Category: Reviews

The current visit by Opera North to The Lowry includes some radical productions and one undeniable classic. A wicked woman with a heart of gold is a standard feature of melodrama but has seldom been better used than in Verdi’s La Traviata. Knowing she is on borrowed time, Violetta Valéry (Máire Flavin), suffering from tuberculous,… Continue reading La Traviata

“The only thing that will be left after a nuclear holocaust is cockroaches and Cher.” This is not a word-perfect quotation—and the identity of the quipper has been lost—but the sentiment it conveys is loud and clear: Cher is a survivor. She is also a musical chameleon, renowned for reinventing her image and music on… Continue reading The Cher Show

Trying to bottle the mercurial comedy genius of Spike Milligan into a stage play was never going to be easy. A whole post-war generation grew up honing their impressions of his radio Goon Show characters, such as Bluebottle and Eccles, or learning the lyrics to the “Ying Tong Song”. It is those same fans who… Continue reading Spike

I go to see this simulation whilst in the real world more missiles rain down on Kyiv and casualties mount up… Nothing can match the surreal, demented logic of the parallel universe in which Putin awards ‘City of Military Glory’ to Melitopol and Mariupol—similar to ‘Hero City’ awarded to cities that held off the Nazis—retaliation… Continue reading Hold Tight

As has often been the case in the past, Oldham Coliseum kicks off the UK’s panto season—and puts on sale tickets for next year’s Sleeping Beauty—but sadly, this follows closely on the announcement that this historic local venue is to lose its Arts Council funding. This is referred to in perhaps the best gag of… Continue reading Robin Hood

In 2010, Fisherman’s Friends—a group of shanty-singing fishermen from Cornwall—achieved the seemingly impossible by landing a £1 million record deal, storming the album charts and performing on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. It’s the kind of far-fetched rags-to-riches tale that upholds Lord Byron’s famous remark that “truth is stranger than fiction”. Given the heart-warming nature… Continue reading Fisherman’s Friends: The Musical

Remembrance Day, 11 November, is the day I see NEBT’s Cycles of Loss and Love, and what more apt than a return of Wayne Eagling’s Remembrance, which was paired with former English National Ballet Soloist Jenna Lee’s The Four Seasons in 2018 at the Peacock Theatre. Tonight we only get an extract from Eagling’s work,… Continue reading Cycles of Loss and Love: Nocturne / War Women Waiting / Re(Current) / The Four Seasons

As Kevin Landis acknowledges in his introduction to the first book that this reader has seen with a 2023 publication date, the undisputed champion of theatre history is Daniel Rosenthal’s The National Theatre Story. While Landis has less lofty ambitions, he has written an informative and very readable book that takes readers into the heart… Continue reading One Public: New York’s Public Theater in the Era of Oskar Eustis

Vakula loves Oksana, but she teases him that she will only marry him if he gives her the Tsarina’s slippers, so the honest smith kidnaps the devil, the lover of his mother, the witch Solokha, and together they fly to the palace where his unsophisticated charm wins over Her Excellency. Rimsky-Korsakov loved fairy stories from… Continue reading Christmas Eve

Remembrance Day, 11 November, is the day I see NEBT’s Cycles of Loss and Love, and what more apt than a return of Wayne Eagling’s Remembrance, which was paired with former English National Ballet Soloist Jenna Lee’s The Four Seasons in 2018 at the Peacock Theatre. Tonight we only get an extract from Eagling’s work,… Continue reading Cycles of Loss and Love: Nocturne / War Women Waiting / Re(Current) / The Four Seasons