★★★☆☆ The time is now, the place is a remote Chinese factory town. A metallic café stage setting with two landings, flashes and throbs with digital lighting and percussive music. But the action played out assumes the co-existence of an eternal spirit world, alongside the Chinese capitalist take on communism.
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★★★☆☆ Two gentlemen in dressing-gowns and nightcaps peer out nervously from behind a curtain. They appear reassured that they have an audience, so they emerge, resplendent now in rather garish outfits . . . The latter part of the show included a very satisfactory moose hunt, requiring a brave volunteer moose.
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★★★☆☆ Combining the music and lyrics of Ray Davies with Joe Penhall’s biographical book of the singer songwriter, Sunny Afternoon tells the story of The Kinks getting their break in the music business and their subsequent travails with managers, money men and unions, on an upward but sometimes tempestuous trajectory to rock’n’roll fame.
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★★★★★ Sally Cookson has taken Frederico Fellini’s 1954 Oscar winning masterpiece and, while retaining all the original elements, has produced a piece of innovative, vibrant and exciting theatre that is a near-masterpiece in itself . . . [she] produces some of the most exciting and original theatre currently extant and you won’t find a better example of it than La Strada.
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★★★☆☆ Pugilist Specialist is undeniably a ‘wordy’ play. Shaplin is so keen to pack each line with a startling image or an amusing witticism that it all becomes rather static. It has a great deal to say about a whole range of topics, not the least being gender politics, but as a depiction of a ‘black ops’ mission it is often rather hard going.
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★★★★☆ The set is fantastically inventive; there is wood, plenty of it, along with tyres, ropes and tubes; just like at the Vench. And the little touches with scene-markers, torches and traffitape are delightful. Stephen Warbeck’s music is the nail that joins the planks together and director Jeremy Herrin smartly assembles the whole lot, which enables the vision to be realised.
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