The Arts Review​

Gleek of the Week by Conor Burke. Image Fnati.c.ph **** Glee. A jukebox musical, TV series that ran from 2009 to 2015 promoting compassion, inclusion and acceptance. Then there's glee, described as opening yourself up to joy. Finally, twee, a sugar-rush sentimentality trying to pass as heart. Evoking the hugely popular "aw" response, as when looking at a doe-eyed puppy shivering in the rain, begging you to love him. All three in evidence in Conor Burke's suspiciously autobiog

The Act of Existing by Croí Glan. Image uncredited ** Choreography gives way to durational performance art in Croí Glan's The Act of Existing, choreographed by Philip Connaughton. Its advertised fifty minutes running well over seventy. It's not the vomiting, the spewing, the spitting, or the drooling that's the problem. We've seen all that before. It's not even its playful cursing at the audience or watching the cast waterboarding each other with milk. No, the problem is its

Mercurial by Rosaleen Cox. Image Julia Salkin **** It could be a sexual role-play. It could be a Tinder date. It could be a Tinder sexual role-play date. Whatever it is, this one-night stand looks like it’s been stood up. Two anxious people arguing about sex whilst not actually having any. Meanwhile, an apocalyptic din regularly crashes from outside the bedroom. In Rosaleen Cox's sexually charged Mercurial, the charge might be weak, but a flurry of comic complications proves