Monday, August 3

Tag: Joe Murphy

Sweeny Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street – Birmingham Rep
West Midlands

Sweeny Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street – Birmingham Rep

With the recent death of Stephen Sondheim musical theatre has been robbed of its most eloquent and profound creator - of whom Mandy Patinkin said, “The man who wrote my prayers has died” - we are left with a long, long legacy of which everyone who has ever placed pen to paper and finger to key would be right to call the Master. His works, words and tunes swooping high over all his contemporaries and masterfully nail what a great artist aims for - trying to understand the human condition. Words and music achingly blending with profound insight evoking feelings and sensations we never knew we had or could identify until he helped us. Photo: Manuel Harlan It is right and proper, then the Birmingham Rep as part of Joe Murphy’s new programme offer us one of Sondheim’s most loved, most per...
Kyoto – Soho Place
London

Kyoto – Soho Place

Rarely can a play genuinely be labelled as an "important piece of theatre”, but Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson's Kyoto is firmly in that category.  Fresh from its critically acclaimed run in Stratford-upon-Avon, Kyoto offers a tense and challenging insight into the process of what John Prescott called "diplomacy by exhaustion".  And rarely has a play been so topical. With wildfires raging and floods destroying communities, while some politicians and commentators continue to deny the existence of man-made climate change, Kyoto is a much-needed history lesson, a demonstration of what is diplomatically possible as well as a grim warning for the future if governments fail to act. The nations of the world have got together to discuss climate change and attempt to agree to targets and...