Cecil Sharp is no unsung hero. Without the energy of this driven and at times prickly musician, the traditional folksong of rural England would very possibly have faced extinction in the early decades of the twentieth century. His collecting of thousands of songs was nothing less than a mercy mission into an aural culture made precarious by the grave new world of mechanisation, migration and war-deaths in industrial quantities. In telling of his song-hunting encounter with the Somerset … [Read more...]
Terence Rattigan’s While The Sun Shines at The Orange Tree Theatre
This early Rattigan play has had an interesting life. Set in the Second World War and premiered while that conflict still raged, it has since found itself rather upstaged by the author’s later and less comedic hits such as The Deep Blue Sea and The Browning Version. Fitting that it should have made its reappearance at the Orange Tree in Kew Road since his first major play, First Episode, was staged at the adventurous, now long defunct, Q Theatre, just a mile up the road. Appropriate too that … [Read more...]
The Good Life at Richmond Theatre
Lazily, the 1970s have been portrayed as a sort of hangover decade after the vividness of The Sixties; quaint old hippie tendencies having to shove over and make room for proper adult pursuits like careers and parenthood. The Good Life, the sitcom which ran on BBC1 for three years from 1975, rather muddied that simplistic picture, and a good job too. This stage version, based on the highly popular TV series, serves as a reminder that Tom and Barbara, the couple originally played by … [Read more...]
One Man Poe – Threedumb Theatre | Review
Four Edgar Allan Poe stories on the trot. This is nothing if not a macabrathon. It’s not just any old Poe either, but matter from the darkest reaches of an output never over-troubled by sunlight. To stage such a show requires an appetite for horror almost as voracious as that of the tormented but prolific American author who died in 1849 at the age of forty. This is amply supplied by the young performer and director of One Man Poe, Stephen Smith. From early childhood, he says, he has been … [Read more...]
The Memory of Water at Hampstead Theatre | Review
It’s nearly a quarter of a century ago that the playwright Shelagh Stephenson scored an enduring hit with this early play at Hampstead. Round the world it went, justly praised for its portrayal of siblings struggling with each other and themselves in the wake of their mother’s death. With hurtful legacies at the heart of their gathering, memory itself justified its place in the title and became a virtual, controversial character in its own right. This it still does in a witty, unsparing … [Read more...]