Caroline Gruber Archives - North West End UK

There is something particularly satisfying about watching a production that understands exactly how to use the theatre it inhabits, and ‘Murder Before Evensong, the world-premiere stage adaptation of Reverend Richard Coles’ bestselling novel, feels completely at home at the Watermill Theatre. Intimate in scale but remarkably expansive in execution, this is a beautifully constructed, wonderfully performed production that manages to make this tiny auditorium feel, at times, like a full-scale West End stage. Adapted by Paul Hart and Shaun McKenna, and directed by Hart, the story takes us to the seemingly idyllic village of Champton in 1988, where parish politics, long-standing relationships and simmering tensions surround St Mary’s Church. When murder intrudes upon this comfortably familia...

Modern life is not known for giving us opportunities to sit, and think, and be. We are constantly moving, working – there is very little time to do anything else. What is valuable about theatre and about storytelling is the space it gives us to contemplate the kind of lives we live and want to live, whether we want to progress or regress. What it means to more than just survive. A moment, to inhale, and to exhale. This is what great theatre, what As Long As We Are Breathing, does. A woman walks up and starts chatting about porridge, the same kind of interaction I might have with a particularly sociable soul on the street – the lights are still up, the audience is still chatting and taking their seats; this is a kind of immersion into theatre so smooth I didn’t realize at first that the ...

Tag: Caroline Gruber

Murder Before Evensong – Watermill Theatre

As Long as We Are Breathing – Arcola Theatre