REVIEWS Archives - Page 56 of 407

31May

By H.S. BakerNo Comments

Scotland

The Merchant of Venice – Traquair House

Regardless of the weather, you know summer’s arrived when outdoor Shakespeare comes around. And of all the venues, Traquair House is surely the loveliest and most apposite in the Scottish borders. Shakespeare at Traquair is a promenade production, moving from one picturesque location to another, with the mewling peacocks providing an atmospheric soundscape. The night we were there, once the shower of rain had passed, we were relentlessly midged for the rest of the evening. But such are the joys of outdoor theatre in Scotland, and it’s a testament to the competence of the large cast that I only saw one young person reacting to the pesky wee blighters. In any case, they did little to detract from the enjoyment of this fine production of the Shakespea...

31May

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

All That Fall – Toxteth Reservoir

Beckett described this radio play, first broadcast on the BBC in 1957, as ‘a text written to come out of the dark’, and director Adrian Dunbar has certainly achieved that with his choice of location and the use of Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 (D.810) to frame his re-imagining of a radio play whose dark-driven conclusion is hardly credible after the preceding slapstick and pantomime of the foley, with Michael Cummins’ technical direction in conjunction with Simon Roth’s sound design retaining Beckett’s orchestrated sound effects with cast (Orla Charlton, Anna Nygh, Vincent Higgins, Stanley Townsend, Frankie McCafferty) and musicians (Darragh Morgan (violin), Cora Venus Lunny (violin), Fiona Winning (viola), Tim Gill (cello)) positioned behind the audience. One of Beckett’s more acces...

Fun at the Beach Romp-Bomp-A-Lomp!! – Southwark Playhouse

31May

By Alan Stuart MalinNo Comments

London

Fun at the Beach Romp-Bomp-A-Lomp!! – Southwark Playhouse

If you're craving a delightfully exciting blend of retro charm and laugh-out-loud comedy, look no further than ‘Fun at the Beach Romp-Bomp-A-Lomp!!’ which is currently dazzling audiences at Southwark Playhouse (Borough). Directed by Mark Bell, the genius behind ‘The Play That Goes Wrong,’ this brand-new musical offers a riotous escape to a sun-soaked beach brimming with beach competitions, vibrant characters, and musical nostalgia. The story unfolds on a picturesque sunny, summers day during the famed ‘Beach Romp-Bomp-A-Lomp’ competition, where participants vie for the prestigious titles of King “or” Queen of the Beach. As expected, romance and rivalry intermingle amid a series of increasingly absurd and entertaining challenges. The show cleverly satirizes the conventional jukebox music...

The Comedy of Errors – Eastbury Manor House

31May

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

The Comedy of Errors – Eastbury Manor House

Double twins and twin doubles! This quartet of Three Inch Fools bring it all to the stage in their rambunctious rendition of “Shakespeare’s shortest comedy” trimmed of all its fat and implanted with several eye catching new musical interludes. Billed as “a musical take on Shakespeare” the Fools’ performance methodology is a tried-and-true formula. There are trap doors, nametagged doublets, ad libs, and prat falls -gimmicks galore. The play is both pure frivolity and ruthless efficiency as the company works overtime to squeeze every gag and galivant into the hours before darkness claims their almost obnoxiously charming outdoor playing space. Detailing (and on many occasions instead summarizing) the exploits of long-lost and reluctantly-reunited identical twins Antipholus and Anti...

Country Roads: One Night of Country Classics – Festival Theatre

31May

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Country Roads: One Night of Country Classics – Festival Theatre

“I’m Johnny Cash” says a performer, and we believe him, with his soothing, authoritative voice and stage presence. The line-up also includes dead ringers for Patsy Kline, Kenny Rogers, and the one-and-only Dolly Parton. They aren’t the real superstars, of course, but they put on a hell of a show. Songs include “Ring of Fire” (apparently inspired by a Wetherspoons curry), “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “Jolene”, as well as the title song. The performers want us to join in, and gradually, the audience gains confidence and starts singing along. The front-of-house staff were bemused by the number of audience members who went up to the front of the stage, and they spent the second half of the show trying to get people to get people to go back to their seats. There was a party atmosphere in the pack...

La Dernière Bande (Krapp’s Last Tape) – Stanley Theatre, University of Liverpool

31May

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

La Dernière Bande (Krapp’s Last Tape) – Stanley Theatre, University of Liverpool

On his sixty-ninth birthday, Krapp (Denis Lavant), as has become his custom, hauls out his old tape recorder to review one of the earlier years, and make a new recording commenting on the events of the previous twelve months. Whilst his younger self speaks to reveal an idealistic fool, will the passage of time reveal the kind of fool he has become? This is the UK debut of director Jacques Osinski’s production – which opened the Avignon Festival in 2019 – that, performed in French with English surtitles, exposes the bleakness of recorded life. Indeed, almost seventy years since it was written, this one-act play remains as relevant – perhaps more so – in 2024, when we can so easily identify with its themes of isolation, reflection, and loneliness following our experiences during the recen...

31May

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

Sentient – Everyman Theatre

The world premiere of Sentient, a Beckett: Unbound 2024 Festival commission from choreographer Liz Roche, in collaboration with performer/composers Nathalie Forget and Nick Roth, is a major full-length work for six dancers (Sarah Cerneaux, Emily Terndrup, Mufutau Yusuf, Conor Thomas Doherty, Grace Cuny, Inez Berdychowska), saxophone and ondes Martenot, an early electronic musical instrument. As a response to an innocuous seeming passage in Samuel Beckett’s Molly where the author explores his wonder at the behaviour of bees – Beckett’s fascination came from German-Austrian ethologist Karl von Frisch’s Nobel-prize winning description of the precise way in which bees communicate information through their orientation, height, and movement – the piece is designed to offer a new interpr...

31May

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Sunset Song – Royal Lyceum Theatre

Dundee Rep in a major co-production with the Royal Lyceum Theatre bring a contemporary reworking of a piece of classic Scottish fiction for the next ten days, marking the end of an East coast tour through Dundee, Aberdeen and Inverness. It is not surprising that the tour has stayed in sight of the North Sea given that almost the entire dialogue is performed in the Doric language native to the North East coast of Scotland. A script that would have had my sadly departed Mother-In-Law, Isobel, chortling away and no doubt reminiscing on her Invergorden crofting roots. Much of the setting of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song would have been familiar to Isobel; the chains that bind you to the land, to family and hardship. The tears, the toil, the unending bleakness and the stoic endurance...

31May

By Jackie FoottitNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Mind Mangler – Hull New Theatre

My reviewer mind started to be slightly mangled as I was handed my press pack in Hull New Theatre’s foyer on Thursday night, and told there would be no programme available for Mind Mangler: Member of the Tragic Circle. No programme meant I had to really pull up my reviewer socks and, gulp, concentrate for the duration of the show. After the initial shock wore off, I took my seat in row N of the stalls, after being handed a pencil and a folded card upon which we were asked to write our full name and a secret about ourselves. Now, my regular reader will know I have an intense aversion to audience participation. So I tucked the blank card away from the prying eyes of the tall young man collecting completed cards from those eager theatregoers not as averse to the spotlight. However...

30May

By Olivia CoxNo Comments

London

Strategic Love Play – Soho Theatre

Two singletons walk into a bar, ready for (at least) a polite two drinks’ worth of getting-to-know-you chatter with a person they’ve never met outside the confines of their phone screen. What could go wrong? The dating app-induced first date is a scene many of us are all too familiar with, and it sets up the premise of Miriam Battye’s Strategic Love Play, currently playing at Soho Theatre until 15th June. We join the two characters — simply referred to as Woman (Letty Thomas) and Man (Archie Backhouse) — at their first meeting, and it’s abundantly clear from the get-go that they’re not on the same wavelength. While Man seems content exchanging bumbling pleasantries that avoid any risk of a genuinely enlightening conversation, Woman is bitingly honest and desperate to dig deeper....