★★★★☆ Two actors, a spectre, a handful of characters, a few bits of saggy curtains, an old theatrical skip, a bentwood chair, a clothes rail and a lot of dust – but those are not the important ingredients. The most important ingredient, and the one we supply ourselves, is imagination.
Read More★★★★☆ This is a well-known and popular show but any reviewer must meet Buddy on its own terms. It isn’t a complex analytical take on the meteoric rise of a musical icon. This is a light-hearted biopic designed to get the audience singing and clapping along gleefully, which it admirably accomplishes.
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This year’s panto, Jack and the Beanstalk, is the current one of the rotating cycle of five titles which the Everyman produces and is much better than the previous one in 2011. What I like about Phil Clark’s pantomimes is that he eschews the tried (tired?) and tested formula of employing some obscure celebrity off the telly that no-one has ever heard of to appear in his shows in favour of real actors – and his shows are all the better for that.
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The real star of the show was the production itself. The concept, direction and, above all, the design, were outstanding and of the very highest quality. This is a production that would grace any stage in the land and is as good as I have seen anywhere, and I mean anywhere, in recent times. Breathtaking is a word I am loath to use but this was one of those shows where you sit there, snug in your seat, and are very conscious of enjoying every second and not wanting it to end.
Read MoreFinding the Will, with their Bard Heads strand, have come up with a clever idea for their raison d’être – they take a Shakespeare character who, in a monologue one-act play, reveals their back-story and tells what happened to him or her in the future, years after the play has finished, as it were. I like Jules Hobbs and Richard Curnow and their Bard Heads.
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