The world-famous Wilton’s Music Hall and the children’s classic The Wind in the Willows make perfect bedfellows. Piers Torday has written a version that brings together music, singing, dancing, puppetry and acting to offer a welcome addition to the holiday season's traditional offerings of panto, A Christmas Carol and The Nutcracker. The show tells the story of the river animals Mole, Ratty, Badger and Toad but with an environmental take which locates the action in contemporary London with the … [Read more...]
About John OBrien
Arms and the Man at the Orange Tree Theatre
This is a bumper week for George Bernard Shaw (GBS) fans in Richmond. Over at the Richmond Theatre, Mrs Warren's Profession is playing to packed houses and last night the Orange Tree, a hundred yards down the road, had its press night for Shaw’s romantic comedy come satire on the war of 1894, Arms and the Man. Both are excellent. They bring Shaw alive and demonstrate how prescient, topical and relevant he remains. Take this wonderful opportunity to see two of Shaw's finest plays in top-notch … [Read more...]
Pickle at Park Theatre
A space in which young creatives can learn and experiment is clearly vitally necessary. Park Theatre in Finsbury Park is fast becoming the go-to venue to put on new contemporary drama. It's got great transport links, and Finsbury Park underground station now virtually opens onto the theatre. The theatre itself is a new build glass and steel structure with two bars, excellent toilets and two performance spaces - one seats 200 the other 90. I went along last night to catch Make Mine a Double. As … [Read more...]
Anything With A Pulse at Park Theatre
Anything with a Pulse written and directed by Eliana Ostro is a two-hander about 20-somethings trying to find meaning and love in a world of Tinder and online dating. I was surprised that the director thought that blasting their audience for ten minutes prior to curtain up with impossibly loud dance music was in any way helpful or entertaining. It was annoying and gave me a terrible headache from which I didn’t recover. This was made even worse by the Park's policy of no readmittance. So there … [Read more...]
A Gala Celebration of Gilbert and Sullivan
In the week when the ENO lost all its Arts Council Funding (and who knows if we'll ever see another Gilbert & Sullivan production at the Coliseum?) I for one am grateful to Tarantara Productions for their 2022/23 UK Tour celebrating the work of Gilbert & Sullivan. It may well be that this will be one of the few companies that carry the torch for the Gilbert & Sullivan repertoire. They were the Victorian equivalents of Rodgers & Hammerstein or Lennon & McCartney. Artists that … [Read more...]
SPIKE at Richmond Theatre
Spike Milligan was a comic genius, writer, poet, actor, musician, anarchist, and a crazy cat from Catford in South London SE6 - he paved the way for the revolution in post-war comedy. His epoch-defining creation The Goon Show (Salvador Dali meets The Magic Roundabout) blazed a trail for others to follow - Beyond the Fringe, That was the Week that Was, Private Eye, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Spitting Image, Harry Enfield and Chums and so the list goes on. As a Gooner myself, no not an Arsenal … [Read more...]
A Single Man at Park Theatre
Christopher Isherwood is probably best known as the writer of the 1930s novel Goodbye To Berlin which forms the source for the musical Cabaret. He is a gay icon whose life and work continues to inspire people throughout the world. Leaving England in 1939 he escaped to America where he found work as a scriptwriter in Hollywood alongside Aldous Huxley. He became a US Citizen in 1946. During this post-war period, he experimented with drugs, became a Hindu and embraced the counter-culture. He wrote … [Read more...]