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Reviews by Alan Franks

West End and Off-West End reviews written by Alan Franks. Reviews are primarily for productions in London's West End and Off-West End venues.

Terence Rattigan’s While The Sun Shines at The Orange Tree Theatre

November 25, 2021 Last updated: November 25, 2021 2:53 pm By Alan Franks

Rebecca Collingwood and Conor Glean in While the Sun Shines.

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

November 24, 2021 Last updated: November 24, 2021 2:00 pm By Alan Franks

The Good Life. Cast. Photo by Dan Tsantilis.

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

October 3, 2021 Last updated: October 4, 2021 12:04 pm By Alan Franks

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

September 10, 2021 Last updated: September 10, 2021 3:33 pm By Alan Franks

The Memory of Water Production Image - L-R Adam James, Laura Rogers, Carolina Main (lying down), Lucy Black, Kulvinder Ghir © Helen Murray.

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...]

Blue Remembered Hills by Dennis Potter | Review

September 8, 2021 Last updated: October 22, 2021 2:31 pm By Alan Franks

Blue Remembered Hills - Southall.

It’s one of the strangest nights out at the theatre. You’re met at a railway station in the far east of London by a group of ushers who load you into a plush coach and spirit you out into the rear end of beyond. If you’ve never come this way before, you’re in good company, for you now enter Thamesmead Waterfront, one of the capital’s last redoubts of true wilderness. A chain of roundabouts takes you up towards the crook of the Thames and the peninsular land to the east of Woolwich Arsenal. … [Read more...]

Twelfth Night at The Globe Theatre 2021 | Review

September 3, 2021 Last updated: September 3, 2021 1:57 pm By Alan Franks

Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's Globe - Victoria Elliott playing Feste - (c) Marc Brenner.

With its climate of chaos and misrule, it’s an apt choice of play for our times. Comedy it may be but, as with much of Shakespeare’s work in this mode, darkness and terror are everywhere. It would be strange if this were not the case here, since 1603, when it was premiered, found London struggling under the tyranny of the plague and losing some 30,000 of its citizens to it in the course of the year. In such a context, the play’s subtitle, What You Will, comes into its own. Given the binge … [Read more...]

Big Big Sky by Tom Wells at Hampstead Theatre | Review

August 7, 2021 Last updated: August 7, 2021 2:47 pm By Alan Franks

Big Big Sky: Matt Sutton and Jennifer Daley - Credit Robert Day.

Everything is coming to an end round here: the summer season, the tea-room’s trade, youth itself, the whole country. For this is the tiny village of Kilnsea, set so far out on England’s north-east coast that the great sea-port of Hull is twenty-five miles away and comes over as a remote western presence. The buses don’t get out this far anymore. The playwright Tom Wells knows just what, or rather where, he is talking about, having grown up in Kilnsea, and his play is awash with the … [Read more...]

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