Bristol OLD VIC

★★★★★ Occasionally, when all the elements that go into making theatre come together successfully, there can be alchemy, an enchantment that lifts a production to a level where it not only delivers delightful ...

★★★★★ ‘13’ is as stiff a challenge as you could imagine for this year’s BOVTS graduates. With multiple scene changes and cross-over conversations in a first half alone that stretched to almost an hour an...

★★★★★ It’s not difficult to find contemporary relevance in this timeless and timely drama. Overt up-dating is unnecessary and unwise - one recent production in Manhattan lost sponsorship because it had a Trum...

★★★☆☆ The piece is full of idiosyncratic individuals from the fictional seaside town of Llareggub who guide us through their day. The young players of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School have chosen this much-...

This has been a stimulating Directors’ Cuts season, and the best has been kept until last. Crave is an extraordinary prose-poem for which writer Sarah Kane supplied no setting, no stage directions and no descriptions o...

★★★☆☆ Writer, Chino Odimba’s BC/AD mash is a very Euripidean project of reimagining characters from traditional myth as contemporaries, with all the psychological nuance that we might now expect. So a modern...

★★★★★ The ‘Messiah’ becomes ‘The Beloved’ and his followers, a crestfallen bunch of activists, rummage around looking for some meaning and direction following his death. The chorus, much loved by Hande...

★★★★★ The very wonderful Linda Bassett, Deborah Findlay, Kika Markham and June Watson play Mrs Jarrett, Sally, Lena and Vi. Directed by James Macdonald this quartet come to life as an ensemble, hilariously so ...

★★★★☆ 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 delightf...

★★★☆☆ The Record, one of nine pieces 600 Highwaymen have created since 2009, veers towards being a kinetic art installation, brought to life by 40-plus Bristolians of all ages, sizes and backgrounds. Theatre ...

The Old Vic rounds off its 250th year with a magical retelling of Hans Christian Anderson’s tale, which director Lee Lyford describes as an epic emotional journey as well as a physical one. Gerda’s quest to save her ...

The very name Kneehigh is enough to inspire goose bumps of anticipation whenever a new production of theirs hits town. 946 is no exception. Directed by Emma Rice, this adaption of the Morpurgo tale sparkled from beginnin...