Month: April 2023

Some time in the 1920s: witches hold a séance and fog descends, or it could be gas, as they conjure up soldiers who don WW1 greatcoats then fall back down onto the blasted heath. It’s a riveting opening, but the idea fails to carry through to the rest of the production, made more confusing as… Continue reading Macbeth

In the past, director Nicholas Hytner has immersed Bridge Theatre audiences in the glens of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Rome of Julius Caesar and here we are in 1950s neon-lit Broadway. Groundlings, or promenaders, amongst the action, herded by New York cops, swirl and interact with the cast and the ever-shifting hydraulic pop-up sidewalks… Continue reading Guys and Dolls

Jane Austen’s six novels have inspired innumerable adaptations on stage and screen—and none more so than her most famous and popular work, Pride and Prejudice. Sticking just to the 21st century, we have seen the book merged with Bollywood (Bride and Prejudice), murder mystery (Death Comes to Pemberley) and even horror (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies). If… Continue reading Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of)

Newcastle is very fortunate to have had Alleyne Dance, founded by identical twin sisters Kristina and Sadé Alleyne, present Far From Home, their new touring production, at Dance City yesterday, following its international première at The Place, London in November 2022. Far from Home is broadly about migration and takes audiences on a journey of… Continue reading Far From Home

There is a rambling lack of focus to Miranda Rose Hall’s superficial play. You might imagine at times that it’s an exercise in grief “meditation on our catastrophic climate change”, though more is said about the earth’s first five mass extinctions than climate change in our current period. The show opens with the actor Lydia… Continue reading A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction

Director and lead actor Adjoa Andoh “doth protest too much, methinks” with her sympathetic take on the much-maligned Richard III? Does Shakespeare’s Machiavellian figure, Richard, have redeeming features? Is it his “vicious mole of nature” or a chip on his shoulder that turns him into a psychopath, scything down anyone standing in the way of… Continue reading Richard III

Theatre company FlawBored’s debut show is a stonker, not only remarkable for being such an accomplished first turn but also for taking on so sensitive and necessary a subject in such a well thought-out and wonderfully funny way. I haven’t laughed so much in ages. As a piece of writing, it operates almost as a… Continue reading It’s a Motherf**king Pleasure