Swamped with Love
Platée
by Jean-Philippe Rameau, libretto by Adrien-Joseph Le Valois d’Orville, after Jacques Autreau
Garsington Opera, at Wormsley, Stokenchurch until 30th June
Review by Mark Aspen
Bizarre, bold and brilliant; Garsington’s Platée is packed with wild grotesquerie, vivid fluorescence, and exuberant energy.
In a municipal garden near my home in Twickenham, there is a very imposing statuary group of Naïades, or possibly Oceanides, always known locally as the Naked Ladies. They had found their way there early in the nineteenth century, when classical subjects provided thinly veiled eroticism. Anyway they are water nymphs. The Ladies are beautiful and full of joy.
Not so the water nymph in Rameau’s Platée, who is aesthetically challenged and hapless. She is one of the Limnades, the nymphs of swamps and marshes, not the most hospitable of habitats. The eponymous Platée has puffed herself up with unrealistic vanity and obsessional delusions, weaknesses which lead her to become the butt of a cruel practical joke.
Read more…Sprung From Gaol
The Importance of Being Oscar
by Micheál Mac Liammóir
Reading Rep Company and Original Theatre at the Reading Rep Theatre until 8th June
Review by Sam Martin
This oral biography of the prolific Oscar Wilde is truly special being performed at Reading Rep, just a stone’s throw from Wilde’s place of incarceration, Reading Goal. Alastair Whatley, the only actor in this solo performance, makes explicit reference to our location at the beginning of the play, drawing the audience’s attention to the significance of the space we are occupying together, and therefore making the moments where the jail is mentioned even more vivid.
Read more…Fl(ass)h Back
Drop the Dead Donkey: The Reawakening!
by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin
Hat Trick and Simon Friend Entertainment at the New Victoria Theatre, Woking until 1st June, then on tour until 22nd June
Review by Harry Zimmerman
French actress Simone Signoret’s autobiography was entitled Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be.
So far as some recent theatrical activity is concerned, nostalgia is a very important facet of new productions of old favourites, and much in vogue. Fawlty Towers is currently doing good business at The Apollo Theatre, whilst the recently successful West End run for Only Fools & Horses is to be followed by a national tour.
The latest blast from the TV past, reincarnated as a stage play, is also touring, and is currently running at The New Victoria Theatre in Woking.
Drop the Dead Donkey is a fondly remembered award-winning newsroom-based Channel 4 sitcom that ran over six series from 1990-98 and has been reimagined for a 2024 audience in a stage play reincarnation, Drop the Dead Donkey:The Reawakening!
Read more…Romps and Revelations
Tom Jones
by Henry Fielding, adapted by Joan MacAlpine
Questors Productions at The Judi Dench Playhouse, Ealing until 1st June
Review by Heather Moulson
It is 1749 and anything goes – well almost anything. Tom Jones is a witty, bawdy and poignant comedy production of Joan MacAlpine’s adaptation of Henry Fielding’s mammoth novel of life in those times. It is directed with innovation by Lucy Aley-Parker, who successfully takes up an ambitious project. Accompanied by classical music, it is so full in pace and drama, and with a side of merriment, that its two and a half hours run, although initially appeared daunting on a hot afternoon were swiftly swept away.
The atmospheric and deceptively simple set is authentic to its period. Farce-like, it has many doors, and a map of the South of England as flooring. Robyn Backhouse’s sound design is well timed and haunting, and John Green’s lighting is ideally sensitive to the many romps and revelations to come.
Read more…A Person’s a Person, No Matter How Small
Seussical
by Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty and Eric Idle, after Theodor Seuss Geisell
BROS Theatre Company at the Hampton Hill Theatre until 25th May
Review by Andrew Lawston
Cats in hats, Horton hearing Whos, Grinches stealing Christmas, all are present and correct in BROS’s bold and confident new production of Seussical, a musical celebration of the works of Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss.
Read more…Geared Up as an Automatic Hit
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman, adapted for the stage by Jeremy Sams; after the novel by Ian Fleming
Crossroads Live at the New Wimbledon Theatre, until 26th May, then on tour until 10th May 2025
Review by Michelle Hood
An unlikely star of the show – but, it’s all about the car – and, in this case, it’s our fine four-fendered friend which takes centre stage as Caractacus Potts’ phantasmagorical car, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, flies into the New Wimbledon Theatre in a refreshed stage adaptation currently touring the UK.
Read more…Emotional Striptease
Beginning
by David Eldridge
Putney Arts Company at Putney Arts Theatre Studio until 18th May
Review by Harry Zimmerman
Laura’s thrown a housewarming party at her new flat. Danny is the last man standing. It’s meant to be, isn’t it? Or is it? They are both single. They both really like each other. But can they take that final leap?
David Eldridge’s play is a poignant real-time examination of relationships, with two emotionally vulnerable people reaching out at the end of a party; a wry, funny and touching meditation on the loneliness of being single in the era of social media dating.
“I’m 38 and I’ve been sensible my whole life, Danny,” says Laura. Tonight, though, things might, just might, turn out differently ….
Read more…Cross Purposes
Jesus Christ, Superstar
music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Tim Rice
Regent’s Park Theatre Company at the New Wimbledon Theatre until 18th May and then on tour until 17th August
Review by David Stephens
Regent’s Park Theatre Company’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar at New Wimbledon Theatre reimagines the iconic rock opera with a bold, concert-like aesthetic that both energises and challenges the traditional format of musical theatre. However, while this approach injects the show with vibrant energy and a unique visual style, it also introduces some limitations, particularly in the realms of emotional depth and character connection.
Read more…A Mega Hustle (6,1,4)
Sleuth
by Anthony Shaffer
Bill Kenwright Productions at Richmond Theatre until 18th May
Review by Mark Aspen
Those of us who enjoy cryptic crosswords will love Sleuth. And there is plenty of sleuthing in Anthony Shaffer’s best-known play. The mood was set on press night by being told, critically, that the cast would be “smaller than you think”. But don’t worry if you are not the cryptic sort. If you enjoy detective stories, you will love Sleuth. If you enjoy games, you will love Sleuth. Plays with plays are commonplace, but Sleuth is a whodunit within a wheredunit, within a whydundit.
Sleuth is about revenge and about the self-sustaining spiral of revenge. A cuckolded husband arranges to meet his wife’s lover, ostensibly to discuss the circumstances of a divorce, but a trap is set… then another, and another. It is a brilliantly written detective thriller, set within a psychological thriller whose dark mood darkens as the play progresses.
Read more…Owls and Howls Taunt Aunt
Awful Auntie
by David Walliams, in a stage adaptation by Neal Foster
Birmingham Stage Company at Richmond Theatre, until 12th May
Review by Heather Moulson
A young girl’s bedroom forms the deceptively simple setting, where the (quite literally) awful Aunt Alberta makes an effervescent entrance in her splendid tartan suit. There is no messing around with Auntie, she makes her motives clear from the start.
Neal Foster, who has a natural gift of comedy, plays the eponymous harridan, Aunt Alberta, the flamboyant focus of this stage version of the children’s book Awful Auntie from the pen of one of Britain’s best-known comedians. Foster is also the adaptor and co-director, an ambitious task carried out skilfully and successfully.
Read more…
Mark Aspen 