Inspired by Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Netherlandish Proverbs, Belle Bao’s Inverted Realm uses physical performance, surreal imagery and simple stagecraft to reflect a businessman’s greed, ambition and power back at him, raising questions about capitalism, ownership and what we call “fair”.

Still finding its shape as a work-in-progress, Momma’s Got a Brand New Toy Kitchen channels Bex Turner’s childhood memories, neurodivergent and autistic experience, and surreal comic voice through a highly physical stand-up performance. Her energy, personality and openness are clear, but a small audience, uneven interactive material and a bare-bones production leave the show feeling underdeveloped. The material is there; what it now needs is a clearer structure and stronger directorial and technical support.

Beginning with a cup of tea placed directly in the audience’s hands, The Sediments of Who We Are turns tasting, scent, waiting and movement into part of the performance itself. Through five performers’ personal relationships with tea, the production explores memory, migration, home and cultural identity as things continually steeped and blended over time, making its ideas tangible through the audience’s own sensory experience.

An investigative documentary performance centred on the death of Dabai, a captive beluga whale, How Do You Bury A Whale? uses testimony, sound, movement, video, archival material and audience participation to examine the relationship between spectatorship and captivity, returning an easily forgotten life to public memory while leaving room for its methods of investigation and verification to be developed more fully.

A one-hour Camden Fringe musical that turns a simple and predictable custody-battle story into an energetic piece of theatre through distinctly British comedy, a 1980s-pop-inspired score and a strong nine-person ensemble, while leaving room for Donna and Rick’s relationship to be developed further in a longer version.

Adapted from the 2014 film, the stage musical Pride revisits the real alliance between LGSM activists and striking miners during the 1984 miners’ strike. Flynn Ng reflects on the production’s emotional power, its transition from screen to stage, and the lingering question of whether the solidarity it celebrates belongs only to the past.

Written and performed by Nicole Abraham and directed by Toby Clarke, Punch Me Then places the audience inside English teacher Lila’s classroom, where a lesson confronting misogyny gradually collides with trauma she has tried to suppress. Abraham moves vividly between teacher and pupils, while the decision to seat audience members as part of the class blurs the boundary between performer, participant and observer, asking how much responsibility education can realistically carry for wider social change.

Written and directed by Diego Beares and performed by Alba Campayo, Los años maravillosos: Archive, Image and Collapse returns to a real 1971 archive in which a young Uruguayan model speaks about the future she imagined for herself. Language, image and body repeat, fracture and collapse as the work moves between Montevideo and London under the shadow of Diana Spencer, exploring memory, identity and the futures that never arrived. Campayo’s poetic physical performance gives this archival encounter a vivid temporary body in the present.

Written by Dongmeng Chen, Chicken Dropping begins with the apparently orderly home of Yifei and Ming and a feud among their neighbours’ chickens, gradually turning breakfast, eggs and a final bowl of soup into symbols of profit, responsibility and control. Directed by Zhaoyi Ying, with performances by Clarissa Liaw and Tristen ZiJuin, the absurdist comedy uses one kitchen to examine spectatorship, privilege and complicity as distant violence enters everyday life.

Written and performed by Antonia Chammas, Maybe Tomorrow follows Lebanese sisters Yara and Mina as the 2019 revolution, questions of migration and identity, and the country’s worsening crisis enter the ordinary space of their living room. Chammas creates two distinct characters within a solo performance, while Lauryn Jenkins’s direction allows news, street unrest and the Beirut port explosion to reshape the sisters’ relationship, holding love of homeland alongside anger, disappointment and the desire to leave.

Herstory in History places Zhao Zhuang Ji from The Orphan of Zhao alongside a contemporary Chinese actress in a one-woman ‘portrait musical’ about the choices available to women across history and the present. Fiona Zhu delivers a particularly strong musical theatre performance, while the use of live camera and the recurring image of white silk create some of the production’s most affecting visual moments.

Written and performed by Martia Dimmer, Please Don’t Die? follows trainee death doula Evie as she helps dying clients face the end of their lives while avoiding her own grief over the death of her close friend Ben. Through music, dark comedy and intimate encounters, the show finds a gentle balance between humour and loss, with Dimmer’s warm vocals and fluid character work giving the one-person performance much of its charm.