Month: November 2024

It’s a sign of a successful panto when the performers are struggling to continue because they can’t stop laughing. There are two action-stopping moments in Nottingham Playhouse’s current offering that mean the show can’t go on—for a brief moment at any rate. In the first half of Jack and the Beanstalk, Dame Daisy Trott is supposed… Continue reading Jack and the Beanstalk

Cassie has decided to hide out in her basement from the growing right-wing unrest in the American city where she lives in Christine Rose’s topical political thriller Sanctuary directed by Donna King. Not wanting to be alone during such tense times, she has invited her childhood friend Amelia to join her in the basement. Initially, they reminisce… Continue reading Sanctuary

It is 21 years since the première of Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier’s production for the Royal Opera, since which time there have been many revivals and many outstanding singers in the role of Butterfly, Cio-Cio-San. So it is an interesting question why this version, starring Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian, recorded in March 2024, is… Continue reading Madama Butterfly

As seasonal as Christmas pudding, turkey, stuffing and sprouts, Nutcrackers get family audiences out for their postprandial annual treat, tonight filling the five-thousand-plus-seater Royal Albert Hall. And they are loving it… I hear a lot of Russian voices in the audience, celebrating one of their own, though neither Tchaikovsky nor Petipa had an easy time of… Continue reading The Nutcracker

Sutara Gayle, AKA Lorna Gee, is a celebrated actor and reggae singer. As solo performer for the entire show, Gayle sings and acts out her life, playing herself and family figures as well as an entire repertoire of unsavoury individuals who hindered her path, from the troubling school years to a successful singing career finding… Continue reading The Legends of Them

Great start with the entrance of Fleshcreep (Richard Meek) magnificently attired (Elizabeth Dennis) and straight into boos and “oh no you won’t”. He is joined by Vegetable Fairy (Millie Readshaw), a Middlesbrough lass, who instantly connects with the audience, feisty and contemporary. The drop cloth is raised to revealed a stunning, three-dimensional set (Ian Wilson,… Continue reading Jack and the Beanstalk

A longish evening (three hours if you include the interval) of donnish talk about classical poetry and male-on-male love won’t be everyone’s taste, but, though it does occasionally go on a bit, if you give it your attention, Blanche McIntyre’s revival of Tom Stoppard’s 1997 play is rewarding. It opens as poet and scholar A… Continue reading The Invention of Love

This is director Rebecca Frecknall’s third Tennessee Williams for the Almeida after Olivier-winning Summer and Smoke and A Streetcar Named Desire, soon to be briefly back in the West End before opening on Broadway. The last featured Paul Mescal, star ofTV’s Normal People; his TV co-star Daisy Edgar-Jones here plays Maggie, self-described as “a cat on a hot tin… Continue reading Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Virginia Gay’s romantic comedy, Cyrano, could almost have been a party. There are dances, songs, and an audience wearing party hats chucking streamers across the stage. The show finishes in a shower of glitter. As we entered the auditorium, cast members were chatting to us individually about what kind of poem we would like. As… Continue reading Cyrano

Gogol Bordello, the punk rock band, lends its name in more ways than one to Dave Molloy’s energetic, beautifully cast rock opera musical of Tolstoy’s realistic and philosophical War and Peace novel, granted only of a tiny sliver of it, seventy pages out of an epic book over a thousand pages long. But not to worry, you… Continue reading Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812