Monthly Archives: July 2015

Richard Bean, psychologist, stand-up comedian and author of the award-winning One Man, Two Guvnors, wrote The Mentalists, a two-hander, which was staged at the National Theatre in 2002. It is now as a vehicle for the stage debut of Stephen … Continue reading →

The government has made cuts for legal aid and funding for social welfare law advice. The poor and vulnerable have been hit hard. 600,000 fewer people are now entitled to aid. Rebecca Lenkiewicz examines the human cost in three cases: … Continue reading →

Ashley G Holloway’s strange, hysterical psychological drama, Lesere is set in rural France in 1921. An English couple, still haunted by the horrors of World War 1, is visited by a man in a dinner suit (Richard Atwill), brandishing a … Continue reading →

Oscar Wilde said the philosophy of The Importance of Being Earnest is that ‘’we should treat all the trivial things of life seriously and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied artificiality.” The play, a brilliant mixture … Continue reading →

In 1960 Orson Welles directed Laurence Olivier in Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros at the Royal Court Theatre. It was not a happy production. Olivier, who was in a relationship with Joan Plowright and steeling himself to make a final break with … Continue reading →

Globally, more than 25 million people have died of AIDS. William M Hoffman wrote As Is thirty years ago in response to the AIDS epidemic and it premiered in New York in 1985 and was nominated for Tony and Pulitzer … Continue reading →

Anton Chekhov said that in life everything was mixed up: “the profound with the trite, the tragic with the comic.” And it is this knife-edge between laughter and tears which any revival of his plays has to achieve. The characters … Continue reading →

Gurinder Chadha had such a big success producing, directing and writing the feel-good movie that it is natural that she would want to keep a tight hold on the reins of the stage version. The additional attraction is that there … Continue reading →