REMEMBRANCE of the First World War now generally concentrates on November, the month of its end, but there is no more poignant place and time to ponder its pain and horror than an English village on a sleepy summer’s day. And surely no English village could provide a finer setting for a walk of poetry…
NEIL Simon’s three-piece Plaza Suite, which opened in New York 50 years ago, is a trio of playlets about marriage, all set in the same suite of the luxury hotel overlooking Central Park. A wife tries to celebrate her anniversary by booking in to the same suite where she and her husband spent their wedding…
IF Hamlet is the North Face of the Eiger for a young actor, King Lear is Everest for an older one. You need a profound experience of life as well as the stage to begin to understand the character. The role requires huge vocal and physical strength, and the actor must convey a hint of…
ANTON Chekhov always described his play The Cherry Orchard as a comedy. I have seen many productions over the years, and always thought it would take a miracle to make it substantially funny. Sadly, it was a sleight of hand beyond the powers of the Cornish-based Miracle Theatre, currently performing Bill Scott’s adaptation of the…
WHEN you think of Twelfth Night as a comedy, you probably picture the impish Maria making a fool of the self-serving Puritan steward Malvolio, of cowardly Sir Andrew trying (not) to fight a duel with Cesario/Viola. Olivia is the black figure of mourning in the back of the action – the wealthy young woman, still…
FOR their 250 production, Bristol-based Kelvin Players, who have been entertaining local audiences since 1929, decide to leave the security of their own well-equipped studio theatre in Gloucester Road and take over the Tobacco Factory Theatre for the week. Already used to presenting plays “in the round” at their home base, the company had no…
LIGHT pollution is a fact of 21st century life – look at one of those satellite night-time photographs and see how few dark places there are in Europe or the USA – but there are a few special places where the night skies are still dark, and one of these is Exmoor. In 2011, a…
JERRY Herman’s 1974 musical Mack and Mabel is the story of Mack Sennett, creator of the slapstick Keystone Cops, who kept international audiences entertained in the fading days of the silent screen, and of his lasting love for his star, Mabel Normand. Since its opening on Broadway the show has had a checquered career, finding…
YASMINA Reza has an almost uncanny ability to slice through the veneer of liberal, intellectual charm of the middle classes, and reveal the primitive barbarian beneath. It makes some people uncomfortable. It makes others laugh – it’s a slightly edgy sort of laughter, because we know we are laughing at ourselves, and we don’t much…
IN this year when the centenary of the end of the Great War is marked all over Europe and beyond, Frome Drama Club entered the list of concerts, art installations, talks, films, plays and more to mourn the lives of the millions who died and to celebrate their sacrifice with Stephen MacDonald’s 1982 Edinburgh Fringe…