Author: The Reviews Hub

Recently I’m writing alot of female characters – I wrote an all-female short film Daughter and now an all-female play – The Beach House. I was always writing women but coming out of lockdown I decided I wanted to actively pursue stories about women and develop female protagonists. We’re half of the population, there’s millions of women to write about. I have two sons and I harped on to them about how few women feature in the movies they watched as they were growing up, in particular how few complicated women, older women make an appearance. So it felt like…

Book: Catherine Johnson   Music & Lyrics: Benny Anderson & Bjorn Ulvaeus Director: Phyllida Lloyd We all know the story, we all know the songs. Our heroine Sophie (Jess Michelmore) is about to get married to Sky (Christopher Foley) and would like to invite along her absent Father (or Fathers) to give her away so, to start the show, she sends letters to the three men her Mother Donna (Sara Poyzer) had written about relations with in the summer before her birth. Much to the annoyance of Donna they all turn up together on the Greek Island on which she…

Firstly, we at The Reviews Hub would like to wish all our readers, venues and PR’s a Happy New Year and hope that it is a fruitful and exciting one for everyone. As we approach our 16th year, we felt that our site and indeed what we offer you, our readers, has undergone a significant change over the last few years. We no longer just cover theatre – we now have a fully-fledged and very busy film team, Our regional teams cover many non-theatre events and this area continues to grow daily. We are also getting requests to cover other…

Writer: William Shakespeare  Director: Matthew Dunster It’s impossible, of course, to do something really inventive with Midsummer Night’s Dream that isn’t going to be compared with all that’s gone before. There’s the tie-dye one, and the Sellotape one, the Bauhaus one and the semi-naked one. Hard acts to follow, but you have to try. You get the idea what this one’s going to be even before doors open – and this is where there has to be a great big SPOILER ALERT. To be perfectly honest it’s probably best to read this after you’ve seen Matthew Dunster’s inventive and entertaining production. There’s…

Libretto: Jodi Picoult & Timothy Allen McDonald Music & Lyrics: Elyssa Samsel & Kate Anderson Director: Lotte Wakeham Regional theatre has had some enormous successes in recent years. The transfer of The Life of Pie to the West End and the stratospheric capitulation of Everyone’s Talking About Jamie (both originating from Sheffield Theatres) is testament to how the regions punch way above their weight artistically. The Octagon Theatre in Bolton have managed a coup in securing the rights to adapt the enormously popular 2005 novel The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and present its world stage premiere as a musical.…

Emily Louizou is a director and founder of London-based, female-led international company Collide Theatre. Since its inception, Collide has created five critically acclaimed sold-out productions in London and Manchester, and has collaborated with more than 50 artists from around the world. Emily is currently working on The Coral at Finborough Theatre, taking place 4th – 29th October. ‘The protagonist in Georg Kaiser’s Gas trilogy exclaims: “I have glimpsed humanity – I must save it from itself!” This was written more than 100 years ago – but how strangely familiar it sounds today. I grow increasingly afraid of what mankind is…

Julian Forsyth is currently returning to a third run in the West End’s most famous ghost story The Woman In Black, based and adapted from Susan Hills haunting novella of the same name. Julian takes time out in between shows at the Fortune Theatre to chat to Executive Editor John McRoberts Where did your love for acting come from? My parents were very active, amateur actors, and producers/directors and they used to drag me and my younger brother along to everything they did. It really put me off. it was only when I think it was in my last year…

Writer/Director:  Mandla Bridget. It’s a name which certainly evokes provocations of middle-class Britain. Yet, this is the name given to the performer mandla as the performer was raised by mandla’s grandmother, and the one Mandla lived with whilst living in Glasgow. Pacing the make-shift kitchen, speaking of the rejection of Bridget, a name which strikingly rings British oppression and does more than skirt the suggestion of colonialism, Mandla Rae opens up to the audience with much to process. But it isn’t an open and frank discussion as some may structure, instead, Mandla forms a detachment from those around, as mandla…