Monthly Archives: June 2014

Since his death in 2008, Simon Gray’s plays have been regularly revived in the West End. It was while Japes was still being rehearsed by Peter Hall in 2001 that Gray realized he had more to say and went on … Continue reading →

Dmitry Krymov Laboratory (part of the Moscow School of Dramatic Art Theatre) perform their touring production which is directed, devised and performed by those trained predominantly in stage design. The audience is seated on the stage. The fire curtain is … Continue reading →

Nick Payne’s new play, another of his intellectual games, is not nearly as accessible as his last big success, Constellations. This time his subject is neuroscience. What’s your memory like? Imagine if you could forget all the traumas and pains … Continue reading →

Stephen Sachs’s two-hander, which lasts 85 minutes and is acted without interval, was inspired by true events. A middle-aged frumpish woman, ex bartender, lives in a junk-filled trailer in Bakersfield, California. She buys a painting she loathes for $3.00 as … Continue reading →

American screenwriter Dalton Trumbo took the title for his novel, which was published in 1939, from the recruiting advert, Johnny Get Your Gun, a call to arms, dating from the American Civil War marching song, When Johnny Comes Marching Home. … Continue reading →

St John Ervine (1883-1971), a prolific Irish playwright, critic and biographer, has long been forgotten and this play, a first-rate old-fashioned melodrama, set in County Down, Ulster, in the 1880’s, deserves to be much better known. It had its premiere … Continue reading →

Mike Poulton’s successful dramatisation of Hilary Mantel’s multi-awarding-winning two novels is strongly recommended to all those who enjoy history plays with sex and politics, and guessing who is in and who is out and who will be next to lose … Continue reading →

At the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, approximately 50,000 children, the result of liaisons between servicemen and prostitutes, were abandoned. The strength of this musical, an up-dated version of Madam Butterfly, is that Claude Michel Schonberg’s music and … Continue reading →