REVIEWS Archives - Page 312 of 417

Everybody’s Talking About Jaime – Edinburgh Festival Theatre

30Mar

By Beth EltringhamNo Comments

Scotland

Everybody’s Talking About Jaime – Edinburgh Festival Theatre

When you learn to except yourself for who you truly are and want to be, that is when the world will follow suit and accept you too, this is the message that this show communicates. Everyone’s Talking about Jamie is based around the true life and journey of drag star Jamie Campbell: one of the youngest drag queens of his time, taking up the art at just 16. Whilst drag is an important plot device do not get this show confused for a drag show; Jamie’s alter ego Mimi Me (or in real life Fifi La True) only actually surfaces once in the show and in its complete form this is via projection. The plot is actually about a young sixteen-year-old queer boy (Jamie played by Layton Williams) who dreams of being a drag queen yet fears the backlash he may get from his classmates, teacher (Lara Denning...

30Mar

By Aditi DalalNo Comments

London

The Other – Drayton Arms Theatre

Packing boxes and walls with scribbles draw the audience into a unique house as they enter. A sentence is written on the walls. It is then spoken aloud. The rest of the show then embodies it. Delicately presented with light moments of interaction with the audience, ‘the other’ is explored in its many forms and feelings. Tracing the journey of a family, as witnessed by the walls of the house they lived in, the show explores their relationships with each other and with their home. As they seek to find a new house, we are taken down memory lane of the bitter and sweet happenings over the years. The nuanced direction of Ariella Stoian brilliantly uses everyday objects to make meaning of people and their emotional journeys. The use of chalk, in particular, is a strong motif. It can be eas...

30Mar

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

North West

Vagina Cake – Hope Mill Theatre

Making friends at university can be a risky business as four friends have found out as they run round the stage pandering to the unreasonable demands of an unseen ‘The Duchess’. In between Laura Harper’s warm, funny but very perceptive new work unpeels the power and complexity of female friendships as Fraggle, Dipsy, Mumps and Mary migrate from their relatively carefree twenties into the much choppier waters of their thirties. Harper has based Vagina Cake on extensive chats with women of different generations, and the regular gales of laughter from the mainly female audience proved she has nailed the inevitable changes in friendships that start when you are essentially still a big child. The first half centres around a disastrous wedding sketching out each of the women’s ro...

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat – Opera House, Manchester

30Mar

By Alison BainesNo Comments

North West

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat – Opera House, Manchester

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s first staged musical ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat’ arrives in Manchester. The iconic duo of Lloyd-Webber and Tim Rice wrote this much-loved production back in 1986 as a school play… little did they know the sensation it would become. The brand-new production is a modern take on a timely classic: it is exactly the star-studded, colourful spectacle you want and expect. Alexandra Burke takes on the leading role of The Narrator, young talent Jac Yarrow takes the title role of Joseph and Jason Donavan returns to the show he once conquered, now as the heartthrob, Elvis-styled Pharaoh. Any musical theatre fan - if not, everyone in the UK - knows the music from this work of art, featuring songs such as Any Dream Will Do, emotional ballad Close Every Do...

30Mar

By Angela KellyNo Comments

North West

The Addams Family – Regent Theatre

The Addams family pay a visit to the neighbourhood of Stoke-on-Trent this week in all their darkest finery. Based on characters created by Charles Addams and with lyrics and music written by Tony Award nominated Andrew Lippa, it was evident from the opening that this kooky musical comedy was going to be something special. Directed by Matthew Wight, the story is essentially about ‘Wednesday’ (Kingsley Morton), daughter of Morticia and Gomez Addams. She has fallen in love with the seemingly ‘normal’ Lucas Beineke (Ahmed Hamad). Lucas and his family are invited to dinner ‘chez Addams’ and spooky dark fun over a dinner ensues. Morton’s role of ‘Wednesday’ was outstanding. With vocals entirely suited to musical theatre she commanded the stage and stomped about being the angry daughter of ...

29Mar

By Lou SteggalsNo Comments

Wales

Catch Me If You Can – Theatr Clwyd

Hollywood has landed in the rolling hills of Mold, with a comedy-thriller that boasts more twists and turns than the Welsh road network. Catch Me If You Can, written by Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, and directed by Bob Tomson, is an adaptation of Robert Thomas’s French play Trap for a Lonely Man. We meet Inspector Levine, called to a house in the remote Catskill mountains to investigate the disappearance of newly married Elizabeth Corban. But when Elizabeth suddenly turns up, her husband Danny swears blind he’s never seen her before, launching a chain of events in which nothing is what it seems, and no-one is as they appear. It’s no wonder this has been adapted for the screen three times over; it’s full of intrigue and conspiracy that will keep the most zealous of armchair sl...

28Mar

By Louise PennNo Comments

London

Dracula – Richmond Theatre

When actor James Gaddas received an offer to work on a television documentary exploring the origins of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it sent him into an obsessive investigation to discover the truth behind the myth. Such is the premise of this new adaptation, in which Gaddas is not only the writer but performer of fifteen different characters. Bringing Stoker’s novel to life is something many others have done from the days of the silent screen: if you haven’t read the book, you have surely seen one of the film, television or stage adaptations. But what if Stoker had really meant to write a work of non-fiction about vampiric activity, and what if an investigation into his real intentions is cursed? As Gaddas tells the story of his interaction with documentary evidence and a trail which takes...

An Evening without Kate Bush – Waterside Arts

28Mar

By David S ClarkeNo Comments

North West

An Evening without Kate Bush – Waterside Arts

Well, I expected this show to be a straightforward tribute to Kate Bush – how wrong I was, it was so much more. I would probably describe it as more like a comedy show with Kate Bush songs thrown in. It did help if (like the majority of the audience) you were an ardent fan of Kate Bush herself, although this was by no means an essential pre-requisite for enjoying the show. The lights dimmed and a darkly clad Sarah-Louise Young appeared on the stage to the sounds of Hounds of Love and this initiated a section of audience participation where a couple of willing volunteers were enticed onto the stage to sing backing vocals to the song Cloud bursting, which had all the audience waving their arms in time to the music. This was only the start of an evening which emphasised her amazing rapport...

Don Carlos – The Metropolitan Opera, New York

27Mar

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

REVIEWS

Don Carlos – The Metropolitan Opera, New York

The Met Opera’s original five-act French version of Verdi’s epic opera of doomed love among royalty is in fact an amended version of the 1867 Paris edition with some omissions as well as the addition of elements from later Italian versions, but if the intention was to serve up the best version possible then there is no doubt that this comes pretty close with the magnificence of its delivery. Photo: Ken Howard It's a tough story with far too real parallels to events unfolding in the Ukraine which serves to reinforce the piece’s uncompromising assessment of the ways of human nature as we are thrust via a love triangle into the courtly world of 16th Century Spain complete with its religious Inquisition and destructive suppression of protest in Flanders. At almost five hours, there is...

The Marriage Of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein – Jermyn Street Theatre

27Mar

By Carole GordonNo Comments

London

The Marriage Of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein – Jermyn Street Theatre

Everything about Edward Einhorn's "The Marriage of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein" is an enigma. Is it comedy, tragedy, tragi-comedy? Farce? All of the above? It's a play within a play within a play in which everyone (audience included) has been invited to the wedding of Gertrude and Alice. The circles in which the two literary superstars of their time moved means that their guest list includes those who are regulars at their Paris salon. There is Picasso (along with one of his wives and two of his mistresses), T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and the less-than-welcome Ernest Hemingway who turns up uninvited with his wife and a matador pal. With such exalted company, the conversation naturally revolves about the nature of art, genius, fame, sex and love. Love is certainly...