Category: Reviews

York Theatre Royal’s pantomime has undergone a transformation in the last couple of years, with the new team of director Juliet Foster and writer Paul Hendy reuniting after last year’s well-received Cinderella. I’m pleased to report that it’s a winning partnership, and the result is a gloriously vibrant romp through some well-loved tropes and jokes,… Continue reading All New Adventures of Peter Pan

Tchaikovsky was one of the dedicatees of Stravinsky’s mini-opera Mavra and the 30-minute folk tale from Pushkin is a perfect companion piece for the earlier composer’s last opera, the one-act Iolanta. It’s not the first time these two rarities have been staged as a double-bill, but what’s new about this excellent Bavarian production is that… Continue reading Mavra/Iolanta

What happens when you take a questionable plot, loud and wonderful costumes, a string of terrible jokes and an evening of sing-a-longs and slapstick? Yes, that’s right, it’s panto season again, except this time there aren’t COVID or omicron outbreaks to disrupt the fun. The Cambridge Arts gala panto night is quite renowned in these… Continue reading Dick Whittington and his Cat

There was an explosion of energy when Evolution’s Jack and the Beanstalk was performed at the Lyceum last night. Actors, ensemble and musicians were supercharged and delighted a packed audience with gags, familiar routines, a blaze of light and colour and a sequence of foot-tapping popular songs. Damian Williams is again Sheffield’s outrageous Dame in an array… Continue reading Jack and the Beanstalk

Michael Grandage’s sumptuous and colourful production of Neil Bartlett’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel begins with the teenage young lordling in his nightshirt asking “Who am I? Whom do I love?” Then there are four centuries of finding out a multiplicity of answers captured in a non-stop eighty minutes. Woolf herself is there as… Continue reading Orlando

People are often dismissive of pantomimes, and I can understand why. After all, they are designed to be silly and throwaway, relying upon a catalogue of well-established conventions that allow children—many of whom will be experiencing live theatre for the first time—to follow what is happening on stage. At worst, they can be dull affairs,… Continue reading Dick Whittington: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Panto

VOXED, associate company at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, premièred its latest work It’s not me… at Dance City on Friday 2 December to a well-filled auditorium. It’s a strong and moving dance theatre performance about climate change using text, dance and music. The premise is a conversation between Earth, played by an unseen Juliana Lisk, and a… Continue reading It’s not me…

When the English-language version of Les Misérables made its West End debut in 1985, the critics immediately began sharpening their knives. For Francis King, writing in The Sunday Telegraph, the musical was a “lurid Victorian melodrama produced with Victorian lavishness”. Other commentators complained that Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schőnberg—the creators of the original French production—had… Continue reading Les Misérables

Things are not looking good for Jack at the start of Chickenshed’s festive version of Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack (performed in the blue rota by Ellie Carroll) lives with her family in dire poverty, often relying on food banks to eat. Her father, who used to run the local amusement arcade, died when she… Continue reading Jack

The highly successful production team of Plested, Brown and Wilsher return with their fifth pantomime, Jack and the Beanstalk, at the Corn Exchange and it’s a giant, fun-filled family show that sparkles with seasonal cheer. The capacity audience were certainly in for a Christmas treat. There were many new twists to this well-known story starting… Continue reading Jack and the Beanstalk