Central Reviews

Book, Lyrics and Director: Kay Mellor Music: Nick Lloyd Webber Reviewer: Clare White It’s been 18 years since ITV drama Fat Friends first hit our screens and now Kay Mellor’s popular slimming club-inspired comedy has undergone its own transformation for the stage. The musical adaptation, written and directed by Mellor, is a funny and frothy romp, featuring a host of ...

Writer: Mary Pix Director: Jo Davies Reviewer: Katy Roberts Jo Davies is the third director to pick up the baton in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC) Spring/Summer 2018 season; a season that, for the first time in the Company’s history, sees the staging of four works directed solely by women. Whilst Maria Aberg and Polly Findlay’s productions are works by ...

Reviewer: Scott Matthewman Drag culture is in flux at the moment. For decades, occasional nights hosting karaoke in gay bars have been the best most acts could hope for: in recent years, though, the ascendancy of TV reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race from cult hit to mainstream phenomenon has seen an influx of American-style drag performance alongside more traditional, British ...

Writer: Dennis Kelly Director: Tom Saunders Reviewer: John Kennedy A disparate cohort of teenagers participates in a danger-dare game that goes fatally wrong for Adam. The enigmatic Phil contrives a collective alibi that works desperately too well when an innocent man is charged with Adam’s abduction. He is doomed by DNA: complicit 'evidence' one of them inventively plants on his ...

Whether you’ve been off for a week already or the kids danced into school this morning with that enviable ‘last day of term’ excitement, coming up with ideas to fill a potentially wet Easter break is a tough challenge. To help ease some of the pressure (and leave you more time to eat leftover chocolate eggs while the kids aren’t ...

Writer: Jon Brittain Director: Andrew Whittle Reviewer: Selwyn Knight Possibly the most widely misunderstood segment of the LBGTQI community is the trans-sexual community; those whose bodies don’t match their own understanding of their gender can find their motives questioned and to be open to misunderstanding, ridicule or even abuse. Jon Brittain’s Rotterdam examines the impact of an individual being transgender ...

Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre is preparing to mark its 60th birthday tomorrow, March 27, nicely coinciding with World Theatre Day. Being the first civil theatre to open after World War II in 1958, the theatre is steeped in history and is very much at the heart of the Coventry community. Hamish Glen, Artistic Director for the Belgrade - who is celebrating ...

Writer: William Shakespeare Director: Polly Findlay Reviewer: Katy Roberts Macbeth, both the play and the titular character, is obsessed with time, and this theme looms large throughout Polly Findlay’s modern-dress production of Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy. From the moment the digital clock sparks into life at the back of the stage, one becomes acutely aware that Macbeth and his wife are ...