★★☆☆☆ Translating the inner to the outer is the challenge facing many an adapter of novels for the stage. Some things skip from page to stage whilst others have to be dragged, bullied and injected with various performance enhancing concoctions. The present offering at the Theatre Royal, however, seems to have developed a resistance to any such persuasions.
Read More
★★★★☆ Looking for the perfect antidote to Trump, Brexit and a second general election in two years? Well, here you go! Anything that can light up a miserable, wet Monday evening in Bristol as effectively as this definitely has the necessary medicinal properties . . . For some simple feel-good, escapist razzmatazz, head on down to the Hippodrome.
Read More
★★★☆☆ Don’t Dress for Dinner is an unashamed farce. Following a couple in their house in the French countryside, both husband and wife are trying to smuggle their respective lovers into the house without arousing suspicion. Within an elaborate web of improbably bluffs, mistaken identities and gross misunderstandings, chaos naturally ensues . . . if you want a good laugh in a so far dreary June, this fits the bill.
Read More
★★★☆☆ The piece is full of idiosyncratic individuals from the fictional seaside town of Llareggub who guide us through their day. The young players of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School have chosen this much-loved grand old master to showcase their voices and talents during a tour of the West Country, which started at the Backwell Playhouse last night.
Read More
★★★★★ The Golem is as old as the human imagination. In Jewish mythology it is a shapeless mass of living stuff formed from the earth. It is Adam without a soul. It is Frankenstein’s creation, it is Capek’s ‘robot’, Tolkien’s malign creature . . . Golem, this timely modern parable, is packed with innovation, imagery, music and thought provoking episodes that fill the ninety minutes with unalloyed theatrical magic.
Read More
★★★★☆ The plot is a simple one; a young boy is bored having to spend nights away at Granny’s consuming a variety of cabbage based dishes, the tedium punctuated only by playing Scrabble and waiting for the inevitable very audible farting. This soon gives way to growing sense of wonder when real life is presented as not all it seems.
Read More