Monthly Archives: January 2013

Vercors, the author of The Silence of the Sea, was the nom de guerre for Jean Bruller, who was a member of the French resistance during World War 2. His novella, published clandestinely in 1942, was propaganda, advocating passive resistance … Continue reading →

A volatile, illiterate 24-year-old (Ryan Cage) has murdered a young woman. Her father (Peter Tate), a Democrat Congressman, an opponent of the death penalty, appeals for clemency and offers to educate the young man and give him a chance to … Continue reading →

The Eclipse Theatre Company is the only Black-led national touring company delivering an annual national middle scale tour. Their latest production is a revival of a comedy written in 1982 by Don Evans (1938-2003), an African-American playwright, director, actor, teacher, … Continue reading →

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s mariner, you will remember, was condemned, as the Wandering Jew and the Flying Dutchman were, to walk the earth for ever and tell his story again and again. He callously shot an albatross, a bird of good … Continue reading →

The opportunities to see the plays of the great German playwright Friedrich Schiller in Britain are rare. Mary Stuart and Don Carlos have been staged with great success in recent years; but the most likely place to find revivals of … Continue reading →

Albert Camus’s play is French existentialism at its nihilistic worst and it failed when it premiered in Paris in 1944; not surprising, given its grim contents and the strange way the characters talked. Audiences during the Nazi Occupation would, no … Continue reading →

The only reason this Elizabethan romantic comedy, circa 1590, is getting a revival is that it was wrongly attributed to Shakespeare by King Charles II’s librarian. Nobody today thinks Shakespeare wrote this awful script. There are two plots. Em, a … Continue reading →

The first time I saw Georges Feydeau’s Sauce for the Goose, it was called Le Dindon and it was performed in French by the Comédie Française. I thought it was the funniest farce I had ever seen. The second act, … Continue reading →