Anita Dobson, beloved by many for her appearances as Angie Watts in EastEnders and in Strictly Come Dancing stole the night with her hilarious entrance as the bedraggled, soaked and much-duped mother of the very naughty Tony. Michael Pennington seethed nicely throughout as Mr Hardcastle, and a very chirpy Catherine Steadman as Kate connived effectively to win her somewhat dubious (you’d have to say) man.
Read More
I Am Hamlet is a play by Richard James, available by online publisher and rights agent Lazy Bee and apparently award-winning. With its am-dram setting and pseudo intellectualism, it’s been a hit amongst amateur theatre companies for the past couple of years, elsewhere it had a mixed reception. Importantly, this week at The Wardrobe it’s the turn of Bristol-based company, Page2Stage.
Read More
“. . . I am not a dance aficionado but I can find a night watching a good modern ballet company as satisfying as seeing a great play and wonderful acting. So, it may be just my uninformed imagination, but there seem to be rather a lot of small(ish) independent dance troupes around at the moment . . . New English Ballet Theatre is certainly a company to keep an eye on and one which, when they become fully aware of their strengths, will no doubt become major players.
Read More
Originally commissioned and broadcast as part of BBC Radio 4’s More Than Words listening festival in 2012, Owen Sheers’ uncompromising piece about three young men from Bristol who enlist in the army, and the ensuing price they and their partners and relatives pay for that decision explodes onto the Bristol Old Vic stage with a young cast on top of its game. This is a tour-de-force worth catching, and surely the antidote of antidotes to all war games-style army adverts.
Read More
The cast of the New International Encounter company are clearly out to have some fun with characters and plot and go to it with relish and invention. The on-stage piano, for example, doubles as train and elephant and the various stages in the race, from Suez to New York, are drawn with elegant economy. The balloon stage of the race is a little gem. The international cast (they tell us) are an ensemble and not credited with particular roles (fair enough), take a fairly broad brush approach to the characters.
Read More
Part of the CHELTENHAM MUSIC FESTIVAL. Satie was a true eccentric who meticulously catalogued his life and thoughts in words and so it was an easy, and maybe obvious, choice to combine the writings with the music. Meurig Bowen who devised and wrote the show took us chronologically through the composer’s life and times and the presentation was itself, befittingly, a little eccentric.
Read More