Category: Reviews

A retelling of classical Greek mythology is one thing, but a retelling through the eyes of the Gorgon Medusa, notorious for turning anyone into stone with one glance, is guaranteed to put you on the edge of your seat. In this one-woman show, Deborah Pugh takes us on a nerve-tingling romp through the Trojan Wars,… Continue reading Beautiful Evil Things

My Neighbour Totoro was a hit as soon as ticket sales opened, the best sales ever in the history of the Barbican, which shows what affection the 1988 film by Hayao Miyazakiand Studio Ghibli commands. To hand it to Improbable’s Phelim McDermott to direct and to have Joe Hisaishi’s (he is also executive producer) score played… Continue reading My Neighbour Totoro

A church is always an interesting setting for a theatrical production—dependent upon your own relationship with religion, the building can be welcoming or foreboding, comforting or imposing. That duality therefore makes the Victorian pomp of St Nicholas’ in Guildford an appropriately atmospheric setting for Guildford Shakespeare’s latest production, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde. Making… Continue reading Jekyll & Hyde

James Woolf’s play comes with some anticipation as he picked up one of three Offie Award nominations earlier in the year for Jo and Sam Find Themselves In Woking. Like Joe and Sam, also directed by Katherine Reilly, his The Play With Speeches was first seen at the Hen and Chickens and arrives south of… Continue reading The Play With Speeches

A detective story wrapped up in spooky Halloween garb, Cahoots NI’s seasonally-accented The Ghost House is an immersive treat for younger audiences. Promenaded through the midnight-dark spaces of former shop units in Belfast’s Cityside Retail and Leisure Park, it marks the company’s contribution to this year’s Belfast International Arts Festival and its return to the pop-up venue… Continue reading The Ghost House

Developed in collaboration with Autism Anglia, this is a piece that is touching, thought-provoking and humorous in equal parts. And suitable for anyone from 9 to 90! Emerging from an original short improvisation, writer Tommy Campe has worked with Colchester Arts Centre creatives and director Ollie Harrington of Found in Translation to create a piece… Continue reading Bring Back Chainmail

If you love musicals, an exhibition has just opened in the Theatre and Performance galleries of the V&A that celebrates the musical with a display of items in the museum’s collections that will intrigue and dazzle and spark off memories. There are costumes and costume designs, set models, scores, technical drawings, props, posters and record… Continue reading Re:Imagining Musicals

The last year in school can be a testing time in many ways and, if you happen to be Muslim in Britain, there is that extra difficulty of racism. Karim Khan’s generally upbeat, fast-moving play explores these things in what initially feels like a mildly amusing situation comedy but becomes more serious over its nineteen… Continue reading Brown Boys Swim

A hilarious and joyful evening in the newly named Tanya Moiseivitsch Playhouse at the Crucible is provided by Tom Basden’s adaptation of Dario Fo’s brilliant farce about police corruption. The adaptation brings the play up to date and places it in a British context at a time when incidents of police brutality, racial discrimination and… Continue reading Accidental Death of an Anarchist