REVIEW: AGES OF THE MOON (Vaults) ★★★★
Sam Shepard, who died in 2017, left a fascinating and challenging set of American plays written between 1963 and 2012, which collected many awards including Buried Child and Fool For Love. Ages Of The Moon from late in his career makes its UK debut at the inelegant Vaults at Waterloo. The theatre’s decrepit feel is as […]
REVIEW: BERYL (Arcola Theatre) ★★★★
Beryl, written by Maxine Peake, gets a London transfer from East Riding Theatre to Arcola Theatre in Dalston. Starting life as a radio play in 2012, the stage version was commissioned as part of the celebration of the Tour of France’s visit to Yorkshire in 2014. The star of the title is Beryl Burton, the […]
REVIEW: Sinatra: Raw (Wilton’s Music Hall) ★★★★
This was my first visit to Wilton’s Music Hall and I have to say it is a beautiful venue. The main auditorium is like a small Cadogan Hall, with balcony seating which afforded a great view of the stage. The show is performed by Richard Shelton, a British actor who now resides in America, who […]
REVIEW: TOAST (Richmond Theatre) ★★★
Nigel Slater‘s 2003 book Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger was converted into a stage play by Henry Filloux-Bennett in 2018 and is now halfway through a UK tour which runs until 7 December 2019 . This week it is at the wonderful Richmond Theatre (although the raised false stage set behind the proscenium arch […]
REVIEW: Dissociated (Etcetera Theatre) ★★★
One doesn’t attend performances at tiny above pub venues like the Etcetera Theatre expecting to see polished and ready for the west end shows and Dissociated is certainly no exception. However, it has a nugget of what could be a truly beautiful, courageous and successful show. Alex played by Eloise Jones is a twenty-seven year […]
REVIEW: GREAT EXPECTATIONS (Southwark Playhouse) ★★★★
Neil Bartlett’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic novel, Great Expectations creates something fresh and energetic, entirely suitable for the young cast from the National Youth Theatre. Dickens is not shy of incorporating huge detail into his work, so Bartlett’s strength is to strip out the superfluous and focus on the key emotional drama in the […]
REVIEW: Calendar Girls the Musical (Winter Gardens, Blackpool) ★★★★
Calendar girls was originally a film and then a play written by Tim Firth, based on the real-life story of how some ladies from a Women’s Institute group in a Yorkshire village ended up taking-off their clothes for a naked but tastefully discreet photo-shoot for a calendar to raise funds for a blood cancer charity. […]
REVIEW: GROAN UPS (Vaudeville Theatre) ★★★★★
Mischief theatre are now infamous amongst the theatre scene as the creators of ‘The play that goes wrong’, ‘Comedy about a bank robbery’ and all round kings & queens of comedy. This year they have teamed up with the Vaudeville Theatre for a 1 year residency in which they will unleash 4 brand new shows […]
REVIEW: The Girl Who Fell (Trafalgar Studios) ★★★★
Sarah Rutherford’s new play The Girl Who Fell tackles grief and guilt with sensitivity and humour in this darkly funny production, that mixes raw emotion with laugh out loud jokes. Claire Goose is grieving mother Thea whose teenage daughter, Sam, committed suicide after a video of her hair being cut in punishment went viral. As […]
REVIEW: Motown the Musical (Sunderland Empire) ★★★★
I arrived at Sunderland Empire expecting to see a tribute concert to the many glorious songs produced on the Motown label. However I was delighted to find that it is actually the Berry Gordy story – which might not be a dynamic name for a musical but it is a very compelling tale. Gordy started […]