Month: January 2025

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

This is a jolly rendition of Sleeping Beauty, which starts with the familiar story then, retaining the plot, largely leaves convention behind. So it starts with Carabosse, feeling spurned for being excluded from the Princess’s naming ceremony, vengefully condemning Bella to prick her finger and die. But with a novel twist, it is Yorkshire’s underachieving… Continue reading Sleeping Beauty

First performed in 1992 and staged only fitfully since then, Northern Ballet’s version of A Christmas Carol is further proof of the company’s flair for creating enthralling narrative dance spectacles. With its combination of dynamic choreography (courtesy of Massimo Moricone) and lucid storytelling, I would rank A Christmas Carol alongside Cathy Marston’s version of Jane Eyre and David Nixon’s retelling of The Great Gatsby as… Continue reading A Christmas Carol

A billowing, grey silk curtain like a ship’s wind-buffeted sail fills the proscenium arch, and the thunder of a musical storm is already building up a tempest as the audience arrive, a foretaste of what is to follow when the lights go down. Less noticed, but equally ominous, the stage is flanked by towers of… Continue reading The Tempest

Glitzy, glossy and full of razzmatazz, Crossroads Pantomimes’ engaging Snow White is exactly what big budget pantos are all about: much singing, dancing, pyrotechnics, sumptuous costumes, jokes and slapstick. Lesley Joseph (Birds of a Feather, Sister Act and ITV’s Love Your Weekend) is resplendent as the wickedest Queen Dragonella, desperate to be the fairest in the land and aiming to… Continue reading Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs