Even Bigger Buns
Calendar Girls, The Musical
by Tim Firth and Gary Barlow
Bill Kenwright at the New Wimbledon Theatre, until 4th November, then on tour until 6th April 2024
Review by Michelle Hood
Tim Firth’s Calendar Girls began life in 2003 as a heart-warming comedy film based on the true story of a group of middle-aged women who, now famously, produced a hugely successful nude calendar in 1999 to help raise money for Leukaemia Research. The film, with a stellar cast including Helen Mirren, Julie Walters, Annette Crosbie and Celia Imrie, became a global phenomenon and went on to spawn a stage adaptation, also by Tim Firth. The stage version was successfully launched at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2008, and the play subsequently transferred to the West End, during which time “the girls” were played by the likes of Lynda Bellingham, Anita Dobson, Lesley Joseph, Patricia Hodge and Sian Phillips.
Following the success of the film, and the further success of the stage play, came the third reincarnation – this time, Calendar Girls, The Musical, which Tim Firth developed with songwriter Gary Barlow in 2015. This latest 2023 touring version, produced by the late Bill Kenwright and directed by Jonathan O’Boyle, has been updated by the writers with a revised script and includes some additional songs.
Read more…Yo Ho!
Treasure Island
by Jago Hazzard after R.L. Stevenson
Teddington Theatre Club at Hampton Hill Theatre, until 28th October
Review by Celia Bard
The cast of Treasure Island certainly succeeded in entertaining their audience at yesterday’s evening performance, not least because of an unintentional promenade staging element, signalled by a fire alarm, which resulted in the actors vacating the theatre followed by the entire audience into Hampton Hill High Street where, completely unfazed, the actors provided a bit of impromptu street entertainment until a fire officer gave the all-clear. The actors returned to the theatre, followed by the audience and the performance continued.
Read more…Dying to Come
Heathers the Musical
by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe
Bill Kenwright and Paul Taylor-Mills, at the New Wimbledon Theatre until 28th October
Review by Gill Martin
Beware, “Heathers the Musical contains haze, loud noises including gun shots, flashing lights and strobe as well as strong language and mature themes, including bullying, murder, suicide, physical and sexual violence and references to eating disorders.” That’s the dire warning in the theatre programme but, hey, it is a musical so how upsetting can it be?
Way back in 2018 a re-release of Heathers the Musical, a bizarre and bloody story of teenage cruelty, hit the cinema screens with stars Winona Ryder and Christian Slater. Even further back in the mists of time, i.e. 1988, it was cult satirical smash hit about vindictive and paranoid high-school kids who could score top marks in meanness.
Read more…Moral Dilemmas Exploded
Farm Hall
by Katherine Moar
Theatre Royal Bath and Jermyn Street Theatre Productions at Richmond Theatre until 28th October
Review by Mark Aspen
Theatre has many functions. Comedy makes us laugh; tragedy makes us cry. It can entertain (and the panto season is just around the corner) … or it can make us think.
Farm Hall has a contemplative depth that probably no other live performance art could provide. This is theatre at its best. It is not easy theatre though, and requires an investment by the audience, but an investment that pays handsomely.
Operation Epsilon was a military action towards the end of World War II. The British government detained some of Germany’s most gifted nuclear scientists, who were believed to have worked on Nazi Germany’s atomic weapons development. The scientists, who included three Nobel Prize winners, were captured in southwestern Germany during the late spring of 1945, as part of a larger intelligence mission. They were all interned together at Farm Hall, a former stately home near Godmanchester, then in in Huntingdonshire, from July that year until early in 1946.
Read more…Oil Slick
Enron
by Lucy Prebble
Richmond Shakespeare Society at the Mary Wallace Theatre, Twickenham until 28th October
Review by Ian Moone
It has been said that when America sneezes, the world catches a cold, and it was certainly a gargantuan sneeze that spread the global financial virus of 2008, resulting in the meltdown or recession of many of the world’s economies. The reasons for this crisis are many and various but the events at Enron, only seven years prior, described so succinctly by Lucy Prebble in this award winning play, certainly started Uncle Sam’s financial nasal hairs tickling.
At its peak in the summer of 2000, Enron’s share price soared at $90.75, valuing the company at $70billion and making it, on paper at least, one of the most successful companies in US history. However, only eighteen months later, the share price had plummeted to just $0.26 and, days later, the company was declared bankrupt, sending shock waves through the global financial markets. To this day, many still wonder how a business that had lead the way on technical and corporate innovation could have failed so catastrophically. Even more puzzling is how one of the most elaborate frauds in corporate history had escaped financial scrutiny for so long.
Prebble’s cautionary account of this monumental collapse takes us on a lightning-paced journey of revelation, during which she attempts to condense the complexities of Enron’s jaw-dropping underhand dealings, fake holdings and off-the-book accounting practices into approximately two and a half hours.
Read more…Beers, Whines and Spirits
The Nag’s Head
by Gabriel Fogarty-Graveson and Felix Grainger
Make It Beautiful Theatre Company at the Park Theatre, Finsbury, until 28th October
Review by Denis Valentine
The Nags Head is a show that sells itself on the lines, “Do you want to hear tales that will chill you to the bone…”, and in parts delivers on this idea but there are many other elements packed in to its hour and forty minute runtime, which make it much more than just a ghostly horror theatre tale. As well as its spookier elements, the show is a very lively, funny affair with great energy and craft from its three actors.
Read more…Essential Traviata
La Traviata
by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto by Francesco Maria Piave (translation by Martin Fitzpatrick)
English National Opera at the London Coliseum until 12th November
Review by Patrick Shorrock
This is very much La Traviata stripped down. Stripped of a producer’s particular take on prostitution. Stripped of possibly the worst music Verdi ever wrote (Flora’s guests pretending to be Gypsies in Act 2) but also of the cabaletta that follows Di Provenza (which I was rather less happy about). Stripped of furniture, apart from a single chair. Stripped of any kind of set, other than several rows of deep red curtains (designer Johannes Leiacker). Stripped of intervals, which makes for a bladder-testing two hours right through.
But this stripping down works brilliantly, because it throws the essentials of this great opera into greater relief. It’s all about the characters and how they are revealed through their music, with no decorative distractions, and nowhere for the performers to hide. The audience is almost too caught up in the drama to applaud the arias – at the end they gave it a standing ovation – and is utterly drawn in. Alfredo sings his offstage counterpoint to Sempre Libera from the stalls, which is also where he, his father, Anina, and Doctor Grenvil are placed for the finale, leaving Violetta utterly isolated on stage.
Read more…Bite the Bullet
Dragon’s Teeth
by Shirland Quin
The Questors at The Studio, Ealing until 28th October
Review by Polly Davies
When the Questors opened its theatre in Ealing’s Mattock Lane back in 1933, it chose to stage the English premiere of an experimental new play by Shirland Quin, Dragons’ Teeth, described by the Amateur Theatre magazine at the time as “undoubtedly the most experimental work done by a London society in recent months, if not years”. It was a bold choice then; a contemporary review in The Spectator pronounced the play to be:
“a bold attempt at anti-war propaganda, but the central male character, the inventive officer who destroys his own new war- machine, does not carry conviction, and dream scenes mixed with realism disturb the adjustments of the observer.”
And it is a still bold choice by David Hovatter to update it as a play suitable for performance in the Studio space at the Questors, even if the original number of characters reportedly needed for the last act has been reduced from the original seventy (according to the current programme!) to a modest eight.
Read more…Direct Hits
Rock’N’Roll War Stories
by Allan Jones
OSO True Stories at the OSO Arts Centre, Barnes until 18th October
Review by Heather Moulson
Here is a man who held the key to a very golden era of rock n’ roll, a deceptively unassuming man in his seventh decade, and author of two memoirs, he had met everybody and everyone in the biz. Hosted by the vibrant Duncan Steer, we were introduced to the legendary editor of Melody Maker, Allan Jones
A young rookie at this iconic music newspaper in 1974, skinny with long blonde hair, he was immediately sent out to interview Elton John, who was promoting his new album Caribou. Despite Jones not hearing the LP before, he still shared five bottles of champagne with the pop star at eleven o’clock in the morning … “It would have been rude to say ‘No’”. This was the kind of tidal wave we were treated to, and just his discipline of getting on that typewriter that same afternoon and meeting his deadline was awe-inspiring.
Read more…Still-Life with Apples, an Elegy to Loss
Hamnet
by Maggie O’Farrell, adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti
The Royal Shakespeare Company and Neal Street Productions at the Garrick Theatre, West End until 17th February 2024
Review by Mark Aspen
Nearly four and a half centuries separate today and the domestic events of depicted in Hamnet, yet it seems just as much real and alive as it seems alien. Ulster writer, Maggie O’Farrell’s multi award-winning historical novel of the same name was published in March 2020, one week after the first Covid lockdown. Suddenly, in the 21st Century, we all experienced the reality and fear of plague, all too familiar experiences in Tudor England … and we have one of the raw live links with Hamnet, novel and play.
The RSC’s gripping and moving stage version, Hamnet covers episodes in the life of William Shakespeare, referred to as Will or as Agnes’ husband, and Anne Hathaway, here called Agnes (with some historical justification). The “g” in Agnes is silent … “but she is not” quips Will. The timeframe is from early 1582, when Agnes and Will first meet, to about 1600, when Will’s play, Hamlet is first performed.
Read more…
Mark Aspen 