Author: Editor

An anxious woman in a red puffer jacket quickly pushes a child’s trolley carrying a small blue puffer-jacketed figure. She says she wants to stay in her apartment but has been told they must evacuate the area. It could be one of the regular scenes from Gaza. How many times have we witnessed that scene… Continue reading A Trojan Woman

It would be easy to mock Liz Truss, the Prime Minister of the UK whom the Daily Star pointed out did not outlast the shelf life of its live-streamed lettuce. (The lettuce makes an appearance in this production.) Indeed, there are amusing moments in Greg Wilkinson’s play that would easily lend themselves to a new… Continue reading The Last Days of Liz Truss?

It’s the most wonderful time of the year at Princess Hall in Aldershot, as audiences are transported to panto-land for an all-singing, all-dancing, glittery spectacular. For 2024, we are whisked to France for Beauty and the Beast, sometimes viewed as a rather problematic title but presented here sweetly with an emphasis on recognising the good in… Continue reading Beauty and the Beast

Capably written and directed by Jo Mawhinney and to stretch our imagination, this year’s panto has morphed the theatre into a giant boat, the good ship HMS Georgian Theatre Royal, set in the mythical coastal town of Richmond-by-the-Sea. And what seaside town would be complete without an ice-cream van? There are treasure maps, caskets of… Continue reading Treasure Island

Little Wolf knows about pantos. Success in nine categories in the Great British Pantomime Awards over the past six years speaks for itself. So any new production by the company has to be taken seriously, if you know what I mean. Cinderella is a typical Little Wolf staging: a visually glittering spectacular with astounding special… Continue reading Cinderella

It is 20 December 1933, and three strangers are impelled to take an overnight train from London’s Paddington to Cornwall. They are from different backgrounds, a medical doctor, Gordon Henderson, a dock worker and family man, James Macdonald, and an aristocrat, Lady Penelope Cunningham, but they share the same mission. If they reach Montague Manor… Continue reading Montague’s Millions

RuPaul’s Drag Race UK finalist Divina De Campo as evil Queen Morgiana steals the show in this year’s panto at Leicester’s De Montfort Hall. And never mind the poisoned apple, her heels are lethal. Imagine Theatre and De Montfort Hall have got a great team going behind the annual panto production, with several of the cast… Continue reading Snow White

Poznan Opera is celebrating the 120th anniversary of the birth and the 55th anniversary of the death of Witold Gombrowicz (1904–1969), one of Poland’s major modern playwrights. Every year between 1964 and 1975, British theatre impresario Peter Daubeny would organise a World Theatre Season, bringing foreign theatre companies to the Aldwych Theatre. One of the plays was… Continue reading The Marriage (Ślub)

The magnificence of Broadway Theatre’s renovated Art Deco interior seems to positively shimmer in the reflected sparkle of this year’s panto, Sleeping Beauty. At the helm is “acclaimed panto legend” Susie McKenna (hyperbole justified), so this is a show that is everything a panto should be. Written by McKenna, this Beauty is an up-to-date heroine,… Continue reading Sleeping Beauty

Narnia’s origin story, The Magician’s Nephew, proves apt seasonal programming for Belfast’s Sanctuary Theatre, a stone’s throw from where C S Lewis was born, in a production by Bright Umbrella marked with agreeably old-fashioned charm. Director Patsy Montgomery-Hughes makes imaginative use of the repurposed church venue, playing on, off and below the stage, the set a… Continue reading The Magician’s Nephew