★★★☆☆ This production proved to be a pleasant surprise. The abridgment of the story was neatly done, the characters were true to the original, and the acting and singing were excellent. I could have watched Ben Watson as the delightfully temperamental James Mortmain all night.
Read More
★★★☆☆ Anne Reid as the accidental activist has the last word, delivered as a speech direct to the audience, casting doubt over the familiar pro-fracking nostrums and having by now fully un-retired herself from public life. Fracked!, directed by Richard Wilson, is on tour from the Chichester Festival Theatre. It is easily digestible stuff, which last night provided plenty of laughs to keep the Theatre Royal audience chuckling along.
Read More
Last night we had a lesson in the value of an actor, that is, what an actor can bring to a script. Following the untimely death of Tim Pigott-Smith who was to play the lead role in Miller’s bitter bouquet to a lost way of life and filial love, Nicholas Woodeson has bravely stepped into the part with a mere two weeks to learn the lines. Unsurprisingly last night’s performance could only reach the heights of a well-rehearsed read-through with Mr Woodeson understandably some way from being ‘off book’.
Read More
★★★★☆ The first act consists of Tangent, where the dancers enact the movement of the seasons to Jason Ridgway’s piano music. It’s no reflection of the skill of the dancers or the quality of Ridgway’s accompaniment that I found this the least interesting of the pieces. Certainly the troupe do a good job of evoking the flirtations of spring and the dourness of winter, etc. . . . the Richard Alston Dance Company performed a holistically impressive show.
Read More
★★★★★ It’s clear that Theatre Témoin have done their research for this piece and are passionate about the themes it tackles. Their program notes and website list the organisations they have collaborated with and include quotes from the homeless and those with mental health issues, and they have organised symposiums around the topics as part of this play’s touring programme.
Read More
★★★☆☆ Writer, Chino Odimba’s BC/AD mash is a very Euripidean project of reimagining characters from traditional myth as contemporaries, with all the psychological nuance that we might now expect. So a modern tale of marital infidelity and familial breakup is superimposed on Euripides’ original with Medea becoming a present day Maddy . . . this is a novel reworking of a much interpreted classic which has enable the Old Vic to present some noteworthy talent.
Read More