REVIEWS Archives - Page 13 of 563

16Jan

By Jackie FoottitNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Lear’s Shadow – Hull Truck Theatre

On Thursday evening, a really bizarre thing happened to me in my long theatre reviewing career. I was at the Hull Truck Theatre to watch a one-man, one-night production - Lear’s Shadow - and, searching out my seat, E4, I found it occupied by - wait for it - an Avatar. Urged to “get rid of it!” by my theatre buddy sister, I gingerly picked it up and deposited it on the row behind. During the 70+-minute performance by lover of all things Shakespeare, actor Colin Hurley (who also devised the production), the Avatar presence became clearer for I noticed several more occupying red chairs on the stage - a stage adorned only with the chairs, a bench, two tables and a small suitcase, as well as Mr Hurley, of course. A banner stating “Lie here and rest awhile” hung as a backdrop. The...

16Jan

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

London

Hamlet – National Theatre Live

Theatre should be for the many, and not the few, so by bringing ‘National Theatre Live’ into the cinema, and ‘National Theatre at Home’ to your armchair, there is more chance than ever for everyone to enjoy theatre. On the 22nd January, Hamlet will be available to watch on a cinema screen near you, and William Shakespeare’s tragic play, will be accessible within the medium of film. Although live performance will always be the best way to experience theatre, this runs at a pretty close second! Hamlet (for those who have yet to experience the play), is a young prince who resides in Elsinore, Denmark, who returns from university to find that his father the King is dead, and that within a month of his death, his mother has married his Uncle Claudius (Alistair Petrie). These events d...

15Jan

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

Natalie Palamides: WEER – Soho Theatre

Fresh from a run at New York’s Cherry Lane Theatre, Natalie Palamides’s one-woman romcom WEER, returns to London. Palamides plays both sides of the couple; her left side is Kristina, and her right side is Mark, and her hair, makeup, and multiple costumes are all split down the middle. Palamides’s performance is spectacular. By turning a different side of her body to the audience, and totally altering her voice and physicality, she switches back and forth seamlessly between the two characters at breakneck speed. She extremely skilfully and hilariously depicts arguments, physical struggles, and lovemaking between the two characters, and throughout the 85-minute show she mines this setup for all the comedic gold it contains to constantly deliver new, unexpected, hysterical gags. Palamides ...

15Jan

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

To Kill a Mockingbird – The Lowry

If the rest of my theatrical year measures up to this stunning start, then I am in for a vintage 2026. My first outing is a superb stage rendering of Harper Lee’s 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird, currently midway through an extensive UK tour following its runaway success on the London stage earlier this decade. A distinctly diverse audience greeted the production at the cavernous Lyric Theatre in Salford for this packed press night. A mixture of ageing grey hairs (like myself), with distant memories of studying the book for O-level, mingled with excitable GCSE students who have encountered Scout, Atticus and Boo Radley much more recently. All were entranced by the stage adaptation of the novel which, whilst staying faithful to the spirit and morality of the original, managed to find 21...

HadesTown Teen Edition – The Forum Theatre

15Jan

By David S ClarkeNo Comments

North West

HadesTown Teen Edition – The Forum Theatre

This is another production at which NK excels, gathering a number of extremely talented young people together to bring out the best in their multiple abilities resulting in a gloriously entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable production, although I have to confess that at times I was a bit bewildered as to what was going on in the storyline, but that is down to my shortcomings rather than any fault with the cast. It was wonderful to see Paul Wilson directing another teen edition version of a classic show following on from the excellent Six which he directed a couple of years ago (ably complimented by Ceri Graves as Musical Director and Jenny Wilson as Choreographer) and it was always going to be difficult to reach the same standard as they previously achieved with that production but agai...

Inspector Morse: House of Ghosts – Liverpool Playhouse

14Jan

By Stephanie WiswallNo Comments

North West

Inspector Morse: House of Ghosts – Liverpool Playhouse

Twists, turns, murder and mystery sound like your kind of evening? If so, join the dynamic cast of characters in Inspector Morse at the Liverpool Playhouse from 13th to 17th January 2026. The staging is set, the lights are low and you are plunged into an intriguingly immersive scene. A murder! Who killed sweet or troubled Rebecca? (Eliza Teale) Our main man, the likeable and quirky Inspector Morse (Tom Chambers) takes to the stage, accompanied by his more stable and rule following partner Lewis (Tachia Newall). Both dive into a shady past of wealth of characters from calm and composed Ellen (Teresa Banham), the wild and rough Freddy (James Gladdon), unstable and erratic Justin (Spin Glancy) and the messy and divaesc Verity (Charlotte Randle). Special mentions to Josh Katembela ...

Drawing The Italian Renaissance – King’s Gallery, Holyrood Palace

14Jan

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Drawing The Italian Renaissance – King’s Gallery, Holyrood Palace

This is an excellent exhibition, inspiring, beautifully curated, and quietly revelatory. Drawing the Italian Renaissance does something deceptively simple but profoundly effective, it brings us closer to the act of thinking itself, as revealed through the drawn line. But first, a little historical background – on paper. Far from being the boring commodity that Ricky Gervais parodies in the iconic The Office, paper was exciting and new and suddenly abundant. Before the Renaissance, drawing was constrained as much by material as by imagination. Paper, though known in Europe from the medieval period, was scarce and relatively expensive, and artists instead relied on vellum, made from animal skin, which was costly and ill-suited to exploratory or repetitive work. From the mid-fifteenth cent...

14Jan

By Tracey BellNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Rocky Horror Show – Sheffield Lyceum

Sheffield waited with antici……….pation and at last the Rocky Horror Show crash landed into the Sheffield Lyceum. With a well versed and non-virginal Rocky audience there were more sparkly tailcoats and top hats, green surgical gowns, heavy rocker leather jackets and more basques, corsets and suspenders than you can find in Ann Summers and this production did not disappoint. After first seeing Richard O Brien’s Rocky Horror Show on its original UK tour in 79/80 (as a 14-year-old schoolgirl with a music teacher who didn’t do his research homework very well and was subsequently horrified he may lose his job!) I am somewhat of a connoisseur it could be said, and after sampling over 60 visits to Frank’s castle the question was - could this production still fill me with the amazement of my first...

11Jan

By Helen JonesNo Comments

North West

Cinderella – Waterside Arts

Sale Nomads are back at Waterside Arts with their annual post Christmas pantomime. This year Cinderella is the one in favour for the first time since 2017. In this production we have all the usual protagonists – Cinders, Buttons, Prince Charming, Dandini and of course the ugly sisters. The Nomads have high production standards and here they work hard to keep those standards in place. In the majority, it works. Good actors. Well designed and executed set. Excellent technical execution. The one blip – parts of the script. Pantomime is always a derivative art form. The basic plot, the corny jokes and so on. Some blatant plagiarism is a little harder to handle. Maybe the writers didn’t expect audience members to be as fam...

11Jan

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

Ghost In Your Ear – Hampstead Theatre

A Ghost In Your Ear is set in a recording studio, where an actor, George, has turned up late to record a job at short notice, so short he hasn’t read the script yet. It turns out it’s a horror story. As he and his friend, the sound engineer Sid, settle into a night of work, things gradually start to seem amiss. The story on the pages begins to escape them and soon George begins to see things. From there, we are plunged into a full-on horror show. The central question for a show like this is can it get your heart racing? The production comes through that test easily. Beyond employing many tried and tested horror methods, the show uses a binaural head – a microphone shaped like a human head that picks up the location of a given sound – to amp up the intensity. It is simply more engaging t...