Month: January 2025

The rich colours and design of the stage set designed by Andrew Caddies can’t fail to catch your eye as you walk to your seat. A rock-like central platform decked with greenery sits on a warm, velvet stage carpet within a semicircular wooden frame, one side of which is labelled NW, W, SW and the… Continue reading Pan

Despite the title, Twelfth Night isn’t a play about Christmas, but Tom Littler’s production arrives like a Christmas gift. It starts off sombre then turns delightful. He has set it just after the Second World War, and designers Anett Black and Neil Irish have lined the balcony front with panels that list the fallen, while below, a… Continue reading Twelfth Night

The Royal Ballet gives us a visually magical Cinderella, a new production last seen in 2023, instead of The Nutcracker as our Christmas treat this year. And bearing in mind that it is panto season, it leans heavily towards the Step Sisters’ double drag act. Though we are told male and female dancers will alternate… Continue reading Cinderella

Even if you don’t know any Gilbert and Sullivan, you’ll undoubtedly recognise some of the foot-tapping songs—somehow they are in our English DNA. Mike Leigh’s 2015 Pirates of Penzance production—revival director Sarah Tipple—returns for the silly panto season. And it is delightful. The pace could be a bit tighter, the choreography a bit more imaginative, some don’t… Continue reading The Pirates of Penzance

The Corn Exchange was bedecked with festive decorations and beautiful real tree in the foyer and festoons of lights in the auditorium for this year’s Christmas Panto Dick Whittington, and it’s an absolute winner. Once again, the award-winning creative team of Plested, Brown and Wilsher return for their sixth year at the helm with Adam… Continue reading Dick Whittington

Following last year’s sparkly Cinderella, the Yvonne Arnaud team is back with another family focussed favourite, namely Robin Hood. Set in merry old England with a nasty sheriff, magical forest, chorus of villagers and ‘will they won’t they’ love story, Jack Counsel’s script and Joanna Read’s direction delivers an action-packed tale stuffed with silliness and… Continue reading Robin Hood

Once again, a joyful, fun-filled panto has arrived at the Cambridge Arts Theatre. This time, Cinderella has rolled into town on her flying pumpkin carriage, bringing magic and sparkle to the dark winter nights. Al Lockhart-Morley’s script is full of ‘dad jokes’ and one-liners, with some great political jibes (how quickly ‘Suella’ has become a… Continue reading Cinderella

This may not be for everybody, two solid hours without interval of Brecht’s writings delivered in German with English surtitles, but it is for me. Some extracts are in English; I prefer the original. I’m moved almost to tears, which takes me by surprise. Maybe it is its relevance to today’s global events that jolt… Continue reading Stranger Than The Moon / Fremder als der Mond

Two marquee names—Dickens and Marie Jones—combine for A Christmas Carol, this year’s seasonal offering on the main stage of Belfast’s Lyric Theatre. Translated to Victorian Belfast, Jones’s script is laced with the city’s broad, barkish vernacular, a dollop of its occasional lapsing into sentimentality and its robust way of storytelling. Little is changed of Dickens’s seminal… Continue reading A Christmas Carol

Based on the novel by Lauren Weisberger and the movie made from it, The Devil Wears Prada is set in the world of high fashion. It is the story of Andrea (known as Andy), a would-be journalist just out of university who gets a job as junior assistant to Miranda Priestly, the formidable editor of… Continue reading The Devil Wears Prada: A New Musical