Jodie McNee Archives - North West End UK

The New Real – The Other Place, Stratford-Upon-Avon

11Oct

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

West Midlands

The New Real – The Other Place, Stratford-Upon-Avon

David Edgar’s 10th premiere at The Other Place follows on from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde (1991), Written on the Heart (2011), and A Christmas Carol (2022), and continues his relationship with the RSC following on from his appointment in 1989 as an Honorary Artist. The New Real, is a bringing together of Headlong, the RSC and David Edgar to produce a new political drama, staged in the RSC’s studio theatre, The Other Place. Set in a former communist country in Eastern Europe, two American political strategists are working for competing candidates and predict that they will teach the East how to do elections, but the tables are turned… Globally, we witness diplomacy a time when the Right competes with populist politics, as seen in Britain’s recent election wit...

30Apr

By Zara OdetundeNo Comments

London

Minority Report – Lyric Hammersmith

Minority Report is a staging of a Nottingham Playhouse and Birmingham Rep co-production. This premise is best known for the 2002 film starring Tom Cruise. This play explores free will and the idea of justice in this adaptation of Philip K Dick’s short story of the same name, written by David Haig. The play opens with a ceremony of the 10th Anniversary of the British Pre-crime department. In which the CEO Dame Julia Anderton is extolling the virtues of detecting Pre-criminals. However, she soon finds out that she has been identified as a pre-murderer. She must go on the run in an attempt to prove her innocence and discover truths about her organisations that have been long buried. Jodie McNee led this play as Pre-crime CEO Julia, she commands the stage and explores so many emotions an...

28Mar

By Peter KinnockNo Comments

West Midlands

Minority Report – The Rep, Birmingham

Science fiction doesn’t work on stage. There I’ve said it. Someone had to. What was the last great science fiction stage play you saw? No, me neither. It’s a genre born of, and best suited to, cinema. From Metropolis to Dune sci-fi’s visual imagery has played equal part to its plots and philosophy. Sadly, no matter how dexterous and inventive the stage design, it’ll never quite capture a cinematic experience. Though, without doubt, one of the more outstanding elements of this production is Tal Rosner’s ethereal digital design perfectly evoking the virtual world of the near future. The play, based of Phil K.Dick's short story riddled with Cold War paranoia, is about pre crime. The capacity to identify a murderer before they commit a murder and arrest them. Whilst this is explained by the...

8Sep

By Carole BaldockNo Comments

North West

Cuckoo – Everyman Theatre

Familiarity breeds contempt and seeing the whole of this household glued to their phones is exasperating to say the least. They appear to be trapped in the mobile world, excuse the dichotomy, with every aspect covered: news flashes; online buying and selling; videos, posts, messages. It feels as if there's more ping than dialogue sometimes. Set in a slightly shabby, old-fashioned house in Birkenhead; a bit parochial but like everywhere else, places are closing down, there's a gig economy and all sorts going on in schools, the increasing vice of violence, and the influence of the would be virtuous. We learn all this through the Greek Chorus of Doreen's two daughters, didactic Sarah in particular. The division between the cosy interior and the scary outside world (and let's face it, has i...

Nora: A Doll’s House – Royal Exchange Theatre

10Mar

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

Nora: A Doll’s House – Royal Exchange Theatre

Even though he resembled everyone's idea of a Victorian gentleman, Ibsen's radical 1879 study of a woman's place in a patriarchal, middle class Norwegian society, is often cited as a crucial accelerant to the nascent female emancipation movement at the end of the 19th century. It is therefore fitting that in the week we celebrate International Women's Day, that writer Stef Smith has adapted it to ' Nora: A Doll's House', examining how one of the most famous characters in theatre would have fared in three different time periods. The result is complex, confusing and frustrating in equal measure. We meet Nora as three separate entities simultaneously on stage. Nora 1918 (Kirsty Rider) cuts a frustrated figure, married and caged at the end of World War One as the suffrage movement is reachi...