Muayad Alayan’s drama of a bereaved 12-year-old and her ghostly new friend creates atmosphere but is slow and stiltedAfter the death of her mother, 12-year-old Rebecca (Miley Locke) and her father (Johnny Harris) move from the UK to Jerusalem to live in a grand house that her father’s family own. But a new start fails to lift Rebecca from the grief...

A group of young delinquents are steered on a different path in RJ Daniel Hanna’s tirelessly formulaic take on a true storyAnother factually based sports drama celebrating – yawn – inspirational mentorship, gutsy tenacity and physical endurance, Hard Miles hauls its tired-out premise up approximately 750 miles of winding, mountainous roads in search...

Live theatre, Newcastle Stewart Pringle’s new play set in Northumberland in 1553 has the bones of something great, but at present teeters on parodyNewcastle’s Live theatre is 51 this year. Under its latest artistic director and CEO, Jack McNamara, it continues to pursue a mission: to produce new writing that is rooted in the region and “unafraid to...

Utilita Arena, Sheffield It’s an unashamed nostalgia fest, but what could feel business-like morphs into something more considered, with strings, singalongs and even a dedication to brother Noel ‘I haven’t got any fucking new ones for you, so it’s going to have to be an old one, all right?” proclaims Liam Gallagher at one point tonight, during a set...

Korea’s bestselling and relentlessly upbeat guide to getting oldSome people age well. Alan Bennett, for instance, has gradually but inexorably ascended to national treasure status. Others age badly. Take Rudy Giuliani, whose meltdown on live television a couple of years ago took on an unedifyingly literal form, as hair dye trickled down his face. Still...

A rundown block of flats is terrorised by a very hungry arachnid in Kiah Roache-Turner’s taut shocker The latest addition to the well-populated sub-genre of spider-horror (see also Eight Legged Freaks, Arachnophobia, Possum and a whole host of skittering, venomous B-movies), Sting is an effectively grisly Australian production that sees the pet spider...