AMERICAN playwright August Wilson wrote a cycle of ten plays about his home city of Pittsburg, and Jitney was the first written, and the last performed. It is set in the early 1970s in an area of the city where licensed taxis didn’t venture, so was served by unofficial “jitneys”. The action takes place in…
MONDAY 18th July 2022 was one of the hottest days on record in this country, and the heat lasted into the night, which in many places saw record temperatures. It was not a night to be in 1950s style clothes under theatre lighting. So, firstly, congratulations on the professionalism of the Swan Theatre cast for…
EVERYTHING about Les Misérables is on the grand scale. Author Victor Hugo first had the idea of writing a novel about social misery and injustice in the early 1830s, but it was 1862 before the 1,462-page novel was published. Despite a luke-warm reception from some critics, the show, now in its 36th year in London,…
WHEN you think how many youth companies have presented Alan Parker’s spoof of those 1930s Hollywood gangster films, since he adapted it for the stage nearly 40 years ago, it comes as a surprise that this production, starting at Bath Theatre Royal, is the first professional production to go on a nationwide tour. And what…
SHAKESPEARE’s last play, and his most magical, The Tempest is mysterious, moving, at times outrageously funny and occasionally alarming. There is nothing realistic about it – in the sense of theatrical realism – yet it probes the human experience with forensic honesty. There are things about the play that are uncomfortable for some modern audiences….
IT is said that there are only seven stories in the world – most of which come down to us from ancient history through myths and legends, where archetypes of human behaviour and emotion are embodied in gods, goddesses, heroes and heroines. One of the most famous Greek myths is the tragic story of Hero…
WHEN Martin Dimery started to put his new musical play together, he could hardly have dreamed how bizarrely topical would be its theme of a leader, convinced of his own destiny, fighting for his survival against increasingly powerful forces. That is not, I hasten to add, to compare our Prime Minister with King Richard III…
BACK in the early 1980s, Declan Donnelley wrote a brilliantly updated version of Thackeray’s classic Vanity Fair for his company, Cheek by Jowl. The adaptation has been brought into the new century by Paul Chesterton for the students of Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, on their (shortened) two-part regional tour this year. On Wednesday 6th…
WHEN this new production of the now-veteran farce, which started life in 2013, opened at the Theatre Royal in Bath on the 20th April this year, there was every excuse for the production not to run smoothly. Defying any doubters it came up as fresh as a daisy, running smoothly on all levels, with the…
FED up with hitherto dependable newspapers filled up with celebrity gossip … previously intelligent and sensible friends and colleagues taken in by manifest lies and bullshit? There could hardly have been a better day to watch Gods and Dogs, Pete Talbot’s brilliantly witty new satire for his company the Rude Mechanicals, than on Thursday 23rd…