SEAN O’Casey’s Irish drama Juno and the Paycock opened in Dublin 90 years ago, and has become the writer’s most frequently performed and most popular work. Its timely revival at Bristol Old Vic, played on the deep stage in front of a rickety structure of discarded furniture, musical instruments, doors and windows, powerfully underlines its…
THE Filter “incarnation” of the Scottish Play started its life at the Tobacco Factory in Bedminster in the spring, and now returns for its first performances before setting off on a national tour. Like all the company’s productions, it explores the interaction of music, text, movement and sound, and what better play than the tense…
ALAN Ayckbourn’s 1975 Bedroom Farce is one of his most popular and frequently performed plays, so it is a real delight to see it fresh as a daisy and full of unexpected delights. In Gareth Machin’s production at Salisbury Playhouse, opening the 2014-15 season until Saturday 4th October, the theatre has been re-conformed to allow…
STORM on the Lawn, now in its 17th season at the ball court at Prior Park college above Bath, is always an exciting enterprise. The public show is the culmination of three short weeks of intensive work by the young actors and back-stage crew, bringing together a new work in an atmospheric setting. With a…
HOW you feel about Judith Bliss and her flamboyant, warring, ultra-theatrical family probably depends on whether you actually know people like the Bliss family in general – and Judith in particular. If you view them through the prism of “normality” and imagine that such behaviour is (a) grotesquely exaggerated and (b) dreadfully self-indulgent, you laugh…
SHREK is a little like Sondheim’s Into The Woods – with familiar fairy tale characters linked by a new story. From my first knowledge of Shrek I was intrigued: a cinema trailer with famous fairytale characters started appearing in late 2000, even before very grown-up films, and I was hooked. When the film came out…
ALAN Ayckbourn had already written as many plays as Shakespeare by the age of 48, the age at which the Bard died, and has now completed almost 80 plays. He enjoys gimmicks, such as his Norman Conquest trilogy, in which the action takes place in three parts of the same house, living room, dining room…
ALAN Bennett’s 13 television plays Talking Heads are widely regarded as mini-masterpieces, and marked the beginning of his recognition as a major playwright. Now the Bournemouth based ImpAct Theatre has chosen three – Her Big Chance, originally performed by Julie Walters, A Chip in the Sugar, which Bennett performed himself, and A Lady of Letters,…
JOAN Littlewood’s extraordinary musical satire Oh What a Lovely War is possibly the most effective anti-war show ever devised, accessible to all ages and attitudes and shining the searchlight from all angles on the reality of conflicts. In this Great War anniversary year, productions of the show – first performed by Theatre Workshop in East…
BATH audiences are fortunate to be able to see a powerful and important award-winning American play, receiving its UK premiere this month at the Theatre Royal’s Ustinov studio. Joshua Harmon’s play Bad Jews is set in a New York studio apartment with a view of the Brooklyn river glimpsed from the bathroom. Brothers Liam and…