★★★★☆ This production by the Saint Petersburg Classic Ballet company, under the direction of Marina Medvetskaya, opts for the romantic version of Tchaikovsky’s intricate ballet . . . Rothbart, the sorcerer, is played by Dmitry Popov as an out and out grotesque, his black owl costume giving a kind of dark reptilian lustre to his taut, angular movements.
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★★★☆☆ Jane Austen’s book opens with one of the most famous, and possibly most sexist, lines in the history of English literature. Perhaps the concepts of men being in want of a wife, or marriage being the life goal for women, are things we wouldn’t recognise in our modern western society . . . Regent’s Park Theatre company have brought their swanky and stylish version of this costume drama to the elegant Theatre Royal in Bath.
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★★★★☆ Biscuit Land of the title is neither a real place, nor a fantasy setting. Performer Jess Thom says the word “biscuit” thousands of times a day. After watching the show, Biscuit Land feels like a perspective, an approach – Thom letting us see things her way. It’s an angle of unrestrained creativity.
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★★★☆☆ This one-man show has songs which thread through the piece, illustrating as they do Sowande’s first love – music. The atmosphere is for the most part congenial, delivered with the comfortable, measured pace of a lawyer anxious for exactitude in unpacking the salient details and passions of a life well-lived.
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 harmless interval of silly nonsense will no doubt bring some much-needed light relief from the background anxieties of national and international politics as it crisscrosses the land – a tittering while Rome falls perhaps . . . throughout, Nigel Hook’s collapsing stage always vied for as much attention as the players.
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