Style with Guile
Death on the Nile
by Agatha Christie, adapted by Ken Ludwig
Fiery Angel at Richmond Theatre until 11th October, then on tour until 23rd May 2026
Review by Polly Davies
A very happy audience left Richmond Theatre at the end of the entertaining and eventful Death on the Nile last night. Stylish and eventful, Ken Ludwig’s adaptation of the well-known Agatha Christie novel keeps the essential elements of Christie’s story, but with a clever prequel, and a degree of simplification. Lucy Bailey’s nicely paced direction builds up the tension from a gentle love story to a murder, with lots of excitement in between. There are thrills a plenty as grudges are revealed, guns are shot, relationships form, and fraud is suspected. If you are like me and had forgotten the denouement it was a genuine mystery.
Read more…Rapturous
Patience
by W. S. Gilbert, music by Sir Arthur Sullivan
HLO Musical Company at the Hampton Hill.Theatre, until 4th October
Review by Polly Davies
I thoroughly enjoyed this production of this perennial favourite at the Hampton Hill Theatre last night. I’d forgotten how sharp Gilbert and Sullivan’s satire could be. Written to poke fun at the fashionable worship of the aesthetic movement in the 19th Century, it doesn’t miss a trick. There are lovesick maidens, simpering poets and rejected lovers apiece. I doubt anyone would get away with making this much fun of Gen Z’s idols and their fans, even with a similarly deft touch, without falling foul of cancel culture.
The arrival of a somewhat dubious poet, in fact only feigning aestheticism to gain admiration, leads the local ladies to desert their military boyfriends as they fall under the spell of the craze for aestheticism and in particular the dream of romantic love. Self- indulgent and infatuated, they fall in love with this newly arrived and self-declared poet. Local girl Patience is the only one to resist his charms, but her curiosity to understand this phenomenon leads her ultimately to fall under its spell. The appearance of a local poet and the ladies’ intense but fickle grant of affection keeps the audience laughing throughout. All this enlivened by the Gilbert and Sullivan’s usual wit and tongue twisting lyrics, and Lee Dewsnap’s superb musical accompaniment.
Read more…Gold Plated Behemoth
Les Vêpres siciliennes
by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto by Eugene Scribe and Charles Duveyrier after Le Duc D’Albe
The Royal Ballet and Opera at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden until 6th October
Review by Michael Rowlands
This operatic French-Italian mongrel, The Sicilian Vespers, is on it’s third outing at The Royal Opera House and in this revival a third change of cast, with the lovely Lebanese-Canadian Verdi specialist Joyce El-Khouri singing Helene, replacing Marina Rebka. Valentyn Dytiuk replaced Soek Jong Baek as Henri, Ildebrando D’Arcangelo sang Jean Procida and Guy de Montfort was sung by Quinn Kelsey who was in the original casting.
The bloodlines of this 1855 behemoth are genetically far apart. Verdi at the top of his form, after La Traviata (1852), Rigoletto (1851), and Il Travatore (1853), produces a wonderful Verdian score that, presumably deliberately, does not have the fully composed-through music of his successes but, at times, reaches as high as any of his work. The other bloodline is, to us, and probably to Verdi too, an outdated operatic straitjacket that was just the genre Verdi was reacting against. Napoleon III was heading a prosperous, rapidly industrialising country, that had opera at its cultural heart, so big was better. Meyerbeer was the man to beat, which meant a five act grand opera, usually based of a quasi-historical event (in this opera a revolt on 30th March 1282 in Palermo), with opposing sides, and with a personal family, duty or love conflict. It was to have a ballet after the interval, and one that also has dramatic spectacle.
Read more…Coddled
The Elixir of Love
by Gaetano Donizetti, libretto by Felice Romani, after Eugene Scribe
English Touring Opera at The Hackney Empire, 27th September, then on tour until 22nd November
Review by Mark Aspen
Surely, we know were are in for a fun evening when at his first appearance Nemorino is wearing a cod piece. No, not that sort of codpiece, (sorry to disappoint) but a big-head fish costume, his advertising gimmick for his struggling seaside fish-and-chip stall.
And in follow the ensemble, some in sandwich-boards with ads for the ailing attractions of a seaside resort now neglected by erstwhile visitors. The soul of this pre-loved English seaside town is accurately captured in April Dalton’s nostalgic set. Its well-structured promenade and pier entrance speak of the shunning of these wonderful places, old friends cast aside as now being infra-dig. Yet here is the art-deco theatre, its faded bill boards pointing towards a past dipping of the toe in the water of culture, in its long past production of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.
Read more…Rossini as Entertainment
La Cenerentola
by Gioachino Rossini, libretto by Jacopo Ferretti
The English National Opera at the London Coliseum until 14th October
Review by Michael Rowlands
From the death of Mozart in 1791, shortly after the premiere of Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute), until Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri in 1813, a period of 22 years, there are no commonly currently performed operas, with the sole exception of Beethoven’s Fidelio of 1805. I’m not sure why there is this gap. Napoleon liked opera; he saw 163 different operas in 319 performances and he liked Neapolitan operas as well as ones with revolutionary themes. It was Rossini who broke through the drought, with a tremendous output of both serious and comic operas, and ending with his Parisian grand opera, Guillaume Tell, giving a total of 34 operas in thirteen years.
He composed, at speed, and following his great comedy success with Il Barbiere di Siviglia in 1816, he produced La Cenerentola, ossia La Bonta in trionfo, “Cinderella or Goodness Triumphant” composed in just 24 days. (And with two other operas in the year as well!) It was a great success and gave a role for coloratura contralto, for which this opera is designed.
Read more…Timeless
Constellations
by Nick Payne
Putney Theatre Company at the Putney Arts Theatre until 27th September
Review by Heather Moulson
Constellations is a promising title and, entering the auditorium one is struck by a set lit with hushed blue lighting that is simple but effective. It is a space that could say everything, and it does.
Nick Payne’s two hander, originally produced at the Royal Court Theatre in 2012, tells of a romance between a cosmologist and a beekeeper, but it is a romance that takes place in many parallel forms and differing directions, and it is intense and funny and vibrant. In Rob Wallis’s intelligently directed production, all its moods and its aching tenderness are flawlessly covered. A thoughtful piece on the possibility of multiple realities against the backdrop of a genuine love story, it is a multiverse giving myriad choices, all set within a very believable relationship.
Read more…Timeshift Turandot in Turan
Turandot
Instant Opera at the The Courtyard Theatre at TownHouse, Kingston University, on 11th and 12th October
Preview: Opera critic Helen Astrid discusses the forthcoming production of Puccini’s Turandot with Instant Opera’s Artistic Director, Nicholas George
HA: Puccini’s last opera Turandot is often described as both monumental and enigmatic. What draws you personally to this opera?
War at the Opera
Tosca
by Giacomo Puccini, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa
The Royal Ballet and Opera at Covent Garden until 7th October
Review by Michael Rowlands
The Royal Opera’s new production by Olivier Mears was given the stellar media treatment, by the brave and controversial decision of the Royal Opera to cast Anna Netrebko as the leading lady for the first four nights, to be followed by Aleksandra Kurzak for the rest of the run. Ms Netrebko has been, earlier in her career, in proximity to President Putin. She helped him congratulate the takeover of the Dombas, “it would be a mistake not to”, and she made a statement concerned with the victims of Ukraine. She is apparently an Austrian Resident, pays taxes there and she says she not returned home since the war started. Is she a Unity Mitford figure? or a Co-Co Channel? Or an innocent bystander? Russia is already at war with us, though political manipulation and through cultural events – so where she stands, and we all stand, does matter in this climate.
Read more…Back in Time
The Last Five Years
by Jason Robert Brown
Barn Theatre and The Theatre Royal Bath at the Reading Rep Theatre until 12th October, then on tour until 3rd January 2026
Review by Sam Martin
Hal Chambers’ production of The Last Five Years, a co-production between Reading Rep, Barn Theatre and Theatre Royal Bath, is a powerful and emotionally intricate exploration of love found and lost. This intimate two-hander, starring Martha Kirby and Guy Woolf, pulses with energy, wit and heartache. The story is brought vividly to life through exemplary performances, intelligent design, and a finely tuned directorial vision that lifts Jason Robert Brown’s cult musical into a new light.
From the outset, Chambers’ direction demonstrates an assured understanding of the complexities of the show’s unique structure (two timelines moving in opposite directions) and he uses that to craft a piece that feels both immediate and universal. The staging, far from being ornamental, plays a vital role in shaping the emotional narrative. The use of screens to define the space is particularly effective. Visually elegant and conceptually loaded, they reinforce the emotional barriers between the characters, giving the production a claustrophobic edge that reflects the slow, inevitable breakdown of the relationship. This subtle but persistent physical reminder becomes a powerful metaphor for the characters’ inability to move beyond the walls they have both put up.
Read more…Austen Allegro
Emma
by Ava Pickett, based on the novel by Jane Austen
RTK Productions at The Rose Theatre, Kingston until 11th October
Review by Polly Davies
The Rose Theatre’s Emma is a joy. I can think of no better antidote to the dreary, non-stop outpouring of news that we are now blessed with daily. Ava Pickettt’s fast-paced witty script shows, if there was ever any doubt, the brilliance of Jane Austen’s storytelling. A tale seemingly set intrinsically in the strictly mannered world of the 18th Century has been re-interpreted in the hands of a skilful playwright to look as if it was always intended for today’s world. And in Ava Pickett’s hands it is not only a good story, it is very, very funny. If you love Austen’s Emma, you will love this. If you have never heard of Austen’s Emma you will still love this, because the story it tells is as relevant now as it was when first written. To drop in the well known “Not well done Emma” line and make it fit amongst the modern world of TikTok messaging, and photo-sharing is pure genius.
Read more…
Mark Aspen 