Tag Archives: Birmingham REP

Writer: Leo Butler Directors: Paul Hunter and Stephen Harper Reviewer: Selwyn Knight Sometimes you’ll finish watching a production and ask yourself. ‘What were they on when they wrote that?’ – no need for that question after Told By An Idiot’s All You Need is LSD – as playwright, Leo Butler told the Guardian, while interviewing Professor David Nutt for this ...

Writers: Ian Hislop & Nick Newman Director: Caroline Leslie Reviewer: Selwyn Knight 1916. Ypres. A unit of the Sherwood Foresters, led by mining engineer Captain Frederick John Roberts, is looking to salvage timber or metal with which to shore up the trenches. They come across an abandoned printing press and, in a flash of eccentric British brilliance, Roberts, an engineer ...

Writers: Ian Rankin and Rona Munro Director: Robin Lefevre Reviewer: James Garrington Detective Inspector John Rebus has retired. Or at least, that’s the theory. Then the daughter of a murder victim suddenly appears on the stairs outside his flat, and he’s drawn back into his past. Haunted by the memories of cases that went unsolved, he throws himself back into ...

Writer: Anna Jordan Director: James Grieve Reviewer: Selwyn Knight Have you ever heard a few bars of a song and been immediately transported back in time to your younger self, with all your youthful aspirations, emotions and insecurities to boot? G and Kayla have. During an evening at a wedding reception, Kayla and G meet and strike up a friendship ...

Writer: Penelope Skinner Director: Amy Hodge Reviewer: John Kennedy Sharing similarities with the oppressive dystopian State versus the rebellious heroine tropes of The Crucible, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Hunger Games, Penelope Skinner’s unnamed Scandinavian setting is a post-conflict police/priest state mandated by ultra-orthodox Christian dogma. All are answerable to The Disciples. Thought-crimes of the soul - blasphemy - are punishable by stoning to death. The ...

Writer: Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields Director: Kirsty Patrick Ward Reviewer: Selwyn Knight The Comedy About A Bank Robbery is a fast-moving, farcical piece of nonsense that has the audience laughing almost from the very start. Ostensibly a send-up of the heist movie, The Comedy About A Bank Robbery includes such stalwarts of Mischief Theatre’s style as slick visual gags, ...

Writer: David Edgar Director: Christopher Haydon Reviewer: Selwyn Knight David Edgar is 70 this year. Simple subtraction shows that he was 20 in 1968, the year known for student unrest and demonstrations across the world. And while Edgar didn’t take part in demonstrations, he was nevertheless beating the socialist drum as chair of the Socialist Society (or “SocSoc”) at Manchester ...

Writer: Timberlake Wertenbaker Director: Fiona Buffini Reviewer: John Kennedy Looking for possibly the definitive antecedent of The Dirty Dozen trope? The maverick junior officer who puts his career on the line to take on a disparate, desperate cohort of the meanest scum on the planet and, up against all the odds, the disbelief of his seniors, and especially said scum ...