Monthly Archives: October 2016

LA FILLE MAL GARDÉE sounds very French and a bit naughty. But Frederick Ashton’s ballet could not be more English and pure. Set in bucolic England, it was, at its premiere in 1960, a pleasant antidote to all the kitchen … Continue reading →

Confessional is an unexpectedly dull title for a play by Tennessee Williams, who has so often come up with some of the most original and poetic titles, viz. A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bird … Continue reading →

Mart Crowley’s once highly popular American comedy, the first play in which all the characters were openly homosexual, premiered in 1968, before the advent of AIDS, and is now very much a period piece, dated and overheated. Well acted in … Continue reading →

Charles Dickens said on its publication that A Tale of Two Cities was the best story he had written. Not everybody agreed. The novel has never been popular with the critics; but it has always been hugely popular with the … Continue reading →

The Libertine, in Stephen Jeffreys’ play is John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), a notorious rake, the quintessence of debauchery and the wittiest of Restoration poets. He lived his short licentious life to excess and was dead by the time … Continue reading →

No’s Knife is an adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Texts for Nothing, which are prose works and not intended for the stage. Irish actress Lisa Dwan and her co-director Joe Murphy have done everything they can to make her solo performance … Continue reading →

Elmer Rice’s celebrated 1920s expressionistic satire on Big Business, is much enhanced by Jason Loewith and Joshua Schmidt who have turned it into an award-winning, sophisticated, one-act chamber musical. It’s a collector’s piece and well worth collecting.

The Pulitzer prize-winning American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks goes back to the Greek tragedies and Homer’s Odyssey to find a format for her play, Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3),which is set during the American Civil … Continue reading →