Terror 2011 - Love Me To Death

Of the myriad of 'horror theatre' that pops up all over London this time of year, Terror 2011's collection of works from the UKs best emerging writing talent is one of the the most satisfyingly scary and bizarrely fun.

Combining a series of suspenseful productions (from wirters iisted below) with cabaret curated by Desmond O'Connor and Sarah-Louise Young, Soho Theatre hosts the likes of Jonny Woo, Dusty Limits, Phil Nichol, and Frisky and Mannish.

The writers and their respective plays are:

The Waiting Mortuary by Dave Florez
As Long As He Needs Me by Lucy Kirkwood
Wormy Close by Carl Grose
The Gong by Jack Thorne
If I Should Stay I Would Only Be In Your Way by Tom Holloway

All five plays run every night but click here to see which cabaret act is due to perform on the night you want to go.

The songs by Desmond O'Connor and Sarah-Louise Young which make you cringe and laugh in equal measure are so brilliantly bizarre that they  overshadow the short plays in this year's annual season of horror at Soho Theatre. But the writing is consistently solid, if not as frightening or gut-wrenching as you might hope.

Plays by Dave Florez and Jack Thorne in particular play on the unknown and turn our own imaginations against us. They reveal so little that what's going on in our own heads becomes scarier than what's on stage. The best show of the night comes from Lucy Kirkwood and Eleanor Buchman who have produced a near silent physical performance that centres on a burlesque routine going horribly wrong. As the clothes come off things get increasingly unsettling, while Buchman, wearing her performance hat, has us recoiling in horror.

Naima Khan