“Three Decembers is the finest modern opera that I have seen.” So wrote Chicago reviewer Tom Williams, having seen its premiere in 2008, and I can do no more than concur! Jake Heggie is an American composer, born in 1961, whose style is very approachable: romantic with broad, sweeping melodies: theatrical but never outstaying its welcome. Originally slated to be a commercial two-act “music theatre” production with lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, based on an unpublished play Some Christmas … [Read more...]
A Murder Is Announced at Churchill Theatre, Bromley
A Murder is Announced was Agatha Christie’s fiftieth novel, published in 1950 and adapted into a stage play by Leslie Darbon in 1977. Middle Ground’s production of one of Christie’s most intricately plotted Miss Marple tales has now been touring the UK for six years, and visited the Churchill, Bromley way back in 2017, when the cast was slightly ‘starrier’! The residents of the village of Chipping Cleghorn are shocked when they read an advertisement proclaiming that a murder will take … [Read more...]
The End of the Night by Ben Brown at Park Theatre
On Hitler’s birthday in 1945 Heinrich Himmler, Nazi Party Reichsfuehrer of the Schutzstaffel(SS), met with Norbert Masur, a representative of the World Jewish Congress for nearly three hours at the house of the Swede Felix Kersten, about 30 miles north of Berlin - or did he? And if he did, what did they discuss and what was the result? That is the premise of this new play by Ben Brown. The informative programme tells us that all this was “rather silly lies”, but Brown takes his … [Read more...]
The Homecoming at Theatre Royal Brighton
This touring production of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming is well worth visiting, whether or not you know the play. In the safe directorial hands of Jamie Glover, it re-emerges as one of the playwright’s strongest and at the same time most elusive scripts. Written in 1964 in Worthing, a few miles west of Brighton, it is set in an old house in north London. In this production the ground floor appears vast, the gaunt set using the full space of the stage and appearing to disappear upwards … [Read more...]
The Osmonds, A New Musical at Churchill Theatre, Bromley
This ‘juke box’ musical offers highly polished, undemanding, feel-good entertainment, showcasing, as it does, 35 songs dating from the 1960s to the 2000s in superbly choreographed (Bill Deamer) copies of the originals: the predominantly female audience at Bromley were clearly entranced by the show from the opening number. The Osmonds, A New Musical purports to be the true story of the highly successful American family singing group from the point of view of Jay Osmond, so it may be … [Read more...]