IF you love the work of Kneehigh, the puppetry of War Horse and a barnstorming musical with a story that’s miles from hackneyed predictability, head without delay for Bristol Old Vic. The first official show of the theatre’s 250th anniversary season has been five years in gestation, and reaches the historic stage in sensational form. …
THE prolific inventiveness of Alan Ayckbourn is constant – and constantly remarkable. Snake In The Grass, chosen as IES’s autumn production, is that rarity among the Ayckbourn canon – a ghostly psychological chiller. The Scarborough-based dramatist, who is said to be the world’s most frequently produced playwright, has, over a career spanning more than 40 years,…
AS I said when reviewing the same play at the Swan in Yeovil earlier this year, Stepping Out is one of those plucky British tales where ordinary people with very real lives have to all work together to achieve a common goal. It is one of the earliest examples, written well before The Full Monty,…
THE eagerly-awaited new musical version of The Wind in the Willows, scripted by Julian Fellowes with music and lyrics by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, opened in Plymouth on 8th October for a two-week run before touring to Southampton and Salford Quays. Rachel Kavanaugh’s sparkling production, choreographed by Aletta Collins and designed by Peter McKintosh,…
THE Beggar’s Opera, first performed in London in 1728, is the sole surviving example of a once-popular form of theatre, the satirical ballad opera. So it is difficult for a modern audience to know quite how to react to it. We see a bunch of low-life thieves, drunkards and whores, motivated mainly by lust and…
WHEN Father Ted writer Graham Linehan turned his attention to the 1955 Ealing classic comedy film The Ladykillers, he had to defend his actions against the purists. But, as anyone who has seen his stage version knows, it was a triumphant project, and the results can be seen at Salisbury’s Studio Theatre in Ashley Road…
LET me begin by saying that I believe John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera to be a masterpiece of music theatre, and I am no fan of Benjamin Britten’s tinkering with familiar tunes. Myra McDadd’s big idea for her production of the Britten adaptation, on stage at Shaftesbury Arts Centre until Saturday 15th October, was to…
I ENJOY the occasional chance to review plays after my national and regional colleagues, but I don’t read their thoughts before seeing the play. So, after a wonderful night at Bath Theatre Royal with Simon Reade’s adaptation of EM Forster’s A Room With a View, directed by Adrian Noble and designed by Paul Willis, I was…
THE 2016/17 season at Bath Theatre Royal’s Ustinov Theatre starts with another triumphant production, Half Life, a play by Canadian academic and scientist John Mighton, directed by Nancy Meckler. The play, set in 1999 (the Year of Older Persons), discusses how we ignore our professional standpoints in our personal interactions, how our expectations are dictated…
A NEW short play by Sturminster Newton based writer Craig White had its first performance for the home audience at the Exchange, after a successful debut at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. Single Varietal is a thought-provoking and topical play about cider and families, provenance and tradition and the insidious encroachment of big corporations into the…