Thursday, December 12

Tag: Richard Hudson

Opera North: Ruddigore – Lowry
North West

Opera North: Ruddigore – Lowry

Jo Davies’ 2010 production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s fast-paced comic opera is dusted down for a well-deserved airing by Revival Director James Hurley, with the action reset in the 1920’s and the era of silent movies proving the perfect setting for moustachioed villains and cloak-swirling, whilst not missing out on some updated lines to have a dig at prime ministers old and new: now, whose name might rhyme with lettuce… Rose Maybud (Amy Freston) is an innocent village girl who lives her life by a book of etiquette which only serves to hinder any burgeoning relationship with tongue-tied suitor Robin Oakapple (Dominic Sedgwick), much to the disappointment of the village’s professional bridesmaids (Chorus of Opera North led by Gillene Butterfield). Robin ropes in his foster brother,...
Leopoldstadt – Wyndham’s Theatre (NT Live Transmission)
London, REVIEWS

Leopoldstadt – Wyndham’s Theatre (NT Live Transmission)

The NT Live transmission, in conjunction with Sonia Friedman Productions, from Wyndham’s Theatre of Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt, was somewhat timely coming as it did on International Holocaust Memorial Day, and more so when its depiction of the travails of a Jewish family resonates so strongly with the unveiling of portraits of the last survivors of the Holocaust. Centred around the extended Merz family in Vienna, we travel through four generations from the turn of the twentieth century to the creation of an independent Austrian republic in 1955, where amidst the all too familiar humdrum domestic scenes we explore what it means to learn and love; to live and die; to discover what identity really means within a family, society, race, and religion, and the extent to which any of us can ev...