Monthly Archives: January 2017

Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler works best in its correct period, the 1890’s; but it is still interesting to see Ivo Van Howe’s radical updating and deconstruction. The play is no longer the familiar social drama Ibsenites know. There is a … Continue reading →

Gemma Arterton in Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan is the loveliest Joan, the most flirtatious, the most seductive, the most girly, I have seen. The English want to burn her. Her nationalism is a threat to the feudal lords. She is … Continue reading →

There is nothing original about the RSC setting Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost in the Edwardian era. It has been done many times before. Christopher Luscombe’s originality is to stage it as a double bill with Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing … Continue reading →

Dreamgirls takes its inspiration from Diana Ross and The Supremes and is set in the 1960s.Listening to the songs of Tom Eyen and Henry Kreiger and watching Casey Nicholaw’s exciting production and Michael Bennett’s choreography, I did wonder why this … Continue reading →

I came out of the theatre, feeling that nobody who has either read Khalid Hosseini’s best-selling novel or seen the film, really needs to see Matthew Spangler adaptation, which is very worthy but feels like a not wholly successful university … Continue reading →

Friedrich Schiller wrote Mary Stuart, his first class political thriller, in 1800. Robert Icke’s urgent modern dress production, acted out on a circular revolving stage, feels very modern. The drama is totally gripping. Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams alternate Elizabeth … Continue reading →

She Loves Me, the American Broadway musical, is set in pre-war Budapest and is about two shy anonymous pen pals, who have never met and, unbeknown, are actually working in the same fancy perfume shop. The couple (played by two … Continue reading →

Everybody is in striped pyjamas, including the stage-hands, in Sally Cookson’s production of Peter Pan, which takes a highly original approach to a familiar story. Never Never Land is a rubbish-filled, graffiti-ridden children’s adventure playground. Captain Hook is played by … Continue reading →