★★★½

“a piece that confronts, questions and refuses to look away”

Set in Lewisham, where we are starkly reminded that 461 children currently live without a family home, Lin Coghlan’s well-crafted play about care and the care system is a quietly devastating and thought provoking piece of theatre.

Robbie (played by Joseph Clark) and Cel (Tabitha Detriot) are siblings who have grown up in different placements, different addresses and with different versions of stability, yet always manage to find their way back to one another. Cel dreams of university; Robbie longs for something simpler and more profound – the chance for them to finally live together in one place.

Jim Pope’s direction makes the most of Sophie Jump’s simple but inventive set design, where movable screens create shifting environments that mirror the instability of the siblings’ lives. Jump’s costumes extend the largely monochrome palette, with Robbie’s green standing out as a colour signalling safety, growth and the fragile hope he clings to.

There is little colour in the lives of those around them as we watch the slow motion car crash of their circumstances unfold. Robbie is growing, nearly eighteen, approaching the cliff edge where legal responsibility ends and support abruptly changes, leaving him, as well as those trying to help, with an immense challenge to navigate.

Alice Selwyn is the standout performer for me. Understated yet compelling as the overworked but deeply committed personal adviser Mrs Bosely, she brings a palpable desperation to make a broken system function for Robbie. Her performance draws out the layers and quiet heartbreak embedded in Coghlan’s script.

The rest of the cast deliver solid work, with Romeo Mika offering nimble multi role performances, including Robbie’s best, and only friend, Miko. At times I longed for a little more energy, edge and volatility to fully expose the emotional ambivalence within the characters, but the performances remain engaging and sincere.

The anthropomorphism of a young man interpreting the world through the behaviour of birds could have been explored a little more, yet Flock remains an honest, grounded portrayal shaped through workshops with those who have directly experienced the care system. As a result, it stands as a fine example of relatable, socially conscious theatre.

PlayingON’s production deserves applause for being a play about something. It’s a piece that confronts, questions and refuses to look away. It feels perfectly placed within the fringe circuit, where such experimentation and challenge should be given room to breathe. Judging by the full house at the Jack Studio, audiences are more than ready to listen.

STEFANIA LICARI: I CAN MAKE YOU ITALIAN IN 55 MINUTES

Underbelly Boulevard

★★½

“Licari is warm, personable and holds the stage with a gentle confidence”

Italian stand-up comedian Stefania Licari has earned a reputation for sell out shows at the last two Edinburgh Festival Fringes, and her performance at Underbelly Boulevard Soho, London, also drew a healthy crowd. Across just under an hour, I Can Make You Italian in 55 minutes finds Licari setting herself the ambitious task of teaching the audience how to be “more Italian,” guiding us through a sequence of comic routines that perhaps inevitably vary in sharpness and impact. Nonetheless, written and performed by Licari, it’s a playful premise delivered with charm and generosity.

The audience is eased into the atmosphere before the show even begins, with Italian themed music and a red and green lighting state complementing the white of the main wash to evoke the sounds and colours of Italy. Licari emerges onto a sparse stage and leads us through a series of cultural contrasts, particularly around social habits and the quirks of male behaviour. Some observations land well such as the British affection for jacket potatoes versus the more refined Italian palate, or the gentle ribbing of British culinary missteps with pasta.

A ‘volunteer’ from the audience, who felt like a pre-organised stooge, is brought up as a kind of comic foil to be taught how to walk and gesture “like an Italian.” It’s an engaging idea, though one that never quite develops into a fully realised set piece.

Licari draws on her own lived experience as an expat medic turned comic throughout the performance, but the transitions between stories sometimes feel abrupt; a leap from personal anecdote to a riff on Cinderella, the transitions seem merely functional. Each piece does not really feed strongly enough into the next, and that leads to a disjointedness that might be addressed as the piece develops.

Themes of love, identity and family surface throughout, yet the sudden revelation about her mother’s cancer – delivered under stark white light – felt somewhat shoehorned into the structure rather than organically earned. The thread of female empowerment is also present throughout, but the narrative strands fail to interlock with enough clarity or momentum to give the show a truly satisfying arc.

Stefani Licari is warm, personable and holds the stage with a gentle confidence. As a performer, she is softer in tone than the bold, brash persona the premise implies, but the material doesn’t always support her, and the overall energy in this performance felt lower than it needed to be. With stronger dramaturgy and more deliberate shaping of the narrative, the show could gain more cohesion and drive. As it stands, the writing feels, as Italians might put it, a little too staccato.

Tag Archives: Robert West

FLOCK

★★★½

Jack Studio Theatre

FLOCK

Jack Studio Theatre

★★★½

“a piece that confronts, questions and refuses to look away”

FLOCK

Jack Studio Theatre

Reviewed on 1st October 2026

by Robert West

Photography by Lucy Hayes

FLOCK

FLOCK

FLOCK

STEFANIA LICARI: I CAN MAKE YOU ITALIAN IN 55 MINUTES

★★½

Underbelly Boulevard

STEFANIA LICARI: I CAN MAKE YOU ITALIAN IN 55 MINUTES

Underbelly Boulevard

★★½

“Licari is warm, personable and holds the stage with a gentle confidence”