REVIEWS Archives - Page 3 of 636

Showstopper! The Improvised Musical – Cambridge Theatre

13Oct

By Charlotte MansfieldNo Comments

London

Showstopper! The Improvised Musical – Cambridge Theatre

Olivier-award-winning improv group, Showstopper! The Improvised Musical, are back at London's Cambridge Theatre performing their long-form improv. As their name suggests, they improvise a West End musical, based on suggestions from the audience. The company has a large amount of talented performers to draw on, but each show typically consists of around six actors, with another company member taking the role of director, whose job it is to gather suggestions from the audience and introduce them at various points to either move the action forward or make the actors look as ridiculous as possible. Co-creator of 'Showstopper!', Dylan Emery, was the director for last night's show, opening the action with a call from a producer in need of a new musical. Not to worry, he has a writer's room (t...

The Silence of the Lambs – Bradford Alhambra

13Oct

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

The Silence of the Lambs – Bradford Alhambra

The Silence of the Lambs is one of only three movies to ever win the ‘big five’ Oscars, including golden statuettes for both lead actors, so creating a stage version of such an iconic film was always going to be a risk. It proved to be a gamble that totally paid off as the producers only had the rights to the book by Thomas Harris, so writer Gina Gionfriddo eschewed some of the camper elements of the movie and focused more on back stories to the twisted psychological battles between the main characters. Rookie FBI trainee Clarise Starling was dispatched to an insane system to interview seemingly urbane serial killer Dr Hannibal Lecter as the bureau attempted to track down Buffalo Bill who was on his own killing spree. Gionfriddo cleverly explored the way Starling and Lector dev...

13Oct

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Jersey Boys – Edinburgh Playhouse

There is something reassuringly familiar about Jersey Boys. This is my third encounter with the musical in approximately six years, suggesting that, rather like a distant relative, it comes calling every three years whether invited or not. But familiarity can be a double-edged sword, particularly when a show has been around for twenty years and its extraordinary catalogue of songs is already deeply embedded in our collective musical consciousness. This latest touring production, directed by Des McAnuff, takes a little longer than expected to find its feet. The first act is, dare I say it, rather pedestrian at times, despite the considerable musical talent on display. But what initially threatens to become a fairly conventional musical biography transforms in the second half into so...

The Awkward Guide to Friendship – White Bear Theatre

13Oct

By Prateek SonnyNo Comments

London

The Awkward Guide to Friendship – White Bear Theatre

An Awkward Guide to Friendship is an auditory treat featuring poetry, music, sing-alongs, and improvisation. It’s a collaborative piece by poet Beth Calverley and musician Beth Roberts, narrating the personal journey of forming and struggling with friendships throughout life. The play takes us on a metaphorical boat ride of friendship and a journey to write a guide for it. The story focuses on Calverley playing a stage version of herself, showing how she was an awkward kid, how she made friends, and the insecurities that kept her from maintaining those connections. It is a unique piece in how both performers present the story through a blend of memoir, spoken-word poetry, narration, and songs. Roberts takes charge as the musician, the guide, and a character version of herself, beaut...

Back in the USSR: Opera North’s Eugene Onegin – Leeds Grand Theatre

13Oct

By Mark HumphreysNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Back in the USSR: Opera North’s Eugene Onegin – Leeds Grand Theatre

Tchaikovsky’s life had a habit of imitating his art. In the spring of 1877, while he was sketching an opera based on Pushkin’s verse novel Eugene Onegin – starting, so the story goes, with Tatyana’s letter scene – he received a passionate letter from a former student, Antonina Milyukova, declaring her love. Determined not to turn her away as coldly as Onegin does, he married her that summer. It was a disaster, and within weeks he had fled. The story itself is simple enough. Tatyana, a bookish country girl, falls for the aloof Onegin, friend of the poet Lensky, who is engaged to her sister Olga. She pours her heart out in a letter; he hands it back with a lecture. At her name-day party a bored Onegin flirts with Olga, Lensky challenges him to a duel, and Onegin kills his friend. Years la...

12Oct

By Charlotte MansfieldNo Comments

London

The Big Cheese – The Golden Goose

Surely it can't be hard to sell cheese, can it? Inspired by her own experiences of working in a cheese shop, this new comedy by writer and director Bylli Gomez pokes fun at middle class Britain through a lens of millennial problems. 30 year old Bee, living with her mum after losing both her job and her relationship, is desperate to find work. When she gets a trial shift at a cheese shop, things go from bad to worse for her as she ends up stealing a jacket, destroying an expensive wheel of cheese and drowning her sorrows in a bottle of wine. Gomez herself plays Bee, a woman carving her own way through life, in spite of her constantly disappointed mother. Bee's mistakes are endless, but that doesn't stop her. Gomez makes her character endearing and expressive, easily getting the audie...

12Oct

By Alan Stuart MalinNo Comments

London

Who Killed Marilyn? – Emerald Theatre

There is a particular pleasure in a story that makes you impatient for its next revelation, and ‘Who Killed Marilyn?’ taps into precisely that feeling, unfolding with the intrigue of a crime novel whose pages you keep turning long after you intended to stop. An expansive retelling of Marilyn Monroe’s life and death, it draws Hollywood glamour, political power and conspiracy into a theatrical mystery that is thoroughly captivating. Written by Sharleen Cooper Cohen and directed by Philip Wm. McKinley, the production follows Monroe’s story after becoming famous, through the relationships and powerful interests surrounding her, including the Kennedys, organised crime and the machinery of celebrity, which all enter the frame as the circumstances of her death come under scrutiny. Conspiracy t...

A Play, a Pie and a Pint: Whaur’s Yer Wullie Shakespeare Noo? – Traverse Theatre

12Oct

By Kathleen MansfieldNo Comments

Scotland

A Play, a Pie and a Pint: Whaur’s Yer Wullie Shakespeare Noo? – Traverse Theatre

Whaur’s Yer Wullie Shakespeare Noo is a comedic reenactment debating not just the Scots Enlightenment in the mid-1700s, but also the value of pure entertainment and man’s inclination to cling to traditional modes of thought. Writer and Director, Brian Logan is currently the Artistic Director of A Play, a Pie and a Pint. He has returned to his homeland from a sojourn in London where he championed The Camden People’s Theatre for thirteen years. Clergymen and thinkers, David Hume and Alexander Carlyle join John Witherspoon (a Scottish Presbyterian Minister and Founding Father of the United States) and Hume’s cousin, John Home, in a fictional recreation of the real men behind several ideas which carry through to today’s society. Actors, Gavin Jon Wright (so good looking), Kevin Lennon (c...

Sweeney Todd: A Legacy of Blood – The Studio, Widnes

12Oct

By Grace LeicesterNo Comments

North West

Sweeney Todd: A Legacy of Blood – The Studio, Widnes

There is something particularly refreshing about seeing original writing brought to life on stage, especially when a familiar story is reimagined from a different perspective. Sweeney Todd: A Legacy of Blood, presented by Warrington-based SOUP Productions at The Studio, delivers a dark, Gothic and blood-soaked evening of theatre, blending murder, companionship, madness and meat pies with a heavy-rock edge. Making his debut as both writer and director for SOUP Productions, Marcus Cameron has taken inspiration from the original Gothic tale, Sweeney Todd: A String of Pearls, creating his own distinctive interpretation of the infamous demon barber of Fleet Street and his accomplice, Mrs Lovett. Rather than simply retelling the story audiences may recognise from previous stage productions...

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Lyceum Theatre

10Oct

By Tom ScottNo Comments

Scotland

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Lyceum Theatre

The National Theatre of Scotland’s new expressionistic production of ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ is a magnificent theatrical gem. Since the 1960s, theatre audiences have enjoyed the Jay Presson Allen adaptation of Muriel Spark’s iconic novel. That features an eccentric but lovable teacher in 1930s Edinburgh, and her influence on the young girls in her care. Vanessa Redgrave played Brodie in the 1966 West End production but turned down the part for the 1969 film version, allowing Maggie Smith to step in and claim her first Oscar. David Harrower is only the second writer to be allowed to adapt the novel, receiving permission from Muriel Spark herself shortly before her death in 2006. Harrower’s adaptation, which premiered at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2018, and has been rev...