Monthly Archives: September 2017

Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s Follies, one of the great American musicals, looks back to the golden age of vaudeville and the glamour of the Ziegfeld Follies with their famously beautiful girls with their long legs, furs, feathers and fantastic … Continue reading →

John Patrick Shanley’s gripping 90-minute Doubt won many awards on Broadway in 2005 and then went on to be a film with Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman and win more awards. Sister Aloysius, the principal of Catholic school in … Continue reading →

Tony Cox’s very entertaining Mrs Orwell deserves a longer run. George Orwell married Sonia Brownell on his deathbed. 16 years his junior, she freely admits she doesn’t love him. So why does she marry “gloomy George”? It was generally thought, … Continue reading →

David Harrower’s haunting Knives in Hens, which lasts 90-minutes and is acted without interval, is strictly for serious theatregoers who are prepared to make an effort. There are just three characters, medieval peasants: an ignorant ploughman, his superstitious wife and … Continue reading →

Luke, an aerospace billionaire in American playwright Christopher Shinn’s Against gets a message from God to “Go where there’s violence.” Ben Whishaw’s intelligent, articulate and immensely likeable performance holds the audience’s attention during Ian Rickson’s two-hour fifty-minute production. Luke’s messianic … Continue reading →

Over 25 per cent of adolescents and teenagers have been bullied repeatedly either through their cell-phones or on the internet. Canadian playwright Jordan Tannahill wrote Late Company, his involving 75-minute social drama, in 2011 when he was only 23. It’s … Continue reading →

Joe Orton, variously described as the Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility, the Douanier Rousseau of the criminal suburbs and the Grandma Moses of the rubbish dump, was no respecter of the Roman Catholic Church, the Police or indeed the … Continue reading →

John Galsworthy, once a major playwright, famous for his social criticism, now rarely performed, described Windows as “a comedy for idealists and others.” Premiered in 1922, it is not one of his best plays and the actors struggle to make … Continue reading →