REVIEWS Archives - Page 7 of 629

9Sep

By Katie LeicesterNo Comments

North West

Jersey Boys – Palace Theatre

There is something reassuring about walking into a theatre knowing that within minutes an audience will be singing along to songs they have known for decades. Yet Jersey Boys offers far more than a nostalgic trip through a greatest-hits collection. Twenty years after it first opened on Broadway, the musical continues to demonstrate why the story behind Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons is every bit as compelling as the music they created. At the Palace Theatre in Manchester, the 20th-anniversary gala performance delivers the familiar songs alongside the less glamorous side of life in the spotlight. This isn’t a story where success simply arrives and everything falls neatly into place. It is about four young men chasing a dream, the relationships that suffer along the way, financial pro...

9Sep

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

East Is East – Octagon Theatre

There is something rather unsettling about watching East Is East in 2026. Ayub Khan-Din's celebrated play, first staged in 1996 and set in Salford in 1971, was written at a time when Britain was beginning to confront the contradictions of a multicultural society. Thirty years on, Kash Arshad's new production arrives with the play's questions about identity, belonging, family and prejudice still perhaps too stubbornly relevant. Set above the Khan family's chip shop, the play introduces us to seven children negotiating the competing expectations of their Pakistani father George (Bhasker Patel) and English mother Ella (Samantha Power). George is determined that his children should embrace his version of Pakistani tradition; his offspring, born and raised in England, have rather differe...

EINSTEIN!: A Genius in Tumultuous Times – Playground Theatre

8Sep

By Alan Stuart MalinNo Comments

London

EINSTEIN!: A Genius in Tumultuous Times – Playground Theatre

Written and performed by Jack Fry, this 85-minute solo show finds Einstein in Berlin in 1914, battling to prove general relativity while his world fractures around him. War, antisemitism, professional rivalry, ill health and a disintegrating marriage all compete for space within an already densely packed narrative. Fry has clearly undertaken formidable research and brings enormous commitment to the stage. This is clearly his passion, and for that he should be commended. Unfortunately, the resulting production feels overwhelmed by its own material. Rather than constructing a satisfying dramatic arc, the piece fires information, characters and incidents at the audience with an exhausting frequency that drove some from their seats and back out into the street. Everything about the s...

8Sep

By Coral MourantNo Comments

North West

Waitress – Liverpool Empire

The diner doors are open and excitement is served, as Liverpool Empire welcomes the UK tour of Waitress. And this particular audience got an extra helping of sweetness added to an already superb show. Jenna is an expert pie-baker and waitress, whose dreams of happiness seem a little out of reach. While her friends support her, and a new Doctor in town spices up her love-life, Jenna has to take matters into her own hands; will baking the perfect pie be the solution to her problems? Based on the film by Adrienne Shelley, this musical takes a fantastic score by Sara Bareilles and an inspiring story written by Jessie Nelson and creates a perfectly seasoned piece. (Yes, there are more baking puns to come) This evening, Ellie Ruiz Rodriguez donned the leading lady’s apron for the first ...

Sound Strokes: A Harmonious Blend of Chinese and Scottish Music – Camden People’s Theatre

7Sep

By Saloni SanwalkaNo Comments

London

Sound Strokes: A Harmonious Blend of Chinese and Scottish Music – Camden People’s Theatre

As in language there are untranslatable words which are uniquely capable of capturing the abstract, so in music there are sounds which are singularly placed to do the same. The Chinese instrument zheng and the four elements in our world— earth, wind, fire, water—is one such perfect marriage, as showcased by the masterful Wan Xing in Sound Strokes: A Harmonious Blend of Chinese and Scottish Music. Photo: Cheung Chi Wai The show combines pieces from Chinese, Scottish and Irish musical traditions to create fresh arrangements that demonstrate the commonalities between them as they seek to capture the elements. It begins with earth, played against the backdrop of a soil painting by the artist Qiu Yangzi and the calm thrum of Gregor Black’s brushstrokes on percussion, emulating the sound o...

7Sep

By NewsdeskNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

King Lear – The Crucible, Sheffield

Widely regarded as one of the greatest pieces of literature of all time, King Lear triumphantly took to the Crucible stage this weekend just gone and is preparing to enjoy a further two weeks playing to packed out audiences. If tonight is anything to go by, a trip to the theatre will be a worthwhile one. Director Titas Halder, supported by Vicky Moran and Marc Small in associate and assistant director roles respectively, makes it so much of this show is only as good as its actors – arguably aptly Shakespearean – which is welcome. That is also not to say they are shy of imposing bold, abstract creative conceits. Halder leans on imagery of eclipses, using the sun and the moon’s veiling involvement with one another to draw parallels to the familial discontent that cannot escape orbit and i...

4Sep

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

Oil and Whiskey – Old Red Lion Theatre

An award-winning off Broadway country rock musical having just had a run at the Edinburgh fringe and now opening in London sounds promising. Unfortunately, it disappointed on most levels. The main problem was the venue. The Red Lion’s performance area is small with the audience on two sides. There were 10 artists in this production, including a band with a keyboard, full drum kit and two guitars. There were two backing singers and four other performers. By the time this crowd had been assembled on the performance area, along with their microphones, amplifiers, speakers etc, there was room for very little theatrical activity. The music and the singing were amplified to an unnecessary degree and was uncomfortably loud, at least for this reviewer, and more seriously the excessively clos...

Strange Face: Adventures with a Lost Nick Drake Recording… The Story Continues – Pleasance 10 Dome

4Sep

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Strange Face: Adventures with a Lost Nick Drake Recording… The Story Continues – Pleasance 10 Dome

There is something rather lovely about a show that gets inside the music without actually playing the music. Strange Face is essentially a PowerPoint presentation, but behind those slides lies an extraordinary little odyssey involving lost recordings, chance encounters, headphones, a backpack and a camera. Our guide is Michael Burdett, a composer, photographer and wonderfully personable storyteller whose connection with Drake began while working as a post-boy at Island Records in the 1970s. Asked to dispose of some tapes, he rescued one marked Nick Drake, Cello Song, only discovering more than two decades later that it contained a previously unheard recording. From that extraordinary accident grew something of a Munro-bagger obsession. Headphones, backpack and came...

4Sep

By Gaurav SinghNo Comments

London

Krapp’s Last Tape – The Cockpit Theatre

On his 69th birthday, Krapp sits alone with his tape recorder and listens back to a recording he made thirty years earlier. Moving between listening, remembering and recording, he encounters his younger self, his memories and the life that has passed between the two voices. Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, performed at The Cockpit Theatre, becomes in Dave Wybrow’s production a remarkably immediate encounter with time. Peter Marinker plays Krapp, but the production also brings another Peter Marinker into the room: his own voice, recorded in 1983 for the BBC radio version of the play. The result is a conversation across more than four decades, between the actor he was and the actor he is now. Picture Courtesy - Cockpit Theatre Website What makes this particularly striking is the ...

4Sep

By Phil MeikleNo Comments

London

Holy Fool – Park Theatre

Throughout history, music and art have been used as vehicles to communicate hidden truths by creatives living under tyrannical states. Here, the legendary composer Dmitri ‘Mitya’ Shostakovich is presented as Communist Russia's Holy Fool; a man who must walk the tightrope between underplaying his talents and concealing his resistance to the state in order to survive the propaganda-led brutality of Lenin and Stalin’s Soviet Union. In Holy Fool, co-writers Rosalind Adler and Lea Sellers document Mitya's life from 1936 to 1973, but in trying to navigate the tightrope of life-threatening political resistance through faux compliance, the play occasionally loses its balance. While Adler and Sellers stay faithful to the historical record and portray the sinister world inside the Soviet regime, ...