RC SHERRIFF’S Journey’s End, written ten years after the end of the First World War and based on his own inescapable memories of the trenches, is widely recognised as one of the greatest plays about the conflict. It was chosen by Merlin Theatre Productions as its contribution to the Frome-wide commemorations of the centenary of…
IF you want an evening of inspired enjoyment, head for Bristol Old Vic before 17th November to see Wils Wilson’s extraordinary take on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The co-production with Edinburgh Lyceum is another brave move from BOV artistic director Tom Morris. Wilson is best known for her site-specific pieces and her collaborative approach, but happily…
IT was way back in 1954 that the Wolfenden Committee was set up to investigate homosexuality and prostitution, but it took another 13 years before the Sexual Offences Act decriminalised gay sex. Move on just over a quarter of a century to 1993 when Jonathan Harvey wrote this play about two young teenagers, Jamie bullied…
THE Ladykillers was one of the biggest hits of the Ealing film studios – a classic heist-goes-wrong comedy thriller about a gang of thieves and thugs with a fool-proof plan that has a little old lady-sized hole in the middle. The 1955 film was successfully adapted for the stage in 2011 by Graham Linehan, and…
BASED on David Croft and Jimmy Perry’s successful TV series which won a BAFTA Award for best comedy series in 1984, this stage version has all the much loved regular workers who inhabited Maplins Holiday Camp at the end of the 1950s when this play is set. Because of repeats, which can still be seen…
THE new company formed by actor Tom Burke and director Gadi Roll chose Friedrich Schiller’s monumental drama Don Carlos for its opening production, and a stark and uncompromising setting in which to frame the complex story. Loosely based on history, it focuses on the dysfunctional ruling family of Spain in a time of political and…
WITH Ade Edmondson and Nigel Planer at the helm and on the stage,what could POSSIBLY go wrong? Vulcan 7, their latest joint venture, finds them as two RADA alumni 40 years after their student days, discovering themselves reluctantly sharing a trailer on the set of episode 7 of a monster superhero movie on the slopes…
I have just returned from the Artsreach performance of Sarajevo Big Bang in Shillingstone. Here are three reviews of the show: THREE brilliant satirists are testing out the traditional politeness of a British audience with the strangely titled Sarajevo Big Bang, on a tour of village halls around the UK. The conceit is that they…
TERENCE Rattigan’s late play In Praise of Love is the story of a marriage, and like so many of the writer’s other plays, focusses on what is NOT said rather than the words in the script. Revived by Jonathan Church at the Ustinov in Bath until 3rd November, you have to ask why this magnificent…
SWEENEY Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, is a metaphor for all that is dark and lurks behind closed doors, in streets barely lit with guttering gaslights, for a time when the rich and powerful had almost infinite power over the poor and powerless, when there was no safety net … Yeovil Amateur Operatic…