The Rest of October (in the UK!)

OPERA
Another successful visit to Britain’s most accessible and best value opera company, Welsh National Opera,  in Cardiff. Wozzeck was given a great production and was brilliantly sung, but the depressing tale and inaccessible music meant it didn’t really light my fire. La Traviata, however, was one of those evenings at the opera when it all [...]

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Money

An extraordinary ’set’ in search of a play!
Shunt have put on some amazing events in strange places (they have a penchant for being underneath railway arches). Here they are in a dis-used factory / warehouse near London Bridge.
After waiting amongst helmeted security guards listening to an intimidating soundscape and watching incomprehensible videos, an audience of c. [...]

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The Power of Yes

David Hare attempts to help us understand the credit crunch by staging 110 minutes of interviews with those that should know, from a 20-something Bosnian economics teacher through the head and former head of the FSA to George Soros and by-and-large he succeeds.
It isn’t as sexy as Enron’s similar single issue story, and does occasionally [...]

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Life Is A Dream

I can’t make up my mind whether this 400-year old play is preposterous, ahead of its time or very clever.
It’s the tale of a king who imprisons his child and heir (without telling his subjects) as he has had a premonition that he will bring disaster to his country. When he has grown up, he [...]

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Into the Woods

I refuse to believe its 15 years since I saw this show at the same theatre. This revival betters the earlier one, largely because director Robert McWhir has assembled a superb cast (taking the narrator role himself, and making a very good fist of it, at the performance I attended). It’s amongst the best sung [...]

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Annie Get Your Gun

Oh dear, when will designers have more consideration for their audience? It’s happened a few times at the National’s Lyttleton and now at the Young Vic Ultz has designed in bad sightlines for so many people; it’s hard to comment on this revival objectively.
It’s an inventive tongue-in-cheek production and I particularly loved the four piano [...]

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Speaking in Tongues

I very much enjoyed Australian playwright Andrew Bovell’s epic ‘When The Rain Stops Falling’ at the Almeida earlier in the year. This one is just as original and intriguing but less satisfying.
Again, it’s the structure which impresses. With nine characters played by four actors, it unfolds like a mystery. The first two scenes have the [...]

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Comedians

Trevor Griffiths 1975 play has dated, but it proves to be a classic well worth reviving.
It’s set in evening class for stand-up comics on the final evening of the course. In the first act, we get the last lesson, in the second showcase performances in front of an agent at a local club and in [...]

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First Lady Suite

This is a very Sondheimsesqe show, owing a lot in concept and structure to Assassins, but unfortunately it nowhere near lives up to the master.
It’s four moments in the lives of four different first ladies topped and tailed by a contemporary scene with Michelle Obama.
Though the staging and the singing are first class, the music doesn’t really [...]

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The York Realist

This is a pitch perfect revival of Peter Gill’s best play, though I refuse to believe it is just 8 years old. 
Set in Yorkshire in 1961, the period has been beautifully created as much by behaviour, speech, mannerisms and silence as the simple design; you really believe you’re there at that time.
The play has so much warmth and charm [...]

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