REVIEWS Archives - Page 300 of 417

5May

By Ezzy LaBelleNo Comments

North West

Madam Butterfly – Liverpool Empire

If captivating story arcs of love, deception and tragedy are your thing, you don’t want to miss this. The timeless plot of Madam Butterfly takes your heart on an emotional rollercoaster and showcases the human voice in a way that must be heard to be fully appreciated. How are The Welsh National Opera delivering a production that brings this to the fore as well as evolving the interpretation of Puccini’s masterpiece? Directed by Lindy Hume, the new tour provides an altogether more gritty – more realistically raw – interpretation of an opera that has stood the test of time. Some people may feel the traditional expectations of opera shouldn’t be tampered with or be apprehensive about how such a work could be adjusted effectively; this is the mindset I held upon first seeing this revised ve...

Grandmother – Bombed Out Church, Liverpool

5May

By Donna M DayNo Comments

North West

Grandmother – Bombed Out Church, Liverpool

Grandmother, written and directed by Asa Murphy, is a sweet musical comedy about how family life is impacted when a new generation begins. Full of fun and emotional songs, with live guitar accompaniment from Asa Murphy, this is an entertaining piece of theatre which will make you laugh and cry in equal measure. The play opens with Becky’s mother (Pauline Donovan) enthusiastically dusting while singing along to the radio. But a phone call from Becky (Clare Alexander Campbell) to announce that she’s pregnant soon changes everything. Tearfully realising her daughter has grown up far too quickly, Donovan delivers a beautiful nostalgic song regarding how soon yesterday has gone. The show constantly pushes against the fourth wall to discuss with the audience the points of view of Becky and...

5May

By Alice RoseNo Comments

London

House of Ife – Bush Theatre

House of Ife follows a family repairing from the tragedy of losing a son, as the house reduces from 4 children to 3 the wounds that are desperate to heal remain open from the secrets buried around Ife’s death and the reason for his devastating path. Closing in around them are 4 walls, opened for view with bright saturated colours and a small amount of possessions. Books fill a small shelf although the only book referenced is the Bible, as the children reminisce on growing up with their dad who now lives in Ethiopia with his second wife and second family. We begin at the funeral, decorating the house as three children are set with the task to make it appropriate. Immediately we cut through the tragedy with the lightness and humour of grieving someone they knew would have wanted light and...

Ballet Black – Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

5May

By Nazaret RaneaNo Comments

Scotland

Ballet Black – Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

After their hugely successful first visit to the Scottish capital in 2019, Ballet Black is finally back after their postponed 2020 show. This time, the London-based company is celebrating its 20th anniversary with two brand new pieces: Say It Out Loud and Black Sun. As I type this review, I notice the nail polish I am wearing – a blush pink tone- which is unoriginally called ballet slippers. This helps illustrate the fact that ballet is inherently white. The lack of diversity within ballet dancers and the struggle racialized performers face in the industry led Cassa Pancho, a trained dancer of Trinidadian and British parents, to fund Ballet Black in 2001 as a company to provide role models to young, aspiring black and Asian dancers. Over the course of these 20 years, Ballet Black has...

5May

By Lou SteggalsNo Comments

North West

Wuthering Heights – The Lowry

“How is anyone expected to follow this? All the names sound the same and everyone is so very, very cross with me!” So, laments Mr Lockwood, new tenant of literary anti-hero Heathcliff, and our introduction to an irreverent and unique take on the Emily Brontë classic. For those not familiar with the text, it follows Heathcliff, taken in as an orphan from the docks of Liverpool to the wild moors of Yorkshire by the well-meaning Mr Earnshaw. He is bullied and resented by Earnshaw’s son Hindley, but finds solace in his friendship with daughter Cathy, which evolves into an intense and toxic love affair. The fact that Emma Rice is the wizard behind tonight’s curtain is the first and biggest clue that the famous novel is likely to have been turned on its head. Her short-lived tenure as A...

5May

By Peter KinnockNo Comments

West Midlands

Mamma Mia – Birmingham Hippodrome

Stephen Fry once compared ABBA to a bottle of coke. It wasn’t because their bubbling pop music was sweet and saccharine. It was because the original glass bottle was so well designed - becoming a design classic - it could withstand a hundred times more pressure from its contents than it needed to. A case of over-design. Just like ABBA. Their work is so well designed, so perfectly engineered and far, far better made than it ever needs to be - that they too have become classics. If Benny and Bjorn had created songs half as good they would still be some of the most outstanding pop music in the world. And “Mamma Mia”, that staggeringly successful stage show, stands testimony to the words and music of those talented Swedes and their well-designed pop classics. The auditorium of the Birmingha...

5May

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

Red Ellen – Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

The author (Caroline Bird) admitted that ‘this play is one interpretation… there are so many Ellens to choose from’ and in this respect the show lost pace and momentum towards the end, lingering too long on Ellen’s disappointments, professional and personal, as she stumbled, a rattling, over-worked medicine cabinet, towards death; the air of exhaustion at the conclusion of the Second World War was captured well by the blazing row between Ellen (Bettrys Jones) and Herbert Morrison (Kevin Lennon), both true and tragic, but overlooked were her incredible feats and achievements as one of less than a handful of women involved in the government and politics of the era. Scant attention was paid to her involvement with the Women’s Suffrage organisation, hardly mentioned was her first position as M...

4May

By Tracey BellNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Bat Out Of Hell – Sheffield Lyceum

Set in a dystopian future, this post-apocalyptic rock and roll musical has the audience fully invested as the characters live and relive the spine-tingling drunkenness of youth and love. With the greatest storytelling hits of the legendary Jim Steinman and Meatloaf forefront and taking centre stage, this UK tour is setting the theatres in its path alight, and Sheffield was no exception. With its unusual live video capture on stage, which is projected onto both a screen and the windows of Falco Towers, the audience are subject to aesthetic ensemble spectacle and heart wrenching close up intimacy – a peep into a hybrid between theatre and film. The story is set in Obsidian (Manhattan as we know it) which has floated out to sea and is tyrannically ruled by Falco played by the role’s origi...

4May

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

A Murder is Announced – King’s Theatre

Based on the 1950 novel by the “Queen of Crime” herself, Agatha Christie, the title refers to the murder being announced ahead of time in a local newspaper in a small village, right down to the minute. Though it could be described as a “Miss Marple Story”, in truth the detective-work is split almost 50/50 between her and local police-officer Inspector Craddock. It's also worth mentioning this isn't one of Christie's fifteen stage adaptations of her own work, this one being written by Leslie Darbon. But being based on one of her novels, it does contain many of the genre staples which have, thanks largely to her, become associated with the genre. These include: a small village setting, a plodding police sergeant (here played by Jog Maher), a corpse on the floor (Luke Rhodri), the suspects...

4May

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

Orlando – Jermyn Street Theatre

One can’t help but wonder what Virginia Woolf would make of the Kardashians, porn ogling MPs, and rising transphobia. She’d surely be a lively wag on Twitter, but likely view TikTok as ghastly and common. Her most popular work, Orlando, is the poetic Magna Carta of subversive queerness, wry feminism and trans magic. On Brexit island in 2022, Empire is celebrated with dim blindness, but in 1928, Woolf used her most joyful literary turn to skewer British imperialism with withering disdain. Due to its fantastical spirit, people often overlook the book’s political satire. Orlando is a transgressive free spirit, but the English patriarchy proves a persistent prison, regardless of epoch, and despite wealth, beauty and mystical eternal youth. After Orlando’s male-to-fem...