REVIEWS Archives - Page 6 of 596

4Jul

By Peter KinnockNo Comments

West Midlands

Matilda – Birmingham Hippodrome

“There’s a newt in my knickers!” It’s hard to believe “Matilda” has been conjuring its magic in the UK for nearly fifteen years beginning back before Covid, before Brexit in 2011. It’s even harder to believe this well-versed critic, whose bottom has dinted hundreds of stalls seats at hundreds of shows, has resolutely failed to see it. Mea culpa. How can you ever forgive me, but tonight I make amends by treating my eyes and ears to their very first viewing. I may not have seen this Matilda, but I have seen a Matilda. Here’s a little known factoid for Tilly fans. An earlier musical version c.1992 toured the country playing number one dates without hitting the West End to great acclaim but rummage the internet and you’ll little mention as it’s upstaged by its younger, shinier sister. This ...

4Jul

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

-320° F – Sadler’s Wells Theatre

This is not a show I am going to be able to fully describe here. Across almost two and a half hours, Hideki Noda’s show was a mad, brilliant and strange whirlwind of ideas and images. Roughly, the story begins in the present day with a search for angel bones, which may hold the key to human desires. The main scientist Professor Kyuri thinks they will unlock humanity's secrets, the warring pharmaceutical sponsors, a brother and sister pair, are interested in their market value. The fight over finding and exploiting them centres around the character ‘Help’, because he happens to have an angel bone in his right arm, which allows him to detect other angel bones and use them to unlock the full power of his brain, connecting himself to past memories. As I said, this is not a straightforward p...

2Jul

By Kevin EcclestonNo Comments

North West

Strawberry Jack – Floral Pavilion

As a part of the Paradise Heights series Strawberry Jack comes to the Floral Pavilion, New Brighton 28th June. Written and directed by Joe O’Byrne, Strawberry Jack is one of those shows that grabs you by the collar from the first moment and refuses to let go. Joe O’Byrne’s Paradise Heights universe has always thrived on grit, heart, and a touch of the supernatural, but this one digs even deeper. It’s a bruised, beautifully bleak character study that feels as raw as a scraped knuckle and as tender as the moment after the fight, when the adrenaline fades and the truth starts to sting. At the centre is Jack Grundy — “Strawberry Jack” to the locals who once whispered his name with a mix of fear and admiration. Once the War Horse of Paradise Heights, Jack was a wild child who grew int...

2Jul

By Alan Stuart MalinNo Comments

London

Malory Towers – Richmond Theatre

Adapting a beloved children's classic for the stage is never an easy task, particularly when generations of audiences arrive with fond memories of Enid Blyton's ‘Malory Towers’. Emma Rice's adaptation does not attempt to reinvent the theatrical landscape, nor does it aspire to compete with the spectacle of the West End's biggest productions. Instead, it embraces the warmth, imagination and youthful optimism at the heart of the original stories, delivering an engaging and thoroughly enjoyable production that knows exactly who its audience is: young girls discovering the story for the first time, alongside the mothers and grandmothers who grew up with these much-loved books. From the moment the pupils arrive at the famous Cornish boarding school, the production captures the excitement...

2Jul

By Jessie MartinNo Comments

Scotland

Twelfth Night – Bard in the Botanics

Bard in the Botanics remains one of the most prominent Shakespeare-forward festivals in Scotland having performed 25 Summers in the beautiful Glasgow Botanic Gardens. Their well-established reputation and years of experience are clear as they present us with a schedule of both Shakespearean works and more contemporary classics such as Jane Austen’s Emma. Using the gardens to their advantage, there is both an open-air main stage, and a separate performance space within the Kibble Palace glasshouse. This time around I saw Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at the main stage, directed by Jennifer Dick and it's safe to say I would happily rush back to see it again. This season of Bard in the Botanics is titled Lovers & Madmen and really is there a difference? Of course...

Hot Mess: A New Musical – The Other Palace Theatre

2Jul

By Carole GordonNo Comments

London

Hot Mess: A New Musical – The Other Palace Theatre

Young, blue-green and beautiful Earth is desperately looking for her one true love. The newly evolved single-celled organisms don't do anything for her and T-Rex meets an untimely end before the relationship can even take off. It's a few billion years of waiting impatiently, then Humanity turns up and sweeps her off her feet. Their relationship starts sweet before becoming passionate, fiery and chaotic. Humanity is ambitious, sees potential in what Earth has to offer him and throws himself into discovering fire, inventing the wheel, and then finding Earth's deepest treasures to exploit. Earth warns him of the dangers of exploiting her resources, but the downwards spiral into a hot mess of a break-up is inevitable. Will Earth and Humanity endure, either together or separately or are they he...

2Jul

By Zain RussellNo Comments

London

Arcadia – Duke of York’s Theatre

Arcadia is a time-shifting play set across two centuries, where we see teenage prodigy Thomasina Coverly living in the early nineteenth century, rapidly thinking beyond her time as she explores mathematics and the natural world. In contrast, the present-day storyline follows Hannah Jarvis as she investigates the life of Lord Byron while staying in the same country house, Sidley Park. The play is highly thought-provoking, raising complex questions about knowledge, history, and certainty. At times, it can be puzzling to follow how the two timelines interlink, but this is also what makes it engaging, as the audience is encouraged to actively piece together meaning across centuries. One of the central ideas is the contrast between the two approaches to history and knowledge. Bernard Nigh...

2Jul

By Coral MourantNo Comments

North West

Miss Saigon – Blackpool Opera House

A musical masterpiece that has garnered loyal fans, Miss Saigon will always bring in an audience to be entertained and devastated in equal measure. This new touring production has been reinterpreted “for a new generation”, but with a track record of box office success, does it really need to be changed? I wouldn’t consider myself a theatre purist, I believe shows should have the opportunity to be re-imagined and reworked. However, this particular adaptation left me nostalgic for its predecessor. Perhaps I am remembering the London revival as perfection, but in comparison, I found myself not fully immersed in this one. Although the technological advancements have served the plot well, I fear the overall impact of the piece has been watered down. Loosely based on Puccini’s opera Madama...

2Jul

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

Grindr the Opera – Union Theatre

Perhaps there are people out there who don’t know that Grindr is a gay ‘dating’ app and are blithely unaware of the culture which has spawned from this smartphone phenomenon. This production is not aimed at that naïve demographic, but serves as a satire, cautionary tale and a timely mirror for the app’s 15m users across the globe. Last year Grindr released stats in which the UK emerged as the global leader for self-identified ‘fem tops’ while Ireland recorded the highest proportion of users listing themselves as ‘bears’. The most searched tag globally was ‘hung’. Madonna recently used the app to launch her new album, and it’s reported that cities experienced a 4% spike in usage when Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball came to town. The app may be re-shaping our neural pathways and it’s definitely ...

Catriona Macdonald & Annbjorg Lien – Traverse Theatre

2Jul

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Catriona Macdonald & Annbjorg Lien – Traverse Theatre

It was, as one might expect, a famously fiddly evening at the Traverse Theatre, as Shetland’s Catriona Macdonald and Norway’s Annbjørg Lien brought together a programme rich in Scandinavian and Shetland tunes, shared history and extraordinary musicianship. Presented as the final concert in this season’s Soundhouse series, the evening was built around the musical relationship between two players who first met when they were barely teenagers. That history mattered. This was not simply a meeting of two virtuosos, impressive though both undoubtedly are, but a conversation between traditions, between islands and sea routes, and between generations of musicians passing music from one hand to the next. Macdonald was open, warm and generous throughout, speaking movingly about returning h...