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…
ALTHOUGH they were written one hundred years apart, in 1772 and 1888 with one throwing the spotlight on French nobility and the other on Swedish society, there are many parallels between Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses and August Strindberg’s Miss Julie. Both feature debauched nobility corrupted by money and the absolute power that…
IT has been 12 years since the musical adaptation of The Witches of Eastwick, a show spawned by the 1987 film that followed hot on the heels of the publication of John Updike’s novel in 1984, was released for amateur performance. Now it arrives on stage in Milborne Port, providing a very different show for…
Tom Stoppard knew all about it when he wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, back in 1966 when he was still in his 20s. This is a play about two of the minor characters in Hamlet. As the murder mystery of Hamlet’s father unfolds around them, Hamlet’s two, interchangeable, childhood friends wait around until someone…
IF you look up “Cruel Intentions” on Wikipedia you have the choice between the film and the “franchise” … and really, that says it all. Pierre Choderlos de Laclos wrote his infamous epistolary novel back in 1782, and many adaptations have followed, on stage, film and television. Perhaps Jordan Ross, Lindsey Rosin and Roger Kumble…
DAN Brown’s 2003 mystery thriller novel The Da Vinci Code is a worldwide best seller – 80 million copies were sold in the first six years – as well as the cause of international controversy, criticised as a historically and scientifically inaccurate attack on the Catholic church. It was filmed in 2006, again delighting audiences…
I FREELY admit that I am a great fan of the wonderful BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth as Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, and the shamefully underrated Benjamin Whitrow’s study of Mr Bennet. So when I first came across this spoof of Jane Austen’s novel, I arrived full…
WE are quite used to opera singers taking a break after singing a strenuous role, but when two leading ladies are announced for a musical, you presume that they will alternate week by week during a year-long tour, which started earlier this month in Sunderland and ends on 4th April 2026 in Leeds. After watching…
PATRICK Hamilton’s Gaslight, first seen in 1938, has a long and powerful legacy, including a new word for the English language and legislation recognising the coercive control that is at the core of the play. Frome Drama has chosen it to launch the 2025 season, and their production at the Merlin is directed by Richard…
WATCHING this show was a little like eating a gourmet burger full of top class ingredients surrounded by a slightly stale, soggy bun. Under the watchful eye of director/choreographer Craig Revel Horwood, this production was slick and smooth-running, with a string of excellent individual performances and a mouthwatering selection of 20 or so expertly staged…