Never mind their vigorous and action-packed songs of the sea, the now famous band of Cornish singers has become something of an epic yarn in its own right. In the unlikely event that you’ve not come across them, they’ve been performing their full-throated ballads for more than a quarter of a century in their home town of Port Isaac, and making a seriously international name for themselves in the process. For all the members’ maturity, much of their repertoire predates them, recounting the … [Read more...]
Blood Brothers at Richmond Theatre | Review
It’s half a century since Willy Russell’s passionate musical about twins separated at birth became a West End hit, with Barbara Dickson and then Kiki Dee in the role of the boys’ anguished mother, Mrs.Johnstone. On the evidence of this latest revival, the work, directed by Bob Tomson and Bill Kenwright, is looking good for its age. If Shakespeare’s play about twins separated in a shipwreck was a Comedy of Errors, Russell’s is a tragedy of good intentions, with that reliable bad guy, the … [Read more...]
Two Billion Beats at The Orange Tree
It’s easy to see why the Orange Tree has brought this one back for another run, less than a year after its first outing here. This is a bold, passionate play by Sonali Bhattacharyya about family conflict and the legacy of historic ideologies. Such things never go away for long. In the loving but spikey relationship between this pair of sisters no reputations are entirely safe, not even that of the much-sanctified Mahatma Gandhi, for his dismissive views on the Dalit, the lowest of India’s … [Read more...]
Blackout written by Poppy Abbott at Theatre503
With a play called Blackout at Clapham’s Theatre503 and another one called Blackout Songs at Hampstead, you could reasonably start thinking that ‘tis the season to be sozzled. Both concern alcohol addiction and the bouts of amnesia which stalk that condition. Though I haven’t seen Joe White’s highly praised drama in north London, I gather that it focuses on a couple in which each becomes the object of the other’s unhealthy obsession. Codependence is the grimly fashionable word to describe … [Read more...]
Mrs Warren’s Profession at Richmond Theatre
Written in 1893, this was a relatively early work of Shaw’s, and came to be known as one of his problem plays. Not because its content was obscure; it was in fact quite the opposite, dealing plainly with the admittedly complex morality of a thriving commercial practice of the day: prostitution. It was the issue itself that was the problem. The Lord Chamberlain of the day - in effect the nation’s censor of publicly available material - took a dim view of the author’s characteristically … [Read more...]