Songs From A Ledge is a new blues musical featuring original music which tells the story of the fictional blues star Maria Lynwood who is known as the ‘red queen’. . . The show is dark, witty and has heart to it. . . A bold new piece, with a clever script and score full of wistful moments. Sure, it needs some refinements to ensure it engages throughout; but the raw material makes for a compelling watch.
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“. . . It is the fate of all ground-breaking works that their effect on subsequent audiences can never quite be the same as for those who experienced the thrill of seeing something new which escapes the conventions of the time. So the step towards realism which to us seems tame and almost comical when not actually melodramatic can no longer be a feature of the pleasure a work such as Carmen gives us today. . . “
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“Frantic Assembly’s modern take on Shakespeare’s Othello is not your everyday Shakespeare production. It is a re-imagining of the famous tale on quite a large scheme: it is striking, especially physically as you would expect from this company . . . The story is brought up to date and set in a pub, complete with chavs in tracksuits, a pool table and gang warfare. . . Steven Miller gives the stand-out performance of the evening; he speaks the text as if it is his natural tongue.”
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The play centres on the aftermath of the overthrow of Captain Bligh in 1789 and the mutineers who find themselves in the middle of the South Pacific on the island of Pitcairn. Led by Fletcher Christian, played by Tom Morley, six mutineers and nine Tahitians attempt to build a utopian ideal and ‘true’ democracy, based on freedom, equality and fraternity. But not all are equal, patriarchy prevails, and in the end Fletcher uses both violent oppression and lies to achieve his goals.
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It is a formidable task to create a play suitable for a family audience that nevertheless conveys something of the realities of life and death in the trenches of the First World War. Director Toby Hulse has responded to this challenge by devising a production inspired by Michael Foreman’s beautifully illustrated novella War Game, the winner of the 1993 Nestle Children’s Book Prize. This features the Christmas Day truce of 1914, when soldiers from both sides sang carols, exchanged gifts and played an impromptu game of football.
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“. . . The second act is pitched far more cutely, buoyed by the tremendous performance of Paul Curievici as the ridiculous Titorelli. His comedy is apparent, his grin is wide, yet there is a penumbral source of consternation, a creeping dread. The mercurial quality that the production is attempting to achieve seems most concrete in Curievici’s performance, as opposed to the broad strokes of Bennett and Folwell . . . It is an enjoyable, perverse and kinetic production, one held back by its unwillingness to be more perverse.”
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