Rapture of Remorse
Breaking the Rules
by Clare Norburn
The Telling at St Mary Magdalene Church, Richmond 8th November, then on tour until 28th November
Review by Eleanor Marsh
A full house eagerly awaited The Telling’s performance of Clare Norburn’s Breaking the Rules.
Norburn cleverly interlinks music and drama in all of her biographical plays, often introducing her audience to little known music in the process. Breaking the Rules tells the story of Carlo Gesualdo, 17th century nobleman and — most importantly for Norburn — composer. Gesualdo had an eventful and somewhat tragic life, which included murdering his first wife and her lover, beating his second wife and witnessing the death of his mother at the age of seven. We meet him on the last day of his life, a tortured wreck of a human who has for several years employed a servant whose sole duty is to whip his master. Gesualdo is now forced to come to terms with his own inevitable demise.
Read more…Cable Ties
Lightning Beneath the Waves
by David Hovatter and Company
Questors Theatre at the Questors Studio, Ealing, until 15th November
Review by Andrew Lawston
From transport to communications, advances in technology have made our world feel ever smaller, at the same time as highlighting the huge distances between us. In the middle of the 19th century, the telegraph enabled almost instantaneous communications between Europe and America – but only after a mammoth effort to lay tonnes of copper cable under several thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean.
Following A Real Race Around the World, David Hovatter and Company return to the Studio at The Questor’s Theatre with another chronicle of 19th century achievement in Lightning Beneath the Waves, bringing out the human story behind a global undertaking.
Read more…Dark Lady Shines
Emilia
by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm
Questors Productions at the Judi Dench Playhouse, Ealing, until 8th November
Review by Claire Alexander
‘There is volume in our silence’ is a phrase that has resonated with me and is repeated throughout Morgan Lloyd Malcolm‘s text of Emilia, presented at Questors theatre this week. It is a part fact, part fiction account of the life of Emilia Bassano, a woman born in 1569 in Elizabethan London, and a poet and trailblazer for what women could achieve, at a time when they had no say and were more often restricted to a life governed in every possible way by men. The phrase speaks volumes indeed and this play shows us in an accessible and sympathetic way how women had no power, however talented or and abused. Emilia’s own mission is to have her talent and poetry noticed and published, and the play nicely contrasts Shakespeare’s success versus Emilia’s invisibility.
Read more…Where the Art Is
Home
by David Storey
Rhinoceros Theatre Company at the Coward Studio, Hampton Hill Theatre until 8th November
Review by Steve Mackrell
Where are we? And what’s happening? That’s the confusing conundrum facing the audience at the start of David Storey’s absorbing 1970 play Home, presented by the adventurous Rhinoceros Theatre Company at the Hampton Hill Theatre.
To begin with, a simple garden set with a white metal table and two matching chairs, aided by back projection of moving clouds. Enter two trilby-hatted gentlemen, elderly and elegant, who engage in casual conversation. Seemingly just a couple of old men with time on their hands, idly passing the time of day with small talk, of this and that, the weather, their work, their wives, their schooldays, their memories and dreams. Articulate and comfortable and yet, something is not quite right. Perhaps we’re in Samuel Beckett or Harold Pinter territory, complete with abstract musings, ambiguous narratives and obligatory long pauses.
Read more…Countdown
And Then There Were None
byAgatha Christie
YAT at The Hampton Hill Theatre until 31st October
Review by Heather Moulson
In this classic Agatha Christie play put on by the polished YAT company, we encountered an authentic set of a thirties living room, and a generous-looking cocktail cabinet. The backdrop of French doors opening onto a balustrade and sea view were cleverly gauzed, immediately setting the scene, a small island off the Devon coast, isolated of course in true Christie style.
The vibrant and articulate secretary Vera smoothly instigated the introductions of the ten guests, each of whom has received an unexpected invitation, all ripe for the unravelling of the plot.
Read more…Nixed but Triumphant
Die Rheinnixen
by Jacques Offenbach, libretto by Charles Nuitter and Alfred von Wolzogen
Gothic Opera at the Battersea Arts Centre until 2nd November
Review by Patrick Shorrock
This operatic exhumation by Gothic Opera is another triumph for this enterprising company. Who knew that Offenbach – responsible for all those naughty French operas comiques like La Belle Helene, Orpheus in the Underworld, and La Vie Parisienne – had written a deadly serious opera in German?
Read more…Reel Chill
Shock Horror
by Ryan Simons
Thunder Road Theatre Productions at the Exchange Theatre, Twickenham until 30th October, then on tour until 23rd November
Review by Heather Moulson
At the first premise, the set of Shock Horror seemed akin to the aftermath of a nuclear fallout, and the dark loneliness and haunting sounds resembledthose in Eraserhead. Or was it a reflection of our nightmares in general? The lone character Herbert unravelled our concepts swiftly as he established his childhood home, a derelict cinema, where he lived in the company of lonely reels of film.
Against the backdrop of horror films and conspiracies outlined by his projectionist dad, Herbert had suffered an unstable environment with his mentally ill and violent mother, and the alcoholic father who was desperate to break free.
Read more…Re-lay Race
Hedda
by Tanika Gupta, inspired by Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler
Orange Tree Productions at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond until 22nd November
Review by Eleanor Lewis
Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, written in 1891, seems to be having a bit of a moment at present. Earlier this year Matthew Dunster adapted it for modern times with Lilly Allen in the leading role and just last month a spectacularly reimagined film, Hedda, starring Tessa Thompson hit the cinemas.
Ibsen’s original Hedda Gabler, in which a strong, clever woman needs to live life on her own terms, but is trapped within the social constraints of the late nineteenth century does not easily translate into today’s world: unhappily married women these days have options. It does, however, adapt to different issues which writer Tanika Gupta has recognised. This latest Hedda is set in 1948, just after the Partition of India and, being inspired by the life of Merle Oberon, it reflects a different trap, that of having to conceal your racial identity when both your glittering career and your social status depend absolutely on passing for white in a racist world.
Read more…Assisted Lying
Arsenic and Old Lace
by Joseph Kesselring
Teddington Theatre Club at the Hampton Hill Theatre until 25th October
Review by Steve Mackrell
Dated? Probably. Corny? Possibly. Implausible? Completely. Entertaining? Entirely.
Arsenic and Old Lace, as a title, has an unfortunate tendency to be theatrical code for an old pot-boiler, but this revival by the Teddington Theatre Club, at the Hampton Hill Theatre, is full of fun and entertaining energy. Written by American Joseph Kesselring, this classic black comedy opened on Broadway in 1941 and was later adapted into a successful film in 1944 starring Cary Grant and directed by Frank Capra.
Despite its age, the play still delivers a wicked mix of comedy, farce and spoof horror, served with wit and dark humour, plus a splash of poisoned home-made elderberry wine. The core of the play centres around a family with an unfortunate habit of murdering people, as if murder is somehow built into their DNA. The count of dead bodies reaches a staggering 24 or, spoiler alert, could it rise to 25?
Read more…A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever
La Fille mal gardée
choreography by Frederick Ashton, music adapted and arranged by John Lanchbery after Ferdinand Hérold
The Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden until 9th June 2026
Review by Michael Rowlands
La Fille mal gardée, or The Wayward Daughter, is a complete joy and it is a perfect way to escape from the troubles of everyday life. Its classic Frederick Ashton choreography is highlighted by the bucolic backdrops designed by Osbert Lancaster. Lancaster was a prominent architectural historian and for many decades a cartoonist at the Daily Express, so he picks the right note in representing the perpetual sunny countryside of this comic rural tale. First performed, in this version, in 1960, it was musically reinterpreted and orchestrated by John Lachbery. He incorporated a lost dance found in a box at The Paris opera to a melody from Donizetti from L’elisir d’amore, the so-called Fanny Elssler pas de deux from 1837. Frederick Ashton took him to see some Lancashire clog dancing at the Royal Albert Hall, which was then included for Widow Simone (amusingly danced by Thomas Whitehead). It has not aged one bit.
Read more…
Mark Aspen 