Theatre Reviews

3*** 9 October 2019 ‘We Walk. We Walk. We Walk’ goes the song, the beat, the rhythm, as three black men trudge across the hills and peaks on the Yorkshire/Derbyshire borders. Every month they do this in a group of up to 30; connecting with each other. However, on this occasion the weather is not […]

4**** 30 September 2019 If there is going to be one thing that polarises an audience when a book is adapted for a film or stage play, it will be those who know the original and those who don’t. When the book is a best seller such as Paula Hawkins’ 2015 thriller ‘The Girl on

3*** 24 September 2019 Agatha Christie remains a staple of the amateur theatre world, with the professional production of ‘The Mousetrap’ still, fairly inexplicably, running in the West End. Occasionally a new production appears, as it did earlier this year with an adaptation of Christie’s book, ‘The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side’ in which

5***** 20 September 2019 Pierre Beaumarchais’s stories have had a longevity envied by many of his contemporaries I can only imagine – the fact that two of them have become beloved opera’s which are continually performed are as much a tribute to the composers as to the original writer. Now, I will be honest, I

5***** 17 September 2019 Any study of the work of Emma Rice will reveal an inventiveness and creativity which can startle, shock and amuse – but she will always get your attention. Her first production for her new Company, Wise Children – the show is also called ‘Wise Children’ – was a huge success and

4**** 16 September 2019 When John Osborne wrote ‘The Entertainer’, the Suez crisis was consuming the nation and thus he used it as the backdrop for his gritty tale of a failed song and dance man, a failed Father, Son and Husband. Weaving back and forth from Music Hall stage to domestic life, Osborne pitched

4**** 12 September 2019 Entering the auditorium, one is greeted with the strains of music from the ‘Carry On’ films – beloved of many, decried by others. To me, the tunes conjour up ludicrous plots, extreme characters, mad capers, campery, innuendo and saucy dialogue – this is not an accidental choice to set the scene

4**** 5 September 2019 When first performed in the late 1970’s this lovely play was blessed with major stars on both sides of the Atlantic – Ralph Richardson and Celia Johnson in London and Rex Harrison and Claudette Colbert on Broadway; a film followed with Harrison and Wendy Hiller.  Pretty good I would say. A

5***** 29 AUGUST 2019 Every so often you see a production of a rarely done play which makes you sit up and take notice and say, ‘Why isn’t this performed more often?’. You then tell yourself that you are pleased it isn’t as it would be less of a treat when you do get to

3*** 23 August 2019 An effective stage thriller is pretty hard to pull off. When you only have a very small number of characters to play with it is even more tricky; ‘Sleuth’, ‘The Business of Murder’ are but two names that spring to mind as successful. ‘Dangerous Obsession’, by renown TV script writer N.J.Crisp