Review by Louis Manzini

Back in the early 1970s Julia Donaldson was writing stories for Radio Bristol and adapting Aesop’s Fables for the BBC’s Play School. Today, she is to children’s literature what Agatha Christie is to crime and detective stories. It is not surprising then to find that, like Christie’s work, Donaldson’s many books - especially those illustrated by the UK-based German illustrator Axel Scheffler - have spawned a tsunami of adaptations on screen and stage. This year the West End is offering The … [Read more...]

When they opened in July 1892, Hornsey Road Baths - and Laundry - included “one of the largest swimming baths in the Kingdom” and was home to London’s first all-female swimming club. In the winter, the pools were floored over and used for public meetings, lectures and entertainment. In an echo of the alternative uses to which they were put in the last century and by Big Space Productions and others after the Baths closed in 1991, the surviving Grade II listed buildings are now the home of … [Read more...]

You must have heard of Harry Houdini? Houdini the “Handcuff King”? The man who could escape from a straitjacket while suspended upside down outside a building? No? Well around the turn of the twentieth century, everyone had heard of Houdini, one of the greatest entertainers in history and a lifelong enemy of spiritualists and the deceits they play on the public. Houdini was, arguably, the first true superstar. Born Ehrich Weisz, he could escape from anything, locked cells, prison vans, … [Read more...]

Part of the appeal of classic texts is the opportunity they provide for a fresh take on the themes and characters as seen through a contemporary lens. Hedda Gabler is a prime candidate for this treatment. The play first staged in 1891, features gaslighting - in both senses - and sexual exploitation, but it ends with Hedda defeated by circumstances and by herself, condemned to an offstage quietus. Some have sought to “modernise” the play by reverting to Ibsen’s draft and having the final scene … [Read more...]

Rachel Bellman’s debut full-length play These Demons has some things in common with her earlier piece Mazzikim and Maltesers and pits two Jewish sisters against each other and against the mythology that underpins their faith. Drawing on elements of Judaic lore and the complexities of family relationships, Bellman’s script is funny, insightful and at times downright thrilling as it incorporates tropes of the horror film genre being set largely in a cabin-in-the-woods style cottage with someone, … [Read more...]