NEL at the Wardrobe Theatre, Bristol

The show starts with the cast wandering around a semi-lit stage as though testing out the sound props, but within one minute of the lights coming up you know that you are in safe hands. The four women engage with the audience with an easy professionalism and humour that puts everyone at their ease. It looks simple but requires excellent direction and much hard work. Every few minutes there is a new imaginative and amusing theatrical trick and the quick fire togetherness is always immaculate.

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THE BIRTHDAY PARTY at the Everyman, Cheltenham

As with all Pinter’s plays, we are never quite sure what is going on, who is doing what to whom, and why. The Birthday Party takes place in a drab and dreary sea-side boarding house (or is it?), run by deck-chair-man Petey and his mousey, compliant wife Meg whose sole purpose in life seems to be the providing of an nice breakfast. . . If you like Pinter you should grab this chance while you can, the next one may not be along for a while.

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PINK MIST at Bristol Old Vic

It tells the story of three young Bristol boys, friends since primary school, who enlist in the army to escape the banality and tick-tock drudgery of civilian life. Arthur has been driving cars off the container ships at Portbury docks: ‘… parking them in perfect lines, like headstones in a cemetery… Every day. Every week. Every month.’ Geraint – inevitably known as Taff – has been working as an apprentice, ‘on crap pay to a St Paul’s plumber’, and he is hungry for something different . . . I left the theatre feeling deeply grateful that neither of my boys followed the path taken by Arthur and his friends. Pink Mist is unmissable.

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TOAST on tour

In the programme, Richard Bean says “I’m interested in entertaining an audience rather than changing the world or becoming an auteur”, and he certainly does entertain the audience. Full of sweary banter and genuinely funny jokes, you come out of it feeling like you’ve heard some fun stories down the pub. I didn’t feel I had learned a moral message on leaving the play, but I don’t think Bean wanted to do that. He just wanted to display the much more complicated story of how men’s minds work, and how people find meaning in their life . . .

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HAMLET at the Tobacco Factory, Bristol

There are critics who measure all performances of the great roles against some supposed ideal; Holness ought to be such and such, Othello ought to be so and, this Macbeth didn’t have that quality, Portia should have done it like this and so on. How tiresome! Would the world be better off if Shakespeare had left detailed notes on how his plays should be played and staged? Of course not. Give us a different Shylock, make us look again at Prince Hal. That’s not to say anything goes . . .

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KING LEAR at Blackwell’s, Oxford

The play takes place in Blackwell’s wonderful Norrington Room . . . it’s a lovely space to enjoy a play, surrounded by such a wealth of knowledge and literature. Creation Theatre channels the bookish vibe by using books as some of their very minimal props and to create clever sound effects. The costume design is outstanding, taking the drama outside of a particular time or place and allowing the personal aspect of Shakespeare’s play to take precedence over a more political setting.

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