Paul Ackroyd, Author at North West End UK

Make England Great Again – Upstairs at the Gatehouse

2Oct

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

Make England Great Again – Upstairs at the Gatehouse

Francis Beckett's new play takes the very topical theme of a right-wing political party having assumed power in the United Kingdom and speculates on its possible consequences. There is certainly plenty in our present political discourse to provide the raw material for such a narrative. The play starts with a dialogue between King Charles III and Max Moore, the Prime Minister of Briton's First, a recently elected right-wing minority government. Max is seeking a dissolution of Parliament even though he has only been Prime Minister for six days. We also meet the leader of the opposition, Pam Jones, denied the premiership because of alleged fraudulent electoral activities in a key number of the constituencies that she won. The fourth member of the cast is Max Moore's political adviser and p...

16Sep

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

Shotgunned – Riverside Studios

Written and directed by Matt Anderson, Shotgunned gained some very good reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe and has now transferred to the Riverside Studios. It is an engaging 60 minutes of theatre. Cleverly written and excellently performed, it tells the story of a young couple, Roz and Dylan, charting their relationship from their first meeting at a party, through its highs and lows. The distinguishing feature of this production is that the story in not told linearly but in a series of short, some very short, vignettes in a seemingly almost random order. The fascination for the audience is piecing together from these fragments how the relationship has developed. This format presents particular challenges for the actors, who have to switch mood almost instantly during the s...

6Sep

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

Home at Seven – Theatre at the Tabard

David Preston, an unassuming man, returns home after an uneventful day at the office, travelling on his normal train from Cannon Street. He is greeted by his distressed wife wanting to know where he has been for the past 24 hours. To his horror, he finds that it is one day later than he thought, and he has no recollection of how he has spent the intervening day. That is the first mystery of this intriguing sounding play by R C Sherriff. The second mystery is that in the time when he had disappeared, a theft and murder have occurred. Was he responsible? The play was written and is set in 1950. Although best known for his well-known and much performed Journey's End, Sherriff wrote a number of other plays and was a successful screenwriter. Home at Seven has rarely been ...

23Aug

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

Every Brilliant Thing – Soho Place

Every Brilliant Thing was created by Duncan Macmillan and Johnny Donahoe and was first performed at the Edinburgh fringe in 2014 and has since been performed by many artists in 80 countries around the world. This is the first time that it has had a performance in London’s West End. It still has the feel of a fringe performance with a solo actor performing with no set dressing and largely without props and involving the audience in the performance. It works well in the intimate theatre in the round auditorium at Sohoplace. Another feature of this production is that it is to be performed by five different actors on different nights during its run. At Press Night it was the turn of Johnny Donahoe, who has performed it many times and his familiarity with the material...

The Daughter of Time – Charing Cross Theatre

26Jul

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

The Daughter of Time – Charing Cross Theatre

It must be the ultimate cold case: the investigation of the reputation of Richard the Third and his involvement in the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower. This is the task which Inspector Alan Grant sets himself when he is laid up in bed convalescing from an injury in M Kilburg Reedy's new play, based on the renowned book by Josephine Tey. The setting is Grant’s rather spacious hospital room, where nurses are encouraging their reluctant patient to undertake the necessary exercises to ensure his full recovery. His interest in King Richard is stimulated by a portrait provided to him by a friend. Using his police skills and assistance from a number of friends and acquaintances, he obtains as many contemporary accounts as he can to try and uncover the truth behind the life of Ric...

23Jul

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

By Royal Appointment – Richmond Theatre

The late Queen’s view on almost all topics is famously unknown. She rarely made public statements or gave interviews, and all her speeches were carefully drafted. On the other hand, she was also the most photographed woman in the world. So, exploring the use of her outfits as a way expressing her views upon the world and its events is an interesting idea, which lies behind Daisy Goodwin's new play at the Richmond theatre, part of a UK tour. The play starts and ends immediately after the Queen's funeral and in between is a series of vignettes of periods in her life, starting in 1969 and proceeding chronologically until her death 53 years later. The setting is the sumptuous interior of a royal residence, we are never quite sure which, with long drapes in glorious colours, a few well-chose...

17Jul

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

Poor Clare – Orange Tree Theatre

The Clare in this story starts off far from poor. She was born into a noble and wealthy family in Assisi in 1194. Religiously pious, at the age of 18 she heard a young man preach and thereafter determined to forego her worldly possessions and devote herself to a life of poverty and God. The young man was Francis, who became the renowned Saint Francis now associated with a simple life, and love of animals and nature. In this dramatisation playwright Chiara Atik chooses to put the issue of wealth distribution at the centre of the play, and also Clare's decision to renounce her former privileged life. She also made the decision to use contemporary vernacular language and forms of speech. So, while the costumes and stage furniture and props were, with a few exceptions, authen...

16Jul

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

That Bastard, Puccini – Park Theatre

James Inverne has written a fascinating new play based upon the rivalry between the two Italian opera composers, Giacomo Puccini and Ruggero Leoncavallo, at the end of the 19th century. At that time, as Inverne explains in his programme introduction, Milan was a hive of theatrical creativity with numerous composers competing to be the successor to Verdi. This play, which has its premiere at the Park 200 theatre, focuses on the race between two composers to produce a new opera entitled La Boheme, based on the 1851 book by Henri Murger. The play starts in Leoncavallo’s living room, with him railing to his wife against Puccini, who he claims, has stolen his idea for the opera after a conversation in a coffee shop. Puccini’s account is very different, claiming that he had had the origi...

14Jun

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

Steel – Park Theatre

Written by Lee Mattinson and first performed at the Theatre by the Lake in Keswick, Steel centres around two teenage boys from the depressed ex-industrial town of Workington. They are informed that one of them is unexpectedly the beneficiary of an inheritance, from a distant relative, of one mile of British rail track estimated to be worth £1 million. However, there is a catch; the original copy of the contract for the purchase of the track has to be delivered by midnight that same day. This improbable scenario sets the scene for a frantic series of encounters by the beneficiary with almost forgotten relatives, and old school friends with whom he has lost contact. This leads him to relive parts of his earlier life and re-evaluate his relationship with the Lake District and realise what is ...

Richard III – New Wimbledon Theatre Studio

16May

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

Richard III – New Wimbledon Theatre Studio

Alex Wakelam's new production of Richard III for the Carlton Theatre Group is innovative in the number of ways. As Wakelam explains at length in his directors note in the programme is made various changes to the text, including significantly reducing the number of speaking characters, introducing a scene from Henry VI part 3 and references to the Wars of the Roses. And it worked. The plot was easy to follow, and the dialogue flowed actually using Shakespeare's own language. It is also innovative that it set the entire play around a long dinner table with a cast seated on one side opposite the audience. The period was deliberately ambiguous. Possibly Victorian. The dinner guests were the main characters, kings, queens and courtiers dressed in evening wear, while in the background with th...