MANY words of praise – fantastic, great and legendary amongst them – have become devalued because they are now too often applied to people and events that do not deserve such a description. It was only after much thought that I decided to declare that director/choreographer Matthew Bourne’s production of The Red Shoes left me…
ONCE upon a time (in 2007, actually) there was a low budget Irish film that charted the unusual relationship of two musicians, one Irish and one Czech. It became an international hit, with its charm, its music mixing Irish standards, new songs and Eastern European Klezmer and its unpredictable story line. Four years later it…
EDWARD Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf crashed onto the theatre scene almost 60 years ago, dividing critics and audiences. Since then it has become a classic of American theatre, perhaps best known as the five-Oscar 1966 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, as well as a regular academic text. It is set in…
WILLY Russell’s 1986 play Shirley Valentine, written as a solo performance for one remarkable actress, was fleshed out when it was filmed with Pauline Collins, Tom Conti and Alison Steadman, and it’s the cinema version that is best known. Now, in a new production by Ian Talbot of Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre fame, is…
Montero: A Piece for Ruth Rachmaninov: Piano Sonata No.2 Op. 36 Shostakovich: Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57 Montero: Improvisations Gabriela Montero, piano with Mark Derudder and Carol Paige, violins, Tom Beer, viola and Jesper Svedberg cello “THERE are not many artists about whom it can be said that their talent borders on…
ONE of the most frequent criticisms levelled at musical biographies in the golden years of Hollywood was that the scripts rarely did anything more than scraped the surface of the true story of those whose lives were being depicted, and this show reminds me of one of those glossy presentations. Like those films, it does…
IF you look down a list of plays written in the 1920s, you will find quite a few successfully produced which border on the style of Grand Guignol, melodrama and horror. Most of them – with titles like The Monster, A Man with Red Hair and the Edgar Wallace pair The Flying Squad and The…
WHY do women fall for Norman? In the original stage and television productions, Alan Ayckbourn’s bumbling Casanova was played, first, by Tom Courtenay, and on screen by Tom Conti, two actors possessed of such charisma that we would probably go weak at the knees if they read a paint chart aloud. There is a huge…
“THIRTEEN, unlucky for some” is the oft-heard bingo cry when the number 13 comes up, but I doubt that any of the sell-out audience for the last concert of this seasons Bach Fest felt that they were unlucky after spending the evening in the company of Bojan Cicic, director and violin, and the other members…
“COME fly with me” invite three attractive young dancers at the opening of the Bourton Players’ highly original 2020 pantomime. But health and safety isn’t having any of it. No flying in the village hall, say Alf Warning (Linda Curry) and his incompetent sidekick Sid Down (Emma Martin). They don’t want anyone flying – or…