Emma McDonald Archives - North West End UK

4Oct

By Jenn McKeanNo Comments

REVIEWS

Going the Distance – Online Stream

We were all waiting for the musical and play adaptation of the Handforth Parish Council Meeting last year and it seems like Going the Distance will be the closest we will get for a while. March 2020 and the theatres have all gone dark. What happens to all those local theatres that rely on donations and local productions to get them through? Going the Distance takes us through how Matchborough Community Theatre plans to survive the global pandemic. We start with a familiar scene – the first Zoom meeting, synonymous with the ‘I can hear you, can you hear me?’ – and we are introduced to Frank (Matthew Kelly), Maggie (Penny Ryder) and Rae (Sarah Hadland). They discuss finances and ways in which they can continue to make money, despite the pandemic trying to have other ideas. They settle on ...

The Picture of Dorian Gray – The Barn Theatre

Oscar Wilde’s intoxicating Faustian tale of beauty, love and mortality is given a fresh and modern day treatment in Henry Filloux-Bennett’s adroit script. There have been many versions of Wilde’s dark morality tale and this particular digital adaptation using both video and film techniques alongside conventional theatre firmly places it in the world of social media and the power of the influencer where self- image and self- promotion rule the day. Wilde’s basic question is how far would a person go to achieve success and maintain personal youth, beauty and fame? As Wilde quoted “behind every exquisite thing that existed there was something tragic” and in every sense of the word the play mirrors his exact assumption. We are in dark unforgiving territory and Bennett’s clever script ...

All-star cast for The Picture of Dorian Gray at Bolton Octagon

Russell Tovey, Stephen Fry and Joanna Lumley head an all-star cast for a digital production of The Picture of Dorian Gray at Bolton Octagon. They’ve joined forces with Barn Theatre in Cirencester, the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield and the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich will co-produce The Picture of Dorian Gray with Theatr Clwyd in Mold and the Oxford Playhouse in Oxfordshire to offer the production as co-producers. Fionn Whitehead is in the title role, are Alfred Enoch as Harry Wooton, Lumley as Lady Narborough, Emma McDonald as Sibyl Vane and Tovey as Basil Hallward with Fry as the Interviewer. From the creative team behind the critically acclaimed What a Carve Up!, the belov...