I MUST confess that having seen mort than a dozen productions of John Kander and Fred Ebb’s musical version of Maurine Watkins 1926 play since it first hit the stage in 1975, I came to this new production with a rather jaded palate. However, it took only a few minuets, and Djalenga Scott’s Velma Kelly…
WHAT is it about the story of Dracula that continues to grip us? Whether it is the 1897 original Bram Stoker novel, the high camp of Hammer horror movies, the dark charisma of the Mark Bruce Dance Company version or any of the stage adaptations, this gothic tale exerts a peculiar fascination. One answer, suggested…
ANTHONY Shaffer’s thriller Sleuth is one of those extraordinary plays whose complexities are such that you forget the outcome, no matter how many times you see it – and that’s even WITH two famous film versions, one made in Dorset’s own Athelhampton House back in 1972 and starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. Set firmly…
BATH was buzzing on Saturday night – the city’s famous rugby club was winning a big match against Leicester and excited fans were gathering round big screens in bars to celebrate the successes and camp glitz of Eurovision. The atmosphere in the beautiful Abbey was perhaps a little more muted, but the enthusiasm was palpable…
HAD Sir William Schwenck Gilbert been alive today, I would take money on his including the latest and plupenultimate president of the United States and his South African top-line-of-keyboard-iconic tech bro sidekick, as well as those for whom personal pronouns are more important than personal relationships, in his brilliant patter songs … so thank goodness…
WHAT do you do if you inherit a traditional shoe factory that is about to be swamped by cheap overseas imports. If your name is Clark, you convert the main factory site into a shopping village and introduce a smaller range of specialist shoes. Kinky Boots, for all its flamboyant story and big scale musical…
HOW do you set about reviewing a play? That’s a question that lots of people ask, and the answer is complicated. For anyone who has been doing it as long as I have, it is a combination of experience, knowledge of the work, previous productions and performances, the effect THIS production has on THIS audience…
LIKE most of Alan Ayckbourn’s 90-plus professionally presented plays, Just Between Ourselves started life at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, before going out on tour, with the author in tow continually tweaking the text, before finding its way onto London’s West End stage. I caught up with Alan Ayckbourn in Bridgwater Arts Centre when, in…
ONE of the few criticisms of the Roald Dahl and Ken Hughes 1968 screenplay of Ian Flemings children’s fantasy Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, with music added by the Sherman brothers, was that it was too long at, 2 hours 25 minutes. This new production, which draws a long tour to a close when, after leaving…
APRIL de Angelis’s play Playhouse Creatures, commissioned by Sphinx Theatre in Leicester in 1993, might have been a historical drama about the life of the famous Mary Betterton, known as the first actress of the English stage – or about Nell Gwynn, the orange seller who enraptured King Charles II. But it is much more…