Writer: Feargus Woods Dunlop Director: James Farrell Reviewer: Claire Hayes Returning to the Ustinov for the beginning of the Crimes Under the Sun UK tour, New Old Friends have really honed their brand of comedic Golden Age murder mystery. This third instalment of their Crimes capers, while conjuring up a classic mix of the bygone age of Agatha Christie and Noel Coward, has a ...
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Writer: Tom Stoppard Director: Stephen Unwin Reviewer: Claire Hayes Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing dazzled when it was first produced in 1982, both for the intelligence and precision of his writing and the performances of Felicity Kendal and Roger Rees in the leading roles. Thought to be one of his most autobiographical plays, its themes of marital infidelity and the pursuit of ...
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Writer: Phoebe Eclair-Powell Director: Faye Elvin Reviewer: Claire Hayes There’s a nostalgia to the opening of TopButton Theatre’s debut production Wink as video images from a previous decade, of two young boys and their families enjoying birthday treats, flitter across the central projection screen. It seems to hark back to an innocence lost in an online world today awash with ...
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Writer: David Hare Director: Jonathan Church Reviewer: Claire Hayes Jonathan Church’s inaugural summer season for Bath’s Theatre Royal signalled changes from the moment his programme was revealed – without any hint of the usual Shakespeare or Coward. Instead, it opens with a revival of David Hare’s 1990 play Racing Demon, a meditation on the state of the Church of England, ...
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Writer: Daniel Kehlmann Translator: Christopher Hampton Director: Laurence Boswell Reviewer: Claire Hayes The Ustinov Studio, under artistic director Laurence Boswell, has garnered a well-deserved reputation for unearthing significant international works to present to a British audience - and then attracting top-flight actors to appear in them. Productions like The Father, with Kenneth Cranham in the lead role, have transferred to ...
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Writer: George Bernard Shaw Director: Sam Pritchard Reviewer: Kris Hallett Is the sign of a truly great play one that can be flexible enough to take the concepts hoisted on it by a director and reveal something hitherto unrevealed to its audience in the meantime? This is the question one came out of watching Headlong Theatre’s Pygmalion, playing in Bath ...
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Writer: Joe Orton Director: Nikolai Foster Reviewer: Claire Hayes 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of Joe Orton’s death, and this brand-new version of What the Butler Saw, a joint production between Theatre Royal Bath and Leicester Curve, commemorates his final full-length play. But as a dark farce, this work is now showing its age; shocking at the time for its anti-establishment ...
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Writer: Marius von Mayenburg Translator: Maja Zade Director: Matthew Dunster Reviewer: Claire Hayes The ambition behind Marius von Mayenburg’s Plastic is dazzling: using the artifice of theatre, its shared space and storytelling communion, to question the boundaries between art and life. If you listen to the narrative of the play’s central character Serge Haulupa, conceptual artist and orchestrator of ...
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