Author: Editor

Peter James is one of the world’s most successful thriller writers. His fictional character Roy Grace, the lead character of his police procedural novels which all contain the word “dead” in their title, is reported to be Queen Camilla’s favourite detective. Over the past decade, James’s novels have been turned into stage plays. They are… Continue reading Picture You Dead

The Yard Theatre finishes its fourteen-year existence in its existing building with a stylistically adventurous production of Tennessee Williams’s memory play The Glass Menagerie. Tom (Tom Varey), standing to one side of the stage, tells us he is taking us back to “the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school… Continue reading The Glass Menagerie

In the midst of preparing for the inevitable exclusion from the list of multi-year funded organisations, Dogstar have found themselves producing a text that similarly has suffered a cull, as The Testament of Gideon Mack from next year onwards will no longer be part of the National 5 English curriculum. Taking the opportunity to tour… Continue reading The Testament of Gideon Mack

A humanoid figure with a donkey’s head lies on a hospital bed in a small, clean room. A book of Shakespeare sonnets lies on his chest. As the dawn rises, we see this elderly man’s day begin: nurses and doctors come to check on him, offering food and assessing his condition. Family members visit, bringing… Continue reading What Dreams May Come

The photographs displayed above are so different that readers may wonder if they really can belong to the same production. And they would not be far wrong. Although Il Bajazet carries the name of Vivaldi on the sleeve, it is the work of many hands, what in 1735 Verona was known as a pasticcio, to you and me… Continue reading Il Bajazet

A show about mid-life women by a mid-life woman and based on anthropologist Dr Isabel de Salis’s research into 50 menopausal women for over 10 years, Mid Life is poignant, funny, over-reaching and frustrating by turns. There is a lot packed into just 90 uninterrupted minutes, from the physical and mental effects of perimenopause and menopause, to… Continue reading Mid Life

This revival of Nick Payne’s intimate two-hander packs a lot into ninety minutes: six decades in fact, beginning in 1942 when young lovers Leonard and Violet give their families invented explanations for not coming home and book into a Bath hotel for a night together, their first and their last before Leonard goes off to… Continue reading One Day When We Were Young

A lively show that mixes live drumming with theatre, judo, dance and wrestling. At the centre, is Jenni (Jennifer) Jackson telling us, repeatedly, she was a Junior Judo Champion (which in real life, she was) and a reason she fights with such passion and determination. Jennifer Jackson is also a performer, director and writer and… Continue reading WRESTLELADSWRESTLE

Hope Mill’s latest production is a play rather than a musical, but one with a musical theme. Peter Quilter’s 20-year-old play centres on the true story of Florence Foster Jenkins, the American socialite from the early twentieth century who was proclaimed as one of the worst opera singers in history but who sold out Carnegie… Continue reading Glorious