This co-production with the New Vic brings back to the professional stage one of the most performed plays in the UK, mainly due to its popularity amongst amateur theatre companies who are often crying out for light comedies with mainly female casts. It’s set in Hull in 2005, the year that Royal Ascot moved north… Continue reading Ladies’ Day
Category: Reviews
Top Girls
Five women—spanning several centuries of history—walk into a restaurant… So not the standard set-up for a joke, but a timely revival of Caryl Churchill’s 1980s dissection of Girl Power. The infamous five are there to celebrate the very modern Marlene’s appointment as managing director of Top Girls employment agency. As they all relax into their… Continue reading Top Girls
The Cunning Little Vixen
This particular staging of The Cunning Little Vixen—directed by Sir David Pountney in 1980 as part of a Janáček season performed by Scottish Opera and the Welsh National Opera—has gained the reputation of an enduring classic. For Rupert Christiansen, former opera critic of The Daily Telegraph, Pountney’s version “skilfully treads the fine line” between “sentimentalized,… Continue reading The Cunning Little Vixen
Venus & Adonis and Dido & Aeneas
These beautifully staged performances, very much in the style in which they were first seen, present an ideal opportunity to compare the work of John Blow with that of the pupil who would succeed and surpass him, Henry Purcell. Blow’s 45-minute work, the first surviving opera in English, directly inspired Purcell’s 50-minute masterpiece in its… Continue reading Venus & Adonis and Dido & Aeneas
Maud
On 23 February 2020, the young unarmed black man Ahmaud “Maud” Arbery, was jogging in Satilla Shores, Georgia when he was pursued by three white men in vehicles. Two of them were carrying guns. One admitted, “I yelled stop or I’ll blow your fucking head off.” They weren’t sure he’d done anything wrong but spent… Continue reading Maud
The Winter’s Tale
The three distinct parts of Sean Holmes’s modern dress production of The Winter’s Tale lasting over three hours are most comfortable in the second part after the interval when the audience is taken from the Wanamaker to the main theatre where everyone is seated either in the lower gallery or at a bench seat in… Continue reading The Winter’s Tale
Women, Beware the Devil
Do you believe in the Devil? You’ll find him today, a prologue to this play at the Almeida, bemoaning that we don’t give him the credit for what he does as he scans the news in the Evening Standard before taking us back to the mid-seventeenth century when people took him suitably seriously. It is… Continue reading Women, Beware the Devil
The Last Vagabonds
The Last Vagabonds lets us glimpse the unhappy mind of the young student Bill (Teddy Monroe). He’s at odds with the world and uncertain of what he wants or even whom he wants to be with. His wealthy parents try to support him, but he’s not really connected with them despite his dad, the Head… Continue reading The Last Vagabonds
Oklahoma
Don’t expect any uplifting sequences in Oklahoma directed by Daniel Fish. This is a production that explores a more disturbing side of America. Gun displays line the walls, songs are often given a minimal country and western tilt and, just so the audience isn’t lulled into any dreamlike state, it feels as if the house… Continue reading Oklahoma
Around the World in 80 Days
Using elements of fringe and physical theatre, a circus setting, and an abundant supply of acting energy, no-one could dispute that this production goes around, and around, in all sorts of ways. It’s a production that started life as mobile street theatre, touring York, and is a co-production between that city’s Theatre Royal and theatre… Continue reading Around the World in 80 Days