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…
THE announcement of Deborah Warner’s appointment as new artistic director of Bath Theatre Royal’s Ustinov Studio came just weeks before COVID-19 swept across the world. The growing band of fans of the venue, in which Laurence Boswell created exciting and memorable work during his tenure, just had to wait. What would Warner bring to the…
THE combination of Jim Steinman’s words and music, and the wide vocal range and dynamic delivery of those numbers by Meat Loaf, created a string of international best sellers in the 1970s and 80s that have become pop classics. Since its premiere in Manchester in 2017, this show, which incorporates 19 numbers from the Bat…
THERE are few more delightful ways to spend an evening than enjoying glorious ballet and dance, with a delicious dinner, under an open-sided marquee, in a beautiful walled garden. OK, the stars weren’t much in evidence on Sunday evening for the last of the three performances of Ballet Under The Stars, but we had stars…