This is a tricky and charming work. The National Youth Theatre has made something first-rate and empoweringly original with Consensual. It is a discussion of sex but simultaneously a discussion of that discussion, critical of the current discourse yet accepting of a world transformed by porn and marketed sexualisation. Evan Placey’s script is punchy: it […]
It is no easy task to turn a book into a play, especially when the book is one of the most beloved pieces of English literature. Stephanie Street’s script brings a modern twist to Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights in her adaptation. While the story is well adapted, the language is quite different from that of […]
Staged at the Bridewell Theatre, Geoids’ latest outing is one of the most technically ambitious productions within London’s amateur scene. A huge cast, set and orchestra are used to recount the problem of an eroding Hollywood. For those unaware of the film (which you should all see, incidentally), Joe (Michael Stacey), a failing screenwriter, is […]
Its language and rhythms belong more to the French New Wave than a stage, yet La Musica has some inspired instances. Within it, we get to know a couple about to complete their divorce proceedings, the man being played by Sam Troughton and the woman by Emily Barclay. We learn of seduction, attempted murder and […]
Winner of the 2014 Moliere Award for Best Play (France’s highest theatrical honour), Florian Zeller’s The Father is an open, distressing, often humorous but also deeply tragic new play currently showing at Wyndham’s Theatre. Revolving around the lives of Andre, an elderly man with dementia, his carer daughter, Anne, and her family, The Father is […]
With the Les Miserables 30th Anniversary Concert almost here on the 8th October, I have had the great privilege to talk with Jeremy Secomb, the man playing the role of Javert, about himself, his character and the musical as a whole. Before taking the part up in July of this year after a major cast […]
It would be easy to dismiss this show—it is really all shades of bad—yet I am going to try to be critical and constructive with terseness. The play is three people in an apocalypse scenario seeking refuge from killer birds. This kind of story demands extremities of feeling, the kind which requires experienced actors if […]
Quite unusually, I was handed an audiobook before sitting down to watch this show—I believe it was an audiobook of the show, or it may have been one of Sons and Lovers or The Rainbow which Phoenix Rising’s Paul Slack has found success in narrating. Regardless, it gives gives clues as to quality of the […]