Category: Reviews

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

When I reviewed Seattle Rep’s The Skin of Our Teeth, and mentioned I’d never attended any productions of it after fifty years of watching and writing about theatre, my editor wrote back that he was surprised I hadn’t seen it. Ditto, I hate to admit, with Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit. I had read both but… Continue reading Blithe Spirit

Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, and their bitterly antagonistic families meet on stage in a completely new, award-winning version from Ballet Cymru, the Cardiff-based Welsh touring ballet company. Does Romeo and Juliet end well? Sadly, most of us know the fate of the young lovers, and Jacob Myers—Romeo—and Gwenllian Davies—Juliet—portray them well, with, particularly,… Continue reading Romeo a Juliet