Tag Archives: Birmingham

Writer: Agatha Christie Director: Gareth Armstrong Reviewer: Tim Harding “When the snow melts lots of things may have happened.” An isolated Manor House.  A blizzard cutting the inhabitants off from civilization. A mismatched assemblage of characters thrown together by circumstance and forced to endure together by fate.  Where else could we be but in an Agatha Christie plot?  Specifically, we ...

Composer and Libretto: Leoš Janáček Conductor: Tomáš Hanus Director: David Pountney Reviewer: C L Delft Janáček’s Cunning Little Vixen had its genesis in a comic-strip printed in a Czech newspaper in the early 1920s: an ongoing tale about the adventures of a clever she-fox.  In creating his opera, the composer transcended this very simple material to produce a multi-faceted work ...

Book: Rupert Holmes Music: John Kander Lyrics: Fred Ebb Director: Paul Foster Reviewer: Selwyn Knight It’s 1959 Boston and the opening night of the musical Robbin’ Hood! – the English folk tale transplanted to the American West – prior to a mooted Broadway transfer. And it’s a disaster – principally because the female lead, diva Jessica Cranshaw, puts in a ...

Writer: Testament Director: Dawn Walter Reviewer: John Kennedy ‘And specially, from every shires ende Of England, to the [Peaks] they wende, The holy blisful [diaspora] for to seke,’ Seems that yon Chaucer chap saw something like this a-coming long time ago, ‘appen. To pass the time, to escape it, three disparate black men go hill-walking. It is a time to ...

Director: Neil Dorward Reviewer: John Kennedy Circus 1903 celebrates an intoxicatingly dexterous, fin de siecle, imaginarium of itinerant acrobatic eccentrica; a through-the-looking-glass shimmering construct of eye-popping impossibilities conjuring reminiscences of Ray Bradbury’s American mid-west novellas. For most certainly tonight something deliciously well wicked this way comes. Relishing in exotic, alliterative narratives, Ringmaster Willy Whipsnade (David Williamson), part Emcee, part side-show ...

Book, Music and Lyrics: Willy Russell Directors: Bob Thomson and Bill Kenwright Reviewer: Hannah Powell With our current political climate becoming heated by Brexit and an ever-growing divide between those at the top and those living on the bread line, now seems the perfect time to revive such a play that displays what those in desperate need can be forced ...

Writer: Inua Ellams Director: Bijan Sheibani Reviewer: John Kennedy This heart and soul hug from a 100% proof rum-soaked octopus, is a pan-African celebratory safari of the human condition. The episodic chronicles, bookended with a capella tribal chants rendered in location-context local dialects, are a seductive, ear-stalking delight. These barbers’ shops monopolise the community-chest treasury of folly, frailty and home-spun ...

Creators: Robin French and Alex Brown Director: Alex Brown Reviewer: John Kennedy Complementing the programme’s Punk Font front cover, the audience are welcomed with hi-viz stickers proclaiming  ‘NAZIS are No Fun’. Evidence alone that, not only did Rock Against Racism coalesce seemingly impossible, eclectic musical genres under a common cause, they also had a wry sense of ironic understatement. Mixed-race, Denise’s ...