Politics in the Park
Julius Caesar
by William Shakespeare
Richmond Shakespeare Society at York House, Twickenham until 22nd July
Review by Andrew Lawston
York House’s Fountain Gardens provide a suitably classical backdrop to Richmond Shakespeare Society’s outdoor production of Julius Caesar, with the “Naked Ladies” and their horses rearing high above the temporary stage’s scaffold. With deckchairs and picnic blankets dotting the lawn, which is surrounded by tall hedges, the venue is perfect for outdoor theatre.
Read more…Water Music?
West Green House Opera
The Theatre on the Lake, Hartley Witney 21st – 30th July
Season Preview by Quentin Weiver
In anticipation of a pre-taste of a fantastic season of opera, I took a trip to where Surrey just tips over into Hampshire at the picturesque village of Hartley Witney, to revisit West Green House, the early 18th century house, built by Gen. Henry Hawley, who led the charge at the Battle of Culloden.
In 1990 the IRA bombed the front of the house, planning to assassinate Lord Robert McAlpine, a prominent member of Margaret Thatcher’s government. It had been his home, but Lord McAlpine no longer lived there. The house was dislodged from its foundations, and the freeholders, The National Trust, were thinking of demolishing it. Then along came Marylyn Abbott, who had known McAlpine when he lived in Australia.
Read more…Germinating In the Greenhouse
2023-24 Season
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond until August 2024
Preview by Steve Mackrell
A greenhouse is, of course, a place where oranges grow! Amongst the offerings at Richmond’s Orange Tree Theatre this summer will be its inaugural Greenhouse Festival at the end of August. This is a new initiative, a showcase which will provide an opportunity for graduating LAMDA students to display their talents in productions such as Ionesco’s The Chairs and Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal.
Teetering On the Edge
A Doll’s House
by Henrik Ibsen
The Teddington Theatre Club at the Coward Studio, Hampton Hill until 8th July
Review by Brent Muirhouse
As I returned to Hampton Hill Theatre for Teddington Theatre Club’s production of A Doll’s House, I was caught in a state of conundrum. Having truly enjoyed a reimagined version of the play set in during the British rule of India at The Questors merely months before, I wondered if returning to the original, unspecific Scandinavian setting for Ibsen’s piece would prove less vibrant. Before this reviewer’s state of conundrum could stay long enough to even contemplate being trademarked, the energy bursting from the stage in the first few moments – as Nora (Amanda Adams) returns home from a shopping trip to her enthusiastically patronising husband Torvald Helmer (Paul Downey) – put this emotive thought back somewhere in the amygdala and switched focus to the boards being trodden for an immersive two-hour drama.
Read more…Again Last Summer
The Bartered Bride
by Bedřich Smetana , libretto by Karel Sabina
Garsington Opera, at Wormsley, Stokenchurch until 23rd July
Review by Mark Aspen
Would you trust the leader of your local council as a marriage broker? It is a risk worth taking for Garsington Opera, and one that succeeds magnificently. Smetana’s best-known opera is moved from its setting in 1860’s rural Bohemia and transposed to the English countryside in the end of the 1950s. The swinging sixties had not yet got underway, but local marriage brokers are still hard to find. In its revival of Paul Curran’s pre-pandemic production of The Bartered Bride, making the mayor the marriage broker is one of many twists, for of course the mayor has ulterior motives.
However, there are twists galore. The famous Act One polka in takes on the dance craze of 1959 to dissolve into The Twist (and works well to the polka’s half-tempo) … and was that an Elvis lookalike we spotted? More traditionally, the chorus get their ribbons in a twist with a maypole dance on the village green, and the merry-go-round music in the circus is twisting away. Then of course, there is the plot, which has a nice twist at the end, even if it is somewhat predictable. (Tales of Shakespeare and of Gilbert and Sullivan come to mind.)
Read more…Go with the Flo
The Swell
by Isley Lynn
OT and Damsel Productions at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond until 29th July
Review by Eleanor Lewis
A swell is what surfers recognise as the point at which energy from the wind transfers to the sea, causing ripples which become waves, sometimes huge waves. Such are the waves created by the reappearance of traveller and surfer Flo into the life of her old friend Annie at the point at which Annie is preparing to marry Bel. So far so possibly predictable but assumptions about love triangles and lots of shouting should here be abandoned because what follows is a gripping, sophisticated, thriller-ish tale about betrayal, self-sacrifice, the pros and cons of the tangled webs we weave and, perhaps arguably, the ultimate triumph of love. Not your average girl meets, loses and regains girl tale by any stretch.
Read more…Left Far Left Behind?
Chopped Liver and Unions
by J.J. Lepink
Out of the Fire for Blue Fire Theatre Company at the Exchange Theatre, Twickenham then on tour until 26th August
Review by David Stephens
An evening of thought provoking historical story-telling was enjoyed by all at The Exchange Theatre on Thursday evening, as the Blue Fire Theatre Company returned to impress their Twickenham audience with the latest addition to their growing repertoire of historical plays. Blue Fire have found great success in recent years with producing a number of original pieces, penned by the hugely talented J.J. Leppink, which focus on little known historical figures, and whose impact on British society have either been completely forgotten or, in some cases, erased by those who used their success as a springboard for their own and, in doing so, condemned them to history’s shadows.
Read more…Abridged Too Far
The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged)
by Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield
Teddington Theatre Club at the Hampton Hill Theatre until 1st July
Review by Heather Moulson
What can one say about a play that promises to deliver The Complete Works of Shakespeare in 97 minutes – and does? Well kind of does, but it wasn’t really the texts that mattered but how this talented cast got round it.
Three vibrant actors work at a wracking pace to the point of the evangelical, adding witty Star Wars references and American football commentary; not to mention a glossy cooking show. Working on the theory that the Bard’s comedies are of more or less the same plot, they were cleverly combined in minutes.
Read more…Tristan Goes Nineteenth Century
Tristan und Isolde
by Richard Wagner
Grange Park Opera at the Theatre in the Woods, West Horsley until 9th July
Review by Patrick Shorrock
Wagner wrote Tristan und Isolde as a break from writing the Ring Cycle. It was originally intended to be a small scale chamber opera. This feels a bit of a bad joke when the finished result is, ahem, Wagnerian in length, contains two of the most physically demanding roles in all opera, and shattered tonality as the 19th Century knew it for ever, by means of the infamous Tristan chord that takes the whole opera to be resolved.
Read more…Vicious but Delicious
Tony! The Tony Blair Rock Opera
music and lyrics by Steve Brown, book by Harry Hill
Nicholson Green Productions at Richmond Theatre until 24th June, then on tour until 14th October
Review by Mark Aspen
We seem to hear quite a lot recently from Tony Blair, an ex-Prime Minister who can’t seem to stay ex-. For such a contentious figure, who held sway during one of the (many) highly controversial of times in modern British politics, perhaps blowing one’s own trumpet, “blairing” out, as one might say, is not a good move. Don’t put you head above the parapet, Sir Tony, for there are satirists about.
Enter Harry Hill …
Hill’s well-sharpened pen has busily been at work, in spite of there being a number of more recent ex-PM’s who might attract a satirist’s vitriolic ink. But how do you satirise a man who presided over the disintegration of British society, who capitulated to the terrorists in Northern Ireland, and who notoriously triggered the explosion in the Middle East that has horrifically destabilised the region for nearly a quarter of a century? The answer, you make the satire into a comedy musical!
Read more…
Mark Aspen 