WHAT would you do if you realised the only other person in your train compartment was your favourite writer, the author of the book you have brought to read on the long journey from Paris to Frankfurt? You might, as Martha does in Yasmina Reza’s dazzling 1995 play, after she recognises the author, decide not…

JAMES Milton and Paul Morrissey’s play When Darkness Falls (not to be confused with either film of the same name), is set on the island of Guernsey and said to be based on true events. It comes to Yeovil as part of a national tour, after a short run in 2020 with a different cast….

HAVING discovered Aristophanes 411 BC comedy Lysistrata, in which a young woman seeks to end the Peloponnesian war between Greek city states by persuading the women to withhold all sexual favours to those in conflict until they stopped fighting, Young SixSix, a group of young performers based at the Bristol Old Vic, decided it would…

GOODNESS, how very difficult life is nowadays. The 35-year-old Robert Icke, already hailed as the great hope of British Theatre, has corralled a huge swathe of these difficulties into one confusing, devastating and undeniably brilliant evening of drama in The Doctor, his reworking of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1912 play Professor Bernhardi. I haven’t seen the original…

HAVING complained on many occasions that the musical backing of a show was too loud, after watching and listening to the rapturous reception this loud, brash presentation of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s long lasting sung-through musical received, I take my cue from the title of the Harry Barris jazz classic, and Bing Crosby’s…

LORCA’s torrid and claustrophobic play Blood Wedding was a huge challenge for the young actors who joined the Theatre Royal Bath Theatre School Summer Company this year, which provided the hottest rehearsal period on record. Updated from the 1930s to the 1970s, the focus was on the knives that were destined to deprive two young…

AMERICAN singer-songwriter Gretchen Peters was back before a devoted crowd at Wimborne’s Tivoli, days after announcing that she would be retiring from regular touring next year. She picked up a dose of vertigo at the start of this leg of her 2022 UK tour, and was forced to sit for much of the set, but…

THERE is a review of Terry Gilliam’s marvellous production of Sondheim’s Into the Woods, on at Bath Theatre Royal until 10th September, that describes it as “overstuffed”. This, presumably, from someone who, by an accident of tardy birth, missed the Pythons, the traditions of pantomime, the illustrations of  fairy tales and perhaps the whole steam-punk …

IT is 35 years since Alfred Uhry’s play Driving Miss Daisy was first performed, and two years later the multi-Oscar winning film was released. To mark the anniversary, the exciting Barn Theatre in Cirencester invited Simon Reade to mount a new production, which opened this week with a cast of Susan Tracy, Mensah Bediako and…