Kimberley Sykes’ bright and breezy, very physical, production of As You Like It has opened the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Autumn season at the Barbican. The full width and depth of the expansive stage is imaginatively used by designer Stephen Brimson Lewis, the single set gradually seeming to grow over time so that it is always not only interesting to look at but … [Read more...]
Afterglow at Waterloo East Theatre | Review
This beautifully written, moving play was seen earlier in 2019 at Southwark Playhouse. For this new production the script has been tightened and it is now one of the best ‘first’ plays by any playwright that I have seen. Josh and Alex are a gay married couple, awaiting the arrival of their first baby, when they invite masseur Darius to share their bed for one … [Read more...]
Singin’ in the Rain – Showtime Challenge 48-Hour Musicals
Occasionally one sees a show which is totally uplifting! This describes the performance of Singin' In The Rain which was mounted by Showtime Challenge 48-Hour Musicals at the Adelphi Theatre in aid of the Lewy Body Society, a charity dedicated to research into the diagnosis and treatment of this type of dementia which affects over 15% of sufferers. Everyone involved … [Read more...]
The Ice Cream Boys at Jermyn Street Theatre | Review
It is always a pleasurable experience visiting Jermyn Street Theatre, if only to see how the designer has used the pocket sized acting area. In this case, Cecilia Trono has produced a very striking and highly appropriate black and brilliant white tiled set, representing an area between private patients’ rooms in a South African expensive private hospital, … [Read more...]
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes at the Union Theatre | Review
Sacha Regan’s Union Theatre has a strong track record when it comes to reviving musicals. 2019 is the 70th anniversary of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ premiere on Broadway, and it has only been seen once in London - in 1962 with Dora Bryan. The 1920s flimsy plot revolves around an ex-Follies dancer, Lorelei Lee, originally Carol Channing, whose fiancée Gus Esmond, a … [Read more...]
Opera Holloway La Boheme – Pop Up Theatre Community Centre, Lingfield
Imagine sitting in a village Community Centre with no stage, just a flat floor, no complex lighting rig, no set to speak of and no orchestra, just one piano, watching what quickly proved to be a totally involving and ultimately very moving production of Puccini’s La Boheme. That is what I had the good fortune to be doing thanks to Opera Holloway, a small-scale touring … [Read more...]
Murder, Margaret and Me at the Churchill Theatre Bromley | Review
This play tells the fictionalised tale of the brief friendship between Agatha Christie and Margaret Rutherford at the time when Rutherford was playing Miss Marple in four British films(1961-3), most of which bore little relation to the books on which they were supposedly based, and which Christie loathed! Lin Blakley is Agatha Christie, and is very convincing, … [Read more...]
Review of Valued Friends at Rose Theatre Kingston
Valued Friends is a highly enjoyable yet thought provoking comedy by Stephen Jeffreys, receiving its first revival since the original production in 1989, when it won the Evening Standard ‘Most Promising Playwright’ award. It is set in a large basement flat in 1989 Earl’s Court where four friends have been housemates for more than ten years. The play look at how … [Read more...]
How Love Is Spelt at Southwark Playhouse | Review
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...]