For those of you already mourning the fact that Godiva Festival is over and done with for another year, fear not, for Coombe Weekender is just around the corner. Being housed in the backdrop of Coventry's historic Coombe Abbey, Coombe Weekender promises to "provide the musical build up to Coventry winning City of Culture for 2021"; and we think the ...

Writer: Paula Hawkins Adaptors: Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel Director: Anthony Banks Reviewer: Alice Fowler No one travels by train without gazing into the backs of houses, wondering about the lives of those who live there. From this universal voyeuristic instinct, Paula Hawkins created her 2015 publishing sensation, The Girl on the Train; swiftly adapted as a successful film, starring ...

Writer: Agatha Christie Director: Gareth Armstrong Reviewer: Lu Greer The Mousetrap is, of course, known as being famously the longest running show on London’s West End. Indeed, it has run for the entirety of Queen Elizabeth’s reign beginning in 1952 as she took the throne. Coming from the mind of Agatha Christie it is recognised as the quintessential period whodunit, ...

Writer: Agatha Christie   Director: Gareth Armstrong  Reviewer: Simon Topping The Mousetrap is a theatrical phenomenon. It has been running continuously in London’s West End for as long as Elizabeth II, the longest reigning incumbent monarch, has been on the throne:  over sixty-seven years. The England of the 1950s is almost unrecognisable to that of today, yet this play endures. The ...

Adapters: Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel Director:  Anthony Banks Reviewer: Lu Greer Based on the best selling book of the same name, Girl on the Train follows Rachel Watson as she battles with a spiral of depression and alcohol by losing herself in the voyeurism of watching a couple a few doors down from her old home through the train ...

Writer: Marie Jones Director: Lindsay Posner Reviewer: Alice Fowler Stones In His Pockets depicts a clash of cultures: what happens when rural Ireland and Hollywood come together on a film-set, somewhere on the Emerald Isle. Actors Owen Sharpe and Kevin Trainor put in bravura performances in this two-man show, playing everyone from bemused locals, roped in as extras, to the ...

Writer: Paula Hawkins Adapters: Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel Director: Anthony Banks Reviewer: Simon Topping The scene is set in a grim London flat, with the main character being sick into a pizza box. Welcome to the addled world of only just functioning alcoholic, Rachel Watson (Samatha Womack). Rachel’s life has fallen apart, her husband has divorced her and remarried ...

Writer: Willy Russell Director: Max Roberts Reviewer: Lu Greer It has been almost forty years since Willy Russell released Educating Rita, and the world was introduced to Rita a working-class Liverpudlian and Frank her alcoholic Open University tutor. The story of Rita, sick of the banal chit chat of the salon she works in enrolling on a literature course only ...