The Importance of Being Ernest
by Oscar Wilde
SMDG
Hampton Hill Theatre until 15th October
Review by Thomas Forsythe.
“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing”. So says Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax, the worldly and wily heroine of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest. In the grave matter of mounting a production of a play, one might ask which is the most important to achieve.
SMDG’s current production at Hampton Hill certainly has plenty of style, but also puts across the ambiguities of Victorian society where how one does something is more important than why one does it.
Conspiracy
by Loring Mandel
OHADS
Hampton Hill Theatre until 8th October
Review by Thomas Forsythe
In his famous Blut und Eisen speech, Otto von Bismark said “The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.” In Conspiracy we see speeches quashed and majority decisions overturned in a manner whose ruthlessness stepped up the portent of Bismark’s adage. The great question of 20th January 1942 considered at the Wannsee Conference resulted in the “final solution” that was to come to be known as the holocaust.
The River
by Jez Butterworth
OHADS ;Hampton Hill Theatre Studio
Review by Mark Aspen
Izaak Walton meets Sigmund Freud in OHADS’ recent production of Jez Butterworth’s The River, a gem of such compact complexity Read more…
Family Circles
by Alan Ayckbourn
Hampton Hill Theatre
OHADS
Review by Mark Aspen
In the way that mothers always accurately distil wisdom, my mother used to say, “If … is a little word with a very big meaning”. Read more…
The God of Carnage
by Yasmina Reza
OHADS
Hampton Hill Playhouse Studio
Review by Mark Aspen
“Puking seems to have perked you up”. This memorable line from one of the characters in Yasmina Reza’s The God of Carnage can be seen as a metaphor for the cathartic effect of this, one of her best plays. Read more…
Riders to the Sea
by John Millington Synge
COG Artspace
Fractured Lines
Review by Mark Aspen
To distil Achill and Arran, all those misty windswept islands in Ireland’s far west, and to concentrate that spirit into a small theatre above a pub in Hoxton is a remarkable feat. But this is just what Fractured Lines, a thrusting new stage company, has done in its current production of Synge’s fateful tragedy, Riders to the Sea, running until the end of November at COG ARTSpace. Read more…
The Graduate
by Terry Johnson
Hampton Hill Playhouse
OHADS
Review by Mark Aspen
The first line of Phillip Larkin’s famous (notorious?) poem, This Be the Verse (usually parodied as “They tuck you up, your mum and dad”) came to mind when watching OHADS’ recent production of The Graduate at Hampton Hill Playhouse. Read more…
A Lady of Letters
by Alan Bennett
and
Follow Me
by Ross Gurney-Randall and David Mounfield
Hampton Hill Playhouse Studio
OHADS Double Bill
Review by Mark Aspen
Two women, two lives, two plays: each seemingly very different. Their two emotional journeys were packed into an intense evening, in a double bill presented by OHADS in the intimate space of the Coward studio at Hampton Hill Playhouse. Read more…
The Show
BYT Experimental Theatre Group
Castelnau Community Centre
20th December 2013
Review by Mark Aspen
The week before Christmas, what could be a better time to pay a visit to a very friendly workshop? But here no Santa and no elves, for BYT’s is a toolmaker’s workshop. It was almost possible to smell the cutting oil and see the sparks as the tools were formed and honed. But here the tools being made were the tools of an actor’s craft.
The Seven Year Twitch
by David Lewis
Barnes Community Players at Old Sorting Office, Barnes
Until 2nd November 2013
The title of The Seven Year Twitch may suggest a light frothy comedy, but it is far more than that, cleverly and neatly written, it combines sharply observed wit with thought provoking serious theatre. There is a nod towards farce and another towards pathos.
Mark Aspen 