REVIEWS Archives - Page 11 of 574

4Mar

By Jenn McKeanNo Comments

North West

Dear England – Liverpool Empire

As someone who can’t bear football, because it is forced upon them so much, I was as shocked as everyone to find how intrigued I was by the Dear England play. Euro ’96 is probably the first big tournament I remember and Gareth Southgate’s penalty being the prevailing moment. And I think that was what made me want to see him and cheer him on as he managed to turn things around over the last decade as manager of the England men’s team. The play starts with that missed penalty that knocked England out of the Euros in 1996. It then cuts to 2016 and Sam Allardyce ‘mutually deciding’ to leave the post with the FA, after being in charge for one singular game. We get to see Southgate being asked to become the Interim manager and follow how he managed to take the team to heights we’ve n...

Someone’s Knockin’ at the Door – Traverse Theatre

4Mar

By Jessie MartinNo Comments

Scotland

Someone’s Knockin’ at the Door – Traverse Theatre

Kicking off this season of A Play, a Pie and a Pint, is Someone’s Knockin’ at the Door. Written by Milly Sweeney, this play features grandparents Kathy (Maureen Carr) and Jack (Jonathan Watson) recounting to their granddaughter how they met music legend Paul McCartney in the rural landscape of the Mull of Kintyre. Moving between sit-down interviews with the couple separately talking to their granddaughter, to flashbacks of the couple’s camping trip in 1976, Someone’s Knockin’ At The Door evokes heavy nostalgia and sentimentality. Exploring not only the personal journey of the couple, but how the political landscape in Glasgow actively shaped their relationship. Sweeney has a knack for tackling a myriad of different themes without complicating the narrative or gleaning ...

Friends! The Musical Parody – Hull New Theatre

4Mar

By Jackie FoottitNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Friends! The Musical Parody – Hull New Theatre

Friends graced our TV screens from 1994 to 2004, so you would surmise that many of the iconic moments from that period, acted out in Friends! The Musical Parody, which has been running since 2022, would be long forgotten. The show arrived at the Hull New Theatre on Monday as part of a UK and Ireland tour, and, judging by the audience’s reactions during the performance, there were many whose memories didn’t need to be jogged re the shenanigans of Rachel, Ross, Joey, Chandler, Phoebe and Monica - the friends in question. There is a long gap between the end of the original TV series to the 2021 Reunion TV Special, an unscripted celebration of the iconic show. But Friends is now streamed on TV, maybe spawning a new crop of fans. Photo: Pamela Raith Monday’s show revealed a stage se...

4Mar

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

The Events – Traverse Theatre

There’s something quietly disarming about walking into the Traverse and finding the choir already in place. No theatrical reveal, just a community gathered on stage, singing, moving joyously, and dispensing hot drinks to the audience. Behind them, in a broad horseshoe, columns of stacked chairs rise like an improvised colonnade, orderly, architectural, faintly ecclesiastical. Later, those same chairs are winched into the roof, clattering against one another in a moment of metallic chaos, a striking image of rupture of ‘the event’ that lingers long after it settles. David Greig’s The Events, first staged in 2013 and winner of a Fringe First that year, returns here as a welcome re-emergence of a modern classic. Its revival demonstrates that it has lost none of its edge. If anything, ...

28Feb

By Klervi GavetNo Comments

London

Last and First Men – Coronet Theatre

At a time when humankind seems increasingly determined to write itself out of its own timeline, Neon Dance’s Last and First Men feels uncannily well placed. This 65-minute movement piece is a resonant speculative journey, with at its heart an act of listening: to the future, to the deep past, and to the fragile thread that still connects them. Based on Olaf Stapledon’s visionary 1930s sci-fi novel, the piece imagines a far future in which the last remnants of humanity reach back across two billion years to address us, the “first men”. Under the inspired direction of Adrienne Hart, the dancers — Fukiko Takase, Aoi Nakamura and Kelvin Kilonzo — perform with an otherworldly, masterful precision that feels recognisably human yet unmistakably other, as if the genus Homo had remained while th...

28Feb

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

16 Postcodes – King’s Head Theatre

Like all big cities, London has always been a challenging place to live and work. Smog, sewage, soot and squalor have held the city together for centuries. However, the past 20 years has seen a dramatic escalation in factors that largely render the capital an exclusive urban enclave. London’s once cosmopolitan centre is now only affordable for a super-rich, culturally hollow, elite echelon of society. The shocking expense of being alive, blended with a housing crisis, stagnant wages and a generous slug of austerity, means that a simple day out in London becomes a Hunger Games battle for sanity and a surviving bank balance. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution has become crueller than nature, with gentrification, zero-hours contracts and inherited wealth skewing the odds. Writing review...

28Feb

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

Savage – White Bear Theatre

Savage is admiral in its efforts to spread information about the atrocities committed by lesser-known Nazi war criminal Carl Værnet, and his post-war escape to Argentina. Værnet was a Danish doctor who attempted to “cure” homosexuality, and his methods involved human experimentation on concentration camp inmates. After the war, he was captured and detained in a British prisoner of war camp, but was able to escape, with the British and Danish governments perhaps even aiding him in starting a new life in Argentina. Gay conversion therapy, of which Værnet was a proponent, is legal in the UK and Denmark. Despite the play’s noble intentions, Savage is not particularly enlightening or powerful. As an exposé of Værnet, it provides only the most surface level information, and as a drama it fall...

The Village Where No One Suffers – Jack Studio Theatre

27Feb

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

The Village Where No One Suffers – Jack Studio Theatre

Four years on from the start of the disastrous and unnecessary Ukraine war, which has brought so much suffering to the Ukrainian people and changed the world for all of us, is a good time to stage a theatrical drama about these troubled times. But this play written by Polia Polozhentseva and playing at the Jack Studio Theatre is a very odd one to choose. It is located in a village in rural Ukraine which has barely been affected by the war; no missile strikes, no deaths or injuries, no damaged buildings and no conscription. Lukyana has returned from her comfortable life in Poland to visit her late grandmother's house, where she has fond childhood memories of growing up with her grandparents. She is responding to her grandmother's wish that she should spend some time in ...

27Feb

By Stephanie WiswallNo Comments

North West

The Memory of Water – Everyman Theatre

Welcome to 1996 and into the family home of three very different sisters as they reminisce, reveal and ruffle each other’s feathers after the passing of their beloved mother. Welcome to Olivier award winning comedy The Memory of Water by Shelagh Stephenson and directed by Lotte Wakeham. A quick witted, passionate and heartwarming show which takes you on a rollercoaster of a journey through all aspects of grief. From the anger, sadness, uncertainty, memories and comfort. This comedy takes a deceptively simple premise—three wildly different sisters reunited for their mother’s funeral—and turns it into a sharp, funny, and unexpectedly tender study of family friction and love. Set entirely in the bedroom of their late mother Vi. Entering the auditorium the staging is set (Katie Scott) yo...

27Feb

By Alison BainesNo Comments

North West

Mean Girls – Opera House, Manchester

Few films capture early 2000s nostalgia quite like Mean Girls. The absolute hit of the noughties – starring Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Tina Fey and Amanda Seyfried – it has long since cemented its cult-classic status. Much like other fan-favourite films that have recently made the leap from screen to stage - Heathers, The Devil Wears Prada, Legally Blonde and Pretty Woman to name just a few – its story continues to find new life with audiences. Direct from the West End, Mean Girls has landed in Manchester and brings an absolutely ‘Fetch’ cast with it. The story follows Cady Heron, on her transition from home-schooled life in Kenya into the harsh reality of American High School… when she meets ‘The Plastics’ who rule the school, she’ll realise high school is a whole new level of sava...