Sharing Caring
Low Level Panic
by Clare McIntyre
The Questors at the Studio, Questors Theatre, Ealing until 13th May
Review by Brent Muirhouse
The play Low Level Panic, written by Clare McIntyre in the 1980s, is hugely thought-provoking, slaloming rapidly through a trail of dark comedy and serious dramatic themes to explore the pervasive issue of objectification, and the obstacles, invasiveness and fear it creates for a woman in modern society. Despite being written in the 1980s, Low Level Panic remains all too relevant today.
Read more…Spiralling Round
The Circle
by W. Somerset Maugham
OT Theatre Productions at The Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond until 17th June
Review by Harry Zimmerman
Somerset Maugham’s 1921 comedy, which twists romantic fates across two generations of a squabbling family, is given a fast paced, yet effectively intimate treatment in Tom Littler’s first production as Artistic Director of The Orange Tree
Elizabeth is married to Arnold, a stolid, buttoned up MP obsessed with his career and ensuring that appearances are properly maintained at all times. He appears to be the personification of the stiff upper lip.
Arnold has good reason to be as repressed as he is. At the age of five, his mother, the famed society beauty Lady Catherine “Kitty” Champion-Cheney, scandalously ran off with her lover, Lord “Hughie” Porteus, whose apparently relentless march towards the Prime Ministership was derailed by his romantic entanglement with her.
Read more…King Charles III
6th May 2023
“Grant that I may be a blessing to all Thy children, of every faith and belief, that together we may discover the ways of gentleness and be led into the paths of peace”
The King’s Prayer
God Save the King
Menace and Morrrrre !
Oliver! Jr
by Lionel Bart
Dramacube Productions, Twickenham Purple Cast at Hampton Hill Theatre until 6th May*
Review by Gill Martin
Rollicking, rumbustious, raucous one minute – plaintive, powerful with plenty of pathos the next.
That’s the mood of Oliver! Jr now rocking the stage of the Hampton Hill Theatre over a momentous weekend … with only the minor distraction of a coronation.
Four shows a day this weekend will offer a welcome break from all the pomp and pageantry as Charles Dickens’ classic tale comes to life with a Dramacube production, directed by Matthew Bunn, featuring teenage casts bursting with talent and enthusiasm.
Read more…Land Milked of Honey
The Beekeeper of Aleppo
by Christy Lefteri, adapted by Nesrin Alrefaai and Matthew Spangler
Nottingham Playhouse at Richmond Theatre until 6th May, then on tour until 1st July
Review by Harry Zimmerman
Based on Christy Lefteri’s 2019 internationally bestselling novel, and adapted for the stage by Nesrin Alrefaai and Matthew Spangler, The Beekeeper of Aleppo tells the story of Nuri, a humble beekeeper from war-torn Aleppo, and his wife Afra, as they escape the perils of the Syrian civil war and travel across the Middle East and Europe to be reunited with Nuri’s cousin and mentor, Mustafa.
Read more…Getting in a Flap
Much Ado about Nothing
by William Shakespeare
The Questors at the Judi Dench Playhouse, Ealing until 6th May
Review by Brent Muirhouse
As soon as I’d read that Anne Neville’s direction of Much Ado About Nothing was to be set in 1923 and would feature Gatsby-esque flappers, jazz hands and art deco decadence of the Charleston dance craze, the likes of which Shakespeare himself was at least 400 years too early to embrace (alas, poor playwright), I was entertained by the mere premise.
Much like being submerged into the glitz and glamour of one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous literary son’s parties, it wasn’t long into the production that I – and the audience and large – felt invited to enjoy the revelry, with anybody leftover surely swayed by the multiple eight-string ukulele bops conjured up by the recurring Balthasar (the self-confessed mini-instrument obsessed Julian Smith). Yes, this is Shakespeare, but with the surprising yet welcome balance of the Bard’s words with barre chords.
Read more…Another Other
Richard III
by William Shakespeare
Rose Theatre and Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse Theatres at the Rose Theatre, Kingston until 13th May
Review by Steve Mackrell
Classified as both a history play and a tragedy, this early Shakespearean play, written in his early 20’s in 1593, is a chronicle of evil, violence and murder and follows the rise of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, seemingly a cold blooded and calculating tyrant, who even slaughters his own family in his quest for ultimate power as King of England. However, debate continues whether Shakespeare’s plot remains true to actual events.
Turning briefly to historical fact, Richard III, only spent two years on the English throne before his death, aged 32, in 1485. He was the last king of the House of York and the Plantagenet dynasty and his death, in the final battle of the wars of the roses by Henry Tudor, at the Battle of Bosworth Field, marked the end of the Middle Ages. However, Shakespeare’s interpretation of these events, written some hundred years later, would have been seen through the prejudicial lens of the succeeding Tudor dynasty, so reflecting the then contemporary spin of discrediting the earlier Plantagenet regime.
This latest interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s major classics – a co-production between the Rose Kingston and the Liverpool Everyman – brings a fresh, energetic and powerful version to the stage. Chilling and engrossing in equal measure, this was a powerful re-imagining of a great classic – a show full of movement, sound and fury, with images that remain in the memory.
What Goes Round
Carousel
by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
TOpS Musical Company at Hampton Hill Theatre until 29th April
Review by Mark Aspen
What goes round comes around. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first musical together, Oklahoma! was such a rip-roaring success that they immediately decided to get their teeth into a follow-up. When Carousel opened on Broadway two years later in April 1945 it was an even greater success.
They had seen a translation from the Hungarian of Ferenc Molnár’s 1909 play Liliom, and thought they would give it a spin as the basis for Carousel. Liliom was a very popular play around the years of the First World War. Liliom means “daisy”, an Hungarian slang term for a chancer, and the name of the primary character, a barker touting for customers for a fairground carousel. It is said that Puccini approached Molnár with a view to making it into an opera, but Molnár thought it was too tragic. He could not have seen many Puccini operas! … or musicals, because Oscar Hammerstein had better luck with the suggestion of a musical.
Read more…Sky Lines
The Welkin
by Lucy Kirkwood
Putney Theatre Company at the Putney Arts Theatre until 29th April
Review by Eleanor Lewis
“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them, women are afraid that men will kill them”.
Margaret Atwood’s observation, made fortyish years ago, remains pin-sharp in its relevance. The need to control women’s bodies: (USA, Roe vs Wade etc), the resentment generated by women’s (current) freedom with regard to their own sexuality (‘incels’), and the violence directed at them (Sarah Everard, Sabina Nessa and others) all represent a culture that seems still, in the main, only able to deal with women on terms that most women themselves do not, voluntarily, accept.
Read more…Powerful Paean to Patriotism
Henry V
by William Shakespeare
Richmond Shakespeare Society at The Mary Wallace Theatre, Twickenham until 29th April
Review by Brent Muirhouse
When it comes to the work of the Bard, it might be simplistic to talk of something so prominent and enduring as dramaturgical Marmite, but there would be a sizeable part of the population and indeed classrooms across the world that disengage at the sibilance of the word ‘Shakespeare’. Perhaps, Henry V is the answer.
Whilst it’s a history, the play follows the young King Henry V of England as he grapples with the challenges of leadership and warfare in medieval England, embarking on an offensive against the French ending in (that popular pub quiz answer) the Battle of Agincourt. The lead character is a complex and charismatic figure, burdened by the weight of his responsibilities as king and struggling to reconcile his moral and political obligations. This production by Richmond Shakespeare Society at Twickenham’s Mary Wallace Theatre captures this in a thoroughly engaging and powerful exhibition from start to finish, the titular character (Luciano Dodero) superb as an anchor that anyone in the audience could only be captivated by, as the rest of the cast add colour and nuance for the more seasoned.
Read more…
Mark Aspen 