Don’t expect any uplifting sequences in Oklahoma directed by Daniel Fish. This is a production that explores a more disturbing side of America. Gun displays line the walls, songs are often given a minimal country and western tilt and, just so the audience isn’t lulled into any dreamlike state, it feels as if the house… Continue reading Oklahoma
Month: July 2024
Around the World in 80 Days
Using elements of fringe and physical theatre, a circus setting, and an abundant supply of acting energy, no-one could dispute that this production goes around, and around, in all sorts of ways. It’s a production that started life as mobile street theatre, touring York, and is a co-production between that city’s Theatre Royal and theatre… Continue reading Around the World in 80 Days
The National Lottery’s Big Night of Musicals
It is an understatement to say live entertainment has had a rough time in recent years. Theatres emerged from lockdown to find a cost-of-living crisis has reduced the income households have available for a night out. COVID turns out to be the gift that keeps on giving and some audience members have become so unaccustomed… Continue reading The National Lottery’s Big Night of Musicals
Mohan: A Partition Story
Niall Moorjani’s grandfather was eleven years old in 1947 when India was divided by the British colonial rulers into two separate countries with horrific consequences. On the Crypt’s thrust stage with the heavy rumble of trains above, Niall switches between speaking directly to us about the context of those events and sitting in a chair… Continue reading Mohan: A Partition Story
This Town in Manchester
This Town is a modern-day epic narrative poem, performed and written by Rory Aaron (BBC New Creatives, Southbank Poetry Collective). An ode to home, it uses spoken word to transport audiences to a post-industrialised landscape. Against the backdrop of a cost of living crisis and a looming recession, it looks at young people’s experience of… Continue reading This Town in Manchester
Cat’s back at Royal Exchange
Tennessee Williams’s Cat On A Hot Tin Roof gets a brand-new production at Manchester Royal Exchange March 24– April 29. Bayo Gbadamosi takes on the role of Brick, with Ntombizodwa Ndlovu, a Zimbabwean-British actress, singer and graduate from the Manchester School of Theatre, as Maggie ‘the cat’ joined by Patrick Robinson as Big Daddy and Jacqui Dubois… Continue reading Cat’s back at Royal Exchange
Richard II
GSC has noticed some rather alarming parallels between the court of Richard II and our present Government and they have based this latest production on the political aspects of our leaders, then and now. Richard II came to the throne as a very young man and proceeded to use his power, and the taxpayers’ money,… Continue reading Richard II
The Lehman Trilogy
Stefano Massini’s epic saga of the Jewish immigrants who gave their name to the bank that spectacularly failed in 2008 was first performed in the UK in 2018 with Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley playing multiple generations of Lehmans with extraordinary dexterity. The new cast—Michael Balogun (Emanuel Lehman), Hadley Fraser (Mayer Lehman)… Continue reading The Lehman Trilogy
Phaedra
Despite the title, this isn’t a retelling of the ancient story of Theseus, his new wife Phaedra and her lust for his son Hippolytus. Described as “after Euripides, Seneca and Racine”, it’s not a version of any of their plays, though you can recognise some source ideas, elements from them that are reused, usually differently.… Continue reading Phaedra
The Snow Beast
Exeter-based Scratchworks Theatre Company continues to delight with a science-packed tale of derring-do, a perilous search for truth and much to learn. The Seldomland Science Academy final exams are looming and orphaned Faina’s experiment has combusted. Armed with an old, incomplete journal and with just three days to find a winning solution, she and adoptive… Continue reading The Snow Beast