictures of all the victims – on another wall, images of those taken as hostages. Some of the names are familiar to us from events of the last 2 1/2 years. Above all, it is the sheer number of these beautiful young people, cut down as they danced, that is chilling. And that they were all someone’s child or sibling or parent reminds us all of how fragile and precious their lives were.

Other tableaux in the exhibition tell of the nightmare of that day – burned out car wrecks; an immaculately recreated festival bar, complete with a credit card swipe machine that we are all familiar with, only this one bears a bullet-shattered screen; and tables and tables of the victims’ shoes, sandals and clothes. To the side of the exhibition, a small room documents the rape and sexual torture that the terrorists inflicted that day. The heartbreak is overwhelming.

And yet, amidst this devastation, my visit to  “06:29AM – The Moment Music Stood Still” also offered a truly humbling glimpse of the finest in humanity. Travelling with the exhibition are a group of remarkable volunteers, each prepared to share their own experiences of the impact of what happened at Nova that day and in the months following.

Amongst the dozen or so of these noble individuals, I spoke to Taryn Thomas, a student from Stanford University in the USA and who had flown in to London from California that morning. Taryn is neither a Nova survivor nor a relative. Rather, she is an example of the power of the exhibition to effect change.

Up until 2024 Taryn had been a prominent and outspoken leader of pro-Palestinian rallies on campus. When the Nova Exhibition came to Los Angeles, the production team extended an open invitation to students to come and see it for themselves. Taryn came. She spent three hours inside and came out changed.

Taryn told me: “I was a part of the pro-Palestine encampment at Stanford University. October 7th of 2023, I was a sophomore and I think what kind of drew me to the movement was a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose.

And fast forward, one of our protests had definitely gotten out of hand and caused about $700,000 in damages. 12 students had received felonies having spray-painted disgusting things such as “Death to Israel, Death to America” And I think that was my first time thinking that I just didn’t understand how this was liberating Palestine or saving anyone. And so I took a step back from the movement because so many students were suspended. And then, months later in October of 2024, I received an email inviting non-Jewish students to visit the Nova Exhibition.

I had heard about this festival, and I went with the purpose of looking for Zionist propaganda. I went with a closed mind and I thought I knew what I was going to see. I was looking almost to validate and strengthen my position as I looked for the Zionist lies. So I went, and I saw all of my assumptions being broken. I was just completely astounded by how horrific the events were.

And this was my first time ever seeing the October 7th footage and this was like a year later.

So I went in looking for propaganda and there was none. The exhibition didn’t argue with me. It showed me kids my age being hunted and I could see myself in them and that could have been me at a music festival dancing, and then fleeing for my life the next moment.

I read the goodbye messages and the last “I love yous” and I just felt like my heart broke. One of the main things that made me open my eyes was the audio clip of the terrorist calling his dad to celebrate that he had killed 10 Jews. And these were the ‘Palestinian martyrs’? This was ‘the resistance’ that we were calling for ‘by any means necessary’? This was who we were supporting? I couldn’t rationalize and even understand the actions of what I was witnessing.”

I asked Taryn what the impact had been upon her life, of so fundamentally changing her perspective on the pro-Palestine movement?

“It’s been incredibly hard. I lost pretty much every single friend that I had. I went to Israel in 2025 and posted about it and my best friend asked, “Is this you?” And I was like, “Yeah, do you want to talk about it? ” And she immediately blocked me.

I thought there would be an argument or a fight and I was wishing that had happened, I thought I would be given a chance for a conversation. Unfortunately, the pro-Palestinian ideology has people so wrapped up in it that they attach their identity, their morals, everything. And if you dissent at all, you’re persecuted socially. It’s like a social suicide.

It started with my best friend and then it turned into my classmates who posted on their social medias that I’m a genocide apologist and calling me a spineless loser. And it was really hard because I knew them. Of course, that’s their tactic, to shame and to silence. Any dissent, or question is to risk your social life.

And I think especially for every college student, that’s your whole world. It feels existential. And so I think going through that and losing that many people, I don’t know, but I feel like for every person I lost, I gained. I was welcomed with open arms in the Jewish community in ways that I would’ve never had imagined. I was invited to Shabbat dinner at Chabad and Hillel and made two of my best friends.

I just never knew that our movement was hateful. We had JVP [Jewish Voice for Peace. A left-wing, grassroots, activist antizionist organization in the United States composed of Jews who advocate for Palestinian rights and the liberation of the Palestinian people] alongside us and so I thought this was what Jews thought. I came to realize how antisemitic our movement was and how antizionism is antisemitism.”

I asked Taryn how she thought it may be possible to enlighten more people, particularly young people, who currently hold the misguided beliefs that she had once shared?

“I think it’s going to be an uphill battle. It is sad that it took me so long, but without people welcoming me with open arms, I wouldn’t be here today. And so I think there’s a silent majority that are scared to speak up, scared to admit that they were wrong, or they made a mistake. So if we want people to be deradicalized, we need to build an off ramp and let them know it’s okay to change your mind and to have nuance”.

"06:29AM – The Moment Music Stood Still” is an astonishing and, sadly, unmissable exhibition. It stands not only as humbling documentary evidence and witness to the diabolical terrorism of Hamas on October 7th, it also frames a narrative of hope for the future. It is only in London for six weeks, but just go. If you are already familiar with the events of October 7th, still go – the exhibition will teach you more.

But even more importantly, take someone with you who has yet to learn of the horrors of that day.

The exhibition runs until 5th July 2026. You can buy tickets here

Equus - Review

Menier Chocolate Factory, London

*****

Written by Peter Shaffer

Directed by Lindsay Posner

Toby Stephens and Noah Valentine

Lindsay Posner is back in the saddle at the Menier Chocolate Factory, jockeying his cast of thoroughbreds into a stunning interpretation of Peter Shaffer’s 1973 classic.

Teenager Alan Strang (Noah Valentine) has just been committed to a psychiatric hospital after having blinded six horses at the stables where he worked. Dr Martin Dysart (Toby Stephens) is the psychiatrist tasked with unlocking the young man’s deeply damaged mind, with Shaffer’s drama offering a brilliantly structured analysis of the challenges the doctor faces.

Onstage throughout, Stephens is sensational, gradually peeling away Strange’s defences to reveal his vulnerable core that led to such a horrific attack. Not only does Dysart unravel the teenagers traumatic life, such is Shaffer’s genius that he is also forced to face his own flaws too.

Stephens may be a sensation but he is well matched by the youthful Valentine a comparative newcomer to the London stage. In a story that revolves around flawed parenting, sexual frustrations and mixed attitudes to Christianity, it is no wonder that young Strang finds solace in the company of horses. Valentine is straining at the bit as he charts his most complex character’s arc with a graphic and brave brilliance. As a double act, Stephens and Valentine offer one of the best pairings in town.

The supporting cast are all given full rein to deploy their skill, notably Colin Mace and Emma Cunniffe as Alan’s bewildered parents who nurse troubled histories of their own. Bella Aubin - another relative newcomer - puts in fine work as Jill, the stable girl attracted to Alan.

It is however the ensemble of six performers, all trained in dance and who depict the horses, that offer some of the evening’s most powerful visuals. Moses Ward and Ed Mitchell do most of the heavy lifting in carrying their riders around the stage, but their stablemates of Luke Hodkinson, Aristide Lyons, Zack Parkin and Tommi Sutton have all been brilliantly cast for their sublime strength and movement. Credit too to Movement Director (or should that be Trainer?), choreographer James Cousins, who has groomed this talented sextet into mimes of equine beauty. Paul Farnsworth’s designs and Paul Pyant’s lighting only enhance Posner’s stylish direction.

After this Menier run, the production canters down the M4 for a brief stabling at its co-producers, the Theatre Royal Bath. Expect to see it galloping into the West End soon!

Runs until 4th July, then at Theatre Royal Bath from 14th - 25th July

Photo credit Manuel Harlan

Magic - Review

Festival Theatre, Chichester

****

Written by David Haig

Directed by Lucy Bailey

Hadley Fraser hangs out in Magic

Magic is an ingenious new drama from David Haig, an actor and playwright with a talent for spotting an episode of history and then building a fictitious drama that is grounded in a fact-filled foundation. The play explores an imagined series of meeting between Harry Houdini, the acclaimed illusionist and escapologist, and Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle. The author is of course renowned for his creation of the detective Sherlock Holmes, but what is not so well known about Conan-Doyle was his belief in the world of spiritualism and seances.

The essence of Haig’s drama draws on Houdini’s mastery of trickery and ultimate cynicism – he was a man who made his fortune by skilfully deceiving his audiences via fairgrounds and flim flam – and how he deploys that skill to challenge what he believes to be the fraudulent trickery of the spiritualist mediums, who he is convinced are deceiving their clients, not via circus-style chicanery but rather, and arguably far more sinister, by preying on their emotional vulnerabilities. 

Magic is set in the 1920s when Conan-Doyle was already a widower and on his second marriage and had recently lost numerous close relatives including Kingsley, a much beloved son, to the fighting in the First World War. Haig sets out Conan-Doyle’s belief in the spiritual world as almost obsessive, with the clashes between the writer and the illusionist making for compelling theatre. There are moments in the evening when one feels that the ground is familiar, as some 30 years ago Haig wrote the play My Boy Jack that focussed on Rudyard Kipling’s grief over his only son Jack, who had been killed in the Great War. 

The evening’s physical theatre is magnificent. Hadley Fraser is Houdini, while Haig himself takes on Sir Arthur. Lucy Bailey directs with her usual flair of shocking brilliance that sees the play open to Fraser being suspended upside down while escaping from handcuffs. Fraser masters the scene spectacularly, but the visuals are striking enough to remind one of Bailey’s stunning Titus Andronicus at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2006 that left audiences fainting, such was the impact of her take on that play’s violence.

 

Aside from Fraser wowing the Chichester audience with his immaculate 6-pack, ( This reviewer jealous? Never! ) his take on the escapologist is passionate and convincing. Equally, Haig’s interpretation of the complicated author desperately seeking a connection with his dead son is deeply moving. There is strong work too from Jenna Augen and Claire Price as the spouses Bess Houdini and Jean Conan-Doyle respectively and a fabulous cameo from Jade Williams as Mina Crandon, a famed medium of her time, who Houdini tries to expose. 

The tone of the evening is classy as Bailey and her designer Joanna Parker create ‘just the right level’ of tawdry in the dancing troupe that supports Houdini’s vaudeville turns. The special effects and illusions are fun too – this could almost be a family show if the subject material wasn’t so troublingly dark.

Spellbinding theatre.

Runs until 16th May

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

The Price - Review

Marylebone Theatre, London

****

Written by Arthur Miller

Directed by Jonathan Munby

Henry Goodman

Arthur Miller’s The Price, now playing at the Marylebone Theatre is a timely reminder of the writer’s ability to dissect both the human condition and the American Dream. As Victor Franz, a cop, meets up with Gregory Solomon, a furniture appraiser in his dead father’s house, he is unexpectedly joined by his brother Walter, a successful doctor. Solomon is there to give Victor (and Walter) a price for the building’s contents, but as Miller’s narrative unfolds and we learn of the resentments and envious complications that simmer between the brothers (where Victor had previously devoted much time caring for his dying father, as Walter had been more estranged towards his family), it becomes clear that the prices Miller seeks to explore are more than just monetary.

Elliot Cowan and John Hopkins are respectively Victor and Walter, but it is in Henry Goodman’s take on Solomon that this production truly takes flight. Miller’s language is acutely New York Jewish in its style, with Goodman savouring every word, delivering his words with an immaculate understanding of the pauses and emphases that each sentence demands. Miller’s observations are wry and Solomon is gifted some sublime wisecracks and perceptive analyses to inject into the conversation from time to time. Under Goodman’s masterful delivery, each gag lands perfectly – the audience chuckling at the accuracy of the actor’s interpretation.

Faye Castelow plays Victor’s wife Esther, in a role that adds little heft to the narrative. Castelow’s performance is fine, but the dialog and reactions given to her frequently sound superficial and cliched.   

Jonathan Munby directs with sensitivity, but ultimately The Price is not Miller’s finest work. The play’s second act in particular as the brothers’ verbally spar, each line revealing yet another twist in their father’s decline, feels more like an emotional whodunnit rather than the critique of wealth, poverty and jealousy that Miller has sought to explore.

The Price may not sit alongside Miller’s Death of A Salesman or All My Sons, as a seminal work of 20th century American literature – but it is nonetheless compelling theatre.

Runs until 7th June

Photo credit: Mark Senior

In The Print - Review

King's Head Theatre, London

*****

Written by Robert Kahn and Tom Salinsky

Directed by Josh Roche

Alan Cox and Claudia Jolly

Rarely are history, politics and drama fused so perfectly as in In The Print, currently playing at the King’s Head Theatre. The title draws on the phrase, used for years, by workers in the print rooms of the newspaper industry to describe their employment. 

Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky’s play is set at the time of the 1986 decision by Rupert Murdoch’s News International corporation to shift the printing of its four titles from the labour-intensive presses of the central London, to a modern computerised print factory in Wapping in the city’s east end. Brenda Dean was the leader of SOGAT, the major print workers’ trade union of the time, with the genius of this story being its creation of fictional tableaux based around historical facts, and all performed to perfection.

The play demands some context, with In The Print’s programme helpfully including a description of the times:

“The Fleet Street print unions - SOGAT and the National Graphical Association, the NGA – held the upper hand. Newspaper operations were hugely inefficient, with old-fashioned hot metal presses which kept breaking down, and ancient agreements with the unions about which type of worker did which job. Print workers were remarkably well-paid, and enjoyed short hours which enabled them to hold second jobs such as driving cabs. Fleet Street print-rooms were rife with legendary Spanish Practices' - overmanning, cash payments, and non-existent ghost workers with names such as Donald Duck.”

Alan Cox plays Murdoch, with Claudia Jolly as Dean. (A nod here to Simon Money, the production’s dialect coach, who has honed Cox’s required Australian accent to perfection.) Both lead performers are electrifying in their interpretations - Cox depicting Murdoch’s ruthless singleness of purpose brilliantly, as Jolly captures the agonies of Dean desperately trying to defend the livelihoods of her members while having ultimately to surrender her fight to the march of technology and progress.

Jolly and Cox are ably supported by Alasdair Harvey, Georgia Landers, Jonathan Jaynes and Russell Bentley who between them convey a raft of recognisable supporting characters of the era ranging from union officials through to Murdoch’s editors. Harvey’s Andrew Neil (The Sunday Times) and Bentley’s Kelvin MacKenzie (The Sun) are particularly enjoyable cameos. Josh Roche’s direction is deftly nuanced, in particular tracing Jolly’s journey that sees Brenda Dean transition from defiance to defeat. 

It is sharp writing that packs so much well constructed content into this one-act, 90-minute gem. Older theatregoers will savour the well constructed return to the nation’s febrile industrial relations scene under Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. Younger audiences will simply enjoy this rather exquisite history lesson.

Runs until 3rd May

Photo credit: Charlie Flint

The North - Review

****

Written & directed by Bart Schrijver

In a love letter to the Scottish Highlands, Bart Schrijver’s The North follows two friends trekking the West Highland Way and the Cape Wrath Trail, reliving a journey they had made some 10 years previously.

Not just a beautifully photographed narrative, The North is a perceptive comment on the evolution of a friendship and its underlying complexities. Navigating not only the 350 miles of stunning landscapes, Lluis (Carles Pulido) and Chris (Bart Harder) face the challenges of trust and honesty between themselves, as well as an ongoing battle to keep the outside world, including incoming phone calls from the office, at bay. 

It’s a gritty yet touching tale. Brief interjections from other hikers that the pair encounter on their trek move the story along. Filmed amongst the raw beauty of the Scottish elements: sunshine, rain and wind, the challenges facing Lluis and Chris become almost tangible.

A thoughtful, beautiful movie.

In cinemas from 24 April

Avenue Q - Review

Shaftesbury Theatre, London

*****

Book by Jeff Whitty

Music & lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx

Directed by Jason Moore

Emily Benjamin, Charlie McCullagh and Meg Hateley

LP Hartley famously wrote that “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” Never has this been more true than in musical theatre, where today marks 20 years since Avenue Q first opened in London. With its brilliantly scripted and piercing satire puncturing many of today’s pretentious pomposities, one has to reflect that this show would never be written today, our modern lyricists lacking both the wit and the temple-tumbling cojones of Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx. Quite simply, Avenue Q returns to reclaim its title as one of the funniest shows in town.

Who knew that this inspired parody of Sesame Street would prove so timeless? Lopez and Marx’s songs may drip with an inspired cynicism - but what makes this show really soar is that the brilliantly animated puppets convey stories of powerfully poignant humanity - their furry appearances belying beating and sometimes broken, hearts of gold.

Minorities are mercilessly mocked, the cruelty of this libretto proving a slap in the face to today’s relentlessly entitled generations. But as with the very best of clowns, when they ridicule our society, they hold a mirror to us all and as some of the evening’s monstrous animations ultimately find paths towards love, redemption and a joyously happy ending, they make us shed tears of both hilarity and also profound joy. It is a rare show can hit both of those emotional sweet-spots simultaneously.

Jason Moore, who directed the show to glory both on Broadway and in London all those years ago, returns to helm this revival with a neat touch seeing him assisted by Julie Atherton who back in the day created Kate Monster /Lucy The Slut  in the show’s London premiere.

This time around Emily Benjamin is simply magnificent as Kate/Lucy, at times delivering both sides of her characters’ deliciously barbed exchanges. Benjamin is matched by the equally talented Noah Harrison who is fabulous as the preppy Princeton and investment banker Rod, perpetually struggling with his sexuality. These two performers have both a physical presence and a vocal genius that delivers passion in their puppetry. As with all good puppetry, our focus is on their respective animated characters - but sneak a glimpse at their (human) faces as they perform, and the integrity and commitment of their performances is just joyous.

Benjamin and Harrison may be doing most of the narrative’s heavy lifting, but this show is truly an ensemble piece. Equally stunning are Charlie McCullagh’s hilarious Trekkie Monster and (Frank Oz soundalike) Nicky, Amelia Kinu Muus is an horrifically blunt Japanese therapist Christmas Eve, Oliver Jacobson is her Jewish husband Brian, as  Dionne Ward-Anderson steps up as Gary, the show’s only black character. Amidst the mayhem, Meg Hateley silently animates other characters that drive the story. The energy across this entire company is relentless and with pinpoint timing, all of the show’s gags make perfect touchdowns. 

There’s a classy creative crew too. Ben Holder directs his five-piece band to make fine work of the deeply varied score. Ebony Molina’s choreography is tight, Anna Louizos’s (also ex-Broadway) scenic design is a treat, enhanced by Tim Lufkin's nifty lighting plots.

Blink and you’ll miss them but there are some barely perceptible script-tweaks that bring the show into the modern era. The song Mix Tape is enhanced with a ‘playlist’, as ChatGPT gets a brief mention too. But overall, Avenue Q remains 99.9% true to its brilliant, original self.

They don’t write ‘em like this any more – and more’s the pity for that. Only here for the summer, take a stroll down Avenue Q for a night of outrageous comedy and brutal social comment. Musical theatre does not get better than this!

Booking until 29th August

Photo credit: Matt Crockett