Graham Wyles

CLOSER EACH DAY at the Wardrobe, Bristol

Posted by Graham Wyles | 4 Feb 2015

” . . . Bristol is rapidly becoming something of a centre for improvised theatre and getting an early warm-up for the forthcoming Bristol Improv. Theatre Festival (BITFest) Closer Each Day last night gave the latest instalment of their improvised soap opera . . . Standup is now firmly established as a sub-genre and for one reason or another, perhaps its open-endedness and informality included, has become very popular. With a pint from downstairs to keep you going you might very well get hooked and find yourself going back to see how the unpredictable plots develop.

Alan Ayckbourn’s ROUNDELAY at Bath Theatre Royal

Posted by Graham Wyles | 3 Feb 2015

” . . . For me the four plays didn’t hang together and were only saved from complete collapse by some good acting. E.M.Forster gives a useful distinction of the difference between a random sequence and a plot; whereas, ‘The king died then the queen died’, is a story, ‘The king died then the queen died of grief’, is a plot in virtue of the fact that the latter contains the element of causality. In Roundelay Mr. Ayckbourn has lost the plot in that sense, but hasn’t quite given us a satisfying replacement . . . ”

GROUNDED at the Arnolfini, Bristol

Posted by Graham Wyles | 29 Jan 2015

“. . This performance by Lucy Ellison is as intense and concentrated a piece of acting as you are likely to find anywhere on the contemporary stage . . . The direction by Christopher Haydon gets the most from the scenario, leading his actress in such a way as to maintain interest with great economy of stagecraft . . . George Brant does not offer any alternative point of view or any answers, but he does raise some fundamental, important and urgent questions about the way we go about killing one another. This is theatre at its most vital, brilliantly acted.”

WILDE WITHOUT THE BOY and THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL at the Ustinov, Bath

Posted by Graham Wyles | 17 Jan 2015

A one-man show has obvious challenges, but equally offers a world of possibilities. Unconfined by a rigid or specific set our imaginations, at the merest prompting can take us anywhere the dramatist would care to lead. In the first half of the show director and dramatist, Gareth Armstrong, has his Oscar in black Victorian morning suit on a black stage against a black background and there we stay.

WAR HORSE at the Bristol Hippodrome

Posted by Graham Wyles | 15 Jan 2015

“The directors have learned that fundamental lesson of theatre (known indeed by striptease artists) that to suggest is often more powerful than to show. Morris’s other revival, Swallows and Amazons, bears this out. He has become a master of imaginative stagecraft and like Orson Welles, who brought Moby Dick to the London stage some half century ago, he relishes making the seemingly impossible possible. Total war calls for total theatre and in this production the two are well matched. “

Author: Graham Wyles

CLOSER EACH DAY at the Wardrobe, Bristol

Alan Ayckbourn’s ROUNDELAY at Bath Theatre Royal

GROUNDED at the Arnolfini, Bristol

WILDE WITHOUT THE BOY and THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL at the Ustinov, Bath

WAR HORSE at the Bristol Hippodrome

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Don’t miss new reviews!

Pin It on Pinterest