How Love is Spelt is a bitter-sweet play, written by Chloe Moss in 2004, about twenty-year-old Peta who has come to London looking for romance, friendship and for exciting people to lead her on to big adventures, but she can only afford to live in a rather squalid bed-sit which doesn’t even have a proper bed! The play is structured into five scenes, Peta taking the … [Read more...]
Florian Zeller’s The Son at Duke of York’s Theatre | Review
Florian Zeller’s The Son is a beautifully written, totally involving play, at times riveting to watch, with not a word or action wasted. Thanks in part to Christopher Hampton’s superb translation from the French as well as Michael Longhurst’s imaginative direction, it is a gripping 110-minute tragedy. The play is a poignant and searching exploration of adolescent … [Read more...]
Opera della Luna: HMS Pinafore at Wilton’s Music Hall
This year, Opera Della Luna is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary of staging and touring small scale productions of musicals, operetta and light opera, all under the energetic directorship of Jeff Clarke. Luckily his 20-year-old production of Pinafore was designed for touring to all types of venues and looked well on the stage of Wilton’s Music Hall, making … [Read more...]
Vivaldi meets Werther: Four Seasons at the Bridewell Theatre
Vivaldi’s four violin concerti depicting Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, which we know collectively as ‘The Four Seasons’ are probably some of the most well-known music composed in the early eighteenth century. Pamela Schermann, the director, had the idea of performing them using five-string players and what sounded like an electric piano, breaking up the sequence … [Read more...]
Towards Zero at The Mill at Sonning | Review
The Mill at Sonning is a restaurant and 215 seat theatre situated on the outskirts of Reading (20 minutes by train from London) on the banks of the Thames. It was converted from a vast watermill and has been a performance venue since 1984. For about £50 one can enjoy a superb two-course meal as well as seeing a play or concert. Visiting The Mill is deservedly a … [Read more...]
Review of Queen of the Mist at Charing Cross Theatre
Queen of the Mist is a new musical by the five-time Tony Award nominee Michael John La Chiusa, currently receiving its London premiere at Charing Cross Theatre. The true story of the first person to negotiate Niagara Falls in a barrel may not seem the most obvious for musical treatment, but, as the copious programme notes say, La Chiusa ‘isn’t a dramatist who shies … [Read more...]
Review of Twelfth Night at The Bridge House Theatre
The theatre at the Bridge House Pub in Penge is a well equipped, intimate space seating less than forty. It is an ideal venue for plays with a small cast, and, as this production proves, perhaps surprisingly, for Shakespeare. Guy Retallack, the director, cunningly decided that Twelfth Night could be staged with a cast of five ‘in-the-round’ to make the audience feel … [Read more...]
Napoli, Brooklyn by Meghan Kennedy at Park Theatre
This powerful play, set in Brooklyn in 1960, attempts to tell the story of a family of Italian immigrants trying to assimilate and adapt to the change of culture and environment. The promise of the ‘American Dream’ has proved elusive, especially to the father of the family, Nic, passionately portrayed by Robert Cavanah. He has ended up with a dead-end job as a lowly … [Read more...]
Beneath The Blue Rinse By Tom Glover at Park Theatre | Review
Tom Glover’s new play is not only VERY funny, it is also heart-warming and at times very dark! Beneath the Blue Rinse attempts to explode stereotypes associated with old age and questions how society views and treats the elderly. Unscrupulous salesman Simon Sudgebury, comically played by Kevin Tomlinson, has bullied 44 OAPs into purchasing his burglar alarms and … [Read more...]