Saturday 9th March 2019 at York Theatre Royal (Studio). ⭐️⭐️⭐️ John Webster’s The Duchess Of Malfi is a bit of a titan and York Settlement Community Players do a great job of bringing its most gripping moments of dramatic power to life. It’s impossible to experience this play without our current social and political climate... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 5th March 2019 at Leeds Playhouse (Pop Up). ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A female Hamlet? A northern tragedy? Multiple gender switches? Leeds Playhouse’s latest Shakespeare offering is a finely tuned combination of exactly that. As Shakespeare’s longest play, Hamlet is in so many cases numbingly over-long and mercilessly dark, but thankfully, Amy Leach’s direction and approach to... Continue Reading →
Saturday 19th May 2018 at the Palace Theatre, Manchester. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ It’s been eight years since I saw Blood Brothers for the first time. I loved it the moment I saw it and I’ve been so desperate to see it again that I was a little cautious going in, thinking perhaps I’d over-egged the memory over... Continue Reading →
Saturday 7th April 2018 at the Palace Theatre, Manchester. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ There’s little to say about Boublil and Schönberg’s Miss Saigon that hasn’t already been said; the consensus has always declared it a supreme theatrical triumph and that is entirely evident in this revival currently touring the UK. What struck me most about this production is... Continue Reading →
Saturday 10th February at Trafalgar Studios, London. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 Walking through the corridors to Studio One at Trafalgar Studios, we are greeted with an extension of Set Designer Jon Bausor’s work on the stage; walls dripping in blood, fading circus posters and curling bunting only just clinging to the walls... All serve to create an instantaneous... Continue Reading →
National Theatre Live, from The Harold Pinter Theatre. 18th May 2017. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Knock out. Star. Superstar. Electrifying. Scrap the cliches guys; Imelda Staunton's performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is of stratospheric brilliance. Edward Albee's play is superbly written and James Macdonald has brought about one hell of an intense and explosive piece of... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 26th April, 2017 at West Yorkshire Playhouse ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 There is a brilliant energy running through this production; the enveloping rowdy scenes of bars and cleverly represented busy streets are joyous to watch purely for the brilliance of the physicality, which is absolutely a winning aspect of this wonderful production. But the surreal energy of... Continue Reading →
Thursday 2nd February, 2017, at Harrogate Theatre. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I loosely liken this production from Blackeyed Theatre to watching the metamorphosis of a butterfly, with the first act being the caterpillar to chrysalis and the second being the transformed butterfly. It's very apt for this analogy to have come to mind of course; Frankenstein does follow... Continue Reading →
Saturday 21st January, 2017. St James' Theatre, London. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The reputation and history of this show are well documented, so I won't repeat too much of it here, but suffice to say that this is a musical in a class of its own. Set in the not-so-dreamy side of dreamy New York at the height... Continue Reading →
