★★★☆☆ Director Sam Pritchard projects Shaw’s play into what he calls Pygmalion-land, a floating time zone swinging between Edwardian manners, video inserts, voice sampling and hip-hop. But traditionalists: please continue reading. The play is full of current relevance . . . So it’s two cheers for innovative effort, amidst regrets about the missing period elegance.
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★★★★☆ Friday night, 8pm, and the third Bristol Improv Marathon begins. A collection of over 30 performers (assisted by theatre technicians, musicians and theatre staff) create an entirely improvised, unscripted play using nothing but their skill and imagination.
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★★★☆☆ Like many a folk tale the story reeks of allegory. An immigrant Italian ice cream seller, Jim (Valeria Compagnoni) meets a beautiful American girl, Alice (Lexie McDougall) whom he rescues from drowning and the unkind attentions of a shark, off the beach of 1950’s Coney Island.
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★★★★★ The very wonderful Linda Bassett, Deborah Findlay, Kika Markham and June Watson play Mrs Jarrett, Sally, Lena and Vi. Directed by James Macdonald this quartet come to life as an ensemble, hilariously so when singing their version of The Crystals’ De Doo Ron Ron, and with depth and sensitivity when exploring the shadowy side of these characters’ lives.
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★★★★★ I realised last night that I was privileged to be at a very special theatrical event when at the end, the audience rose as one to give the cast a standing ovation. The spontaneity of this response was amazing and even produced some tears on stage. Whether this was some catharsis due to past difficulties, I don’t know, but Sheridan Smith was fantastic as Fanny Brice.
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★★★★☆ In this highly entertaining, personally revealing and slightly political piece the two actual flatmates – or friends as Louise prefers to call themselves– explore the lives of people who used to live in their unloved and messy flat.
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