Theatre Reviews

______ 24 October 2025 ______ 4**** ______ At the start of ‘Haunted Shadows’ we are made fully aware that there was a lot more to writer, Edith Nesbit (1858-1924) than ‘The Railway Children’, ‘Five Children and It’ and ‘The Treasure Seekers’ – wonderful stories for children, of course, but there was another side to her […]

______ 17 October 2025 ______ 5***** ______ Samuel Beckett is a playful writer – playing with words, with meaning, playing with the audience and so often putting the ball into their court to decide what his writing is all about. Staging any of his works is one hell of a challenge and can never be

______ 15 September 2025 ______ 5***** ______ In recent years it has been something of a masterstroke by the producers of the Sidmouth Summer Play Festival to bring the season to a conclusion with a gloriously, completely bonkers piece of fun; thus we have had ‘The 39 Steps’ and ‘Ben Hur’ played for all its

______ 8 September 2025 ______ 3***1/2 ______ This is something of a coup for the Manor Pavilion Theatre – while ‘The Cottage’ had its first production in the USA in 2013, it took ten years to reach Broadway – it took another 12 years to reach these shores, for this is its UK premiere. Billed

______ 4 September 2025 ______ 4**** ______ In the anniversary year commemorating 50 years since the death of R C Sherriff, it is a time ripe for revivals and it is a real delight to see ‘Home at Seven’ on the stage again. Sherriff, is, of course, rightly, best remembered for his First World War

______ 1 September 2025 ______ 5***** ______ Written as part of a trilogy all set in the same suite of a luxury Swiss hotel, ‘A Song at Twilight’ is one of Noel Coward’s final plays and tells of renown writer Sir Hugo Latymer coming face to face with his past lives and loves, which may

______ 30 August 2025 ______ 4**** ______ A cricket match, a food fight, a vegetable competition – what’s going on here? From the description you wouldn’t think for one moment that this is going to be a review of ‘Giulio Cesare in Egitto’ (‘Julius Caesar in Egypt’) by George Frideric Handl, but it is! As

______ 25 August 2025 ______ 4**** ______ The ghost story/thriller has, over the years, been something of a neglected genre by theatre; true there have been a few decent ones; versions of ‘The Turn of the Screw’, ‘The Woman in Black’ for instance, but a revival really came with Danny Robins’ ‘2:22 – A Ghost

______ 22 August 2025 ______ 4***** ______ It seems strange to think that this 1925 comedy – one of Noel Coward’s earlier plays (revised in the 1950s) – should have ruffled the feathers of the authorities and been subject to serious questions by the office of the Lord Chamberlain, the censor of the time. The

______ 18 August 2025 ______ 5***** _____ In the wrong hands, a production of Philip King’s 1945 farce can be a disaster – when you have a director like Jonathan Hunt and his assembled cast at the Manor Pavilion, Sidmouth – it is an unalloyed joy! Farce relies on split second timing, full command of