THE SHOP FOR MORTALS AND ALL FOOLS

The Shop for Mortals and all Fools

★★★★

“a hair-raising, hypnotic, and hellish ride”

As autumn’s shadows lengthen and the chill starts to bite, step into the enigmatic ‘Shop For Mortals And All Fools’, a one-woman show where magic stirs, reality distorts, and every moment defies the ordinary.

As one of the select few invited to enter, you’re greeted by a mysterious woman. In her antique atrium redolent with incense and intrigue, she hands you an aged scrap of paper containing instructions to seek the item holding ‘the secret’ to the story. Then, almost wordlessly, you are ushered down a dark slope, the smell of burnt sage and sweet decay stinging your nostrils. A dimly lit room emerges, crammed with relics nestled amongst branches, leaves, clothes and furniture. Your sense of time and space falls away. Eight ‘artefacts’ emerge with cryptically worded legends hinting all is not what it seems. Then the mysterious woman returns… and a wild, thrilling and unsettling story unfolds, ripping reality away and immersing you in an orgiastic tale of desire and betrayal.

Created by Vinicius Salles with Culture Croydon and Stanley Arts, this modern, one-woman retelling of Euripides’ Bacchae is entirely from Agave’s – or in this version, Agatha’s – perspective. The female lens reclaims the narrative and keeps you off-balance through its unreliable recitation. It grippingly captures Agatha’s madness and delusion, drawing you unwillingly into an alternate reality and forcing you to question everything around you. It gradually builds to a powerful climax before leaving you wondering what just happened – and whether Agatha’s experience is in any way real.

Directed by Vinicius Salles, expect powerful physical theatre throughout, with sinuous slides, crips contortions, and preternatural poses embellishing the dialogue and heightening the otherworldly. Agatha’s slow unravelling is expertly accentuated by the gradual disrobing of her schoolmarmish costume, transforming into a dishevelled dryad before our very eyes. Once we get going, the pacing is exceptional, shifting gears from deliberately stilted, to devilishly driving, to carelessly careening towards the tragic climax.

Though there are some facets which work less well. The ‘immersive’ elements are limited to a few audience interactions and the final choosing of the ‘secret’, which, unless you’re the lucky recipient of the ‘gift’, feels a little tacked on after everyone else is immediately ejected from the space. The initial perusal time is too long, mystery fading as people start to mill around aimlessly, wondering whether to treat this like an escape room.

The accompanying soundscape is fantastic, made up of eery noises, creepy music and disembodied voices. The seamless use of live reverb further distorts reality and makes the somewhat claustrophobic space feel impossibly cavernous at points. This combination of sound, action and movement feels more akin to a bewitched ballet and is breathtaking to behold.

The design is deliciously mysterious from the start, with cryptic instructions guiding you to the obscure location. Once inside, it captures the occult with low lighting, billowing incense, a temporally disjointed set, and intruding foliage. An array of kitsch lamps become part of the action in places. The artefacts feel very witchy, their legends defying gender norms. However, the small text and very low lighting make them challenging to read and the audience benefits from perusing them in advance as recommended.

Emily Mytton’s Agatha is spellbinding, transforming from restless recluse to gloriously unhinged goddess. She transcends her stuttering mortal form, achieving undeniable omnipotence, daring you to meet her gaze and forcing you to rethink every assumption. Her assured yet volatile movements disorientate, drawing you in, pushing you away and sometimes provoking disgust. It’s truly a goosebump-inducing performance once it gets going, showcasing breathtaking range and delivery.

Come test your mettle in ‘The Shop For Mortals And All Fools’, a hair-raising, hypnotic, and hellish ride. It perhaps feels like a piece in two parts – the shop and the story – but it’s worth suspending your disbelief to experience a night like no other.

THE SHOP FOR MORTALS AND ALL FOOLS

The Shop for Mortals and all Fools

Reviewed on 18th September 2025

by Hannah Bothelton

Photography by James Lawson

Previously reviewed by Hannah:

THE SHOP FOR MORTALS AND ALL FOOLS | ★★★★ | COLAB TOWER | September 2025

BROWN GIRL NOISE | ★★★½ | RIVERSIDE STUDIOS | September 2025

THE TRUTH ABOUT BLAYDS | ★★★ | FINBOROUGH THEATRE | September 2025

COW | DEER | ★★★★★ | ROYAL COURT | September 2025

SEAGULL: TRUE STORY | ★★★★★ | MARYLEBONE THEATRE | September 2025

SWAG AGE | ★★★★ | GILLIAN LYNNE THEATRE | September 2025

HERE AND NOW | ★★★★ | MANCHESTER OPERA HOUSE | September 2025

EMERALD STORM | ★★★★ | EMERALD THEATRE | September 2025

THE PITCHFORK DISNEY | ★★★★★ | KING’S HEAD THEATRE | September 2025

INTERVIEW | ★★★ | RIVERSIDE STUDIOS | August 2025

THE SHOP FOR MORTALS

★★★★

“the dialogue is whip smart – intelligently written and delivered in a natural manner that draws plenty of unexpected laughs”

Hampstead Theatre’s ambitious revival of Tom Stoppard’s Rock ’n’ Roll follows the intersecting lives of Jan and Max, a Czech PhD student at Cambridge and his Marxist professor. Starting in 1968 with the Prague Spring and closing just after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, it covers vast ground, temporally and thematically, but primarily examines the socio-political challenges of Czechoslovakia as a satellite state of the Soviet Union through Jan and Max’s diverging perspectives. It’s pretty cerebral, not least because the academic discussions on Marxism are often only given respite by academic discussions on Sappho, but there is balance to be had with emotive love stories interwoven throughout.

There’s a lot to unpack, whether Czech independence is familiar to you or not. The script is densely filled with characters, storylines and dialogue covered at such a cantering pace it can be difficult to keep up. Jumps forward in time require heavy exposition to make sense of when and where we are. But the dialogue is whip smart – intelligently written and delivered in a natural manner that draws plenty of unexpected laughs.

Stoppard describes this play as a love story primarily between Jan and Rock and Roll music. Jacob Fortune-Lloyd as Jan is sweetly enamoured by the Velvet Underground and Nico, Pink Floyd, and the Rolling Stones – taking just a suitcase of records with him back from Cambridge to Prague in ‘68. Director Nina Raine brings this to life in the staging, blasting the familiar tunes as the scenes change and using Brenock O’Connor as an ethereal Syd Barrett to hop across the stage like the spirit of rock and roll.

“a timely revival from one of British theatre’s greatest playwrights”

It’s Jan’s singular fixation with Czech rockers Plastic People of the Universe that drive him from youthful idealism towards dissidence for the ruling regime. Almost every scene at times is peppered with ‘plastic people’. His eventual criticism of the communist regime puts him at odds with the fearsome Max. Nathaniel Parker’s Max feels intensely unlikable – an old man stuck in his ways, unbudgeable in his convictions. Czech independence from soviet influence feels viscerally modern at the current moment with Ukraine at war for the right to self determination. Max’s dogmatic insistence in the preeminence of communism has added resonance now.

These intellectual battles are expertly balanced against emotional ones. Nancy Carroll as Eleanor, gives an indelibly powerful performance as Max’s equally accomplished wife whose specialism in sapphic poetry is at odds with the rationalism of her partner. When she talks of Sappho writing of an un-mechanical man you can’t help but think she is imagining the very opposite of her husband. It’s clever therefore that in Act II Carroll plays Esme, Eleanor and Max’s daughter, who harbours a lifelong attraction to the more emotional Jan.

Set in traverse, it is never noticeable that the cast are playing to the audience on both sides. The large stage is fulsomely decked out by Anna Reid as the grand interior of a Cambridge college suitable for a professor of rank just as well as a poky Prague flat.

Rock ’n’ Roll is a timely revival from one of British theatre’s greatest playwrights. Whether you’re a Syd Barrett super fan or Marxist intellectual there will be plenty to mull over long after the final tableau.

THE SHOP FOR MORTALS AND ALL FOOLS

The Shop for Mortals and all Fools

★★★★

“a hair-raising, hypnotic, and hellish ride”

THE SHOP FOR MORTALS AND ALL FOOLS

The Shop for Mortals and all Fools

Reviewed on 18th September 2025

by Hannah Bothelton

Photography by James Lawson

Previously reviewed by Hannah:

THE SHOP FOR MORTALS

THE SHOP FOR MORTALS

THE SHOP FOR MORTALS

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL at Hampstead Theatre

★★★★

“the dialogue is whip smart – intelligently written and delivered in a natural manner that draws plenty of unexpected laughs”

“a timely revival from one of British theatre’s greatest playwrights”

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL at Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed on 12th December 2023

by Amber Woodward

Photography by Manuel Harlan

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Rock ‘n’ Roll

Rock ‘n’ Roll

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