Tag Archives: Bristol

Reviewer: Julia Beasley Those talented folk from the Wardrobe Theatre of Bristol are at it again – putting together disparate cultural ingredients to serve up a feel-good fusion of happy-clappy, sexually explicit musical entertainment. For this production staged at the Tobacco Factory Theatre, the original cult classic films are Rocky and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. One is a macho ...

Writer: Nick Makoha Music: Duramaney Kamara Director: Roy Alexander Weise Choreographer: Jennifer  Jackson Reviewer: Julia Beasley It is 1978 in Idi Amin’s  Uganda. Four-year-old Nick and his mother are fleeing from a strife-torn homeland that has been ravaged by years of military dictatorship.  The story of their journey from Kampala to Heathrow is recalled by the now adult Nick, in ...

Writer: Matt Grinter from the novel by Mary Shelley  Director: Rebecca Robson Designer: Molly Hawkins Reviewer: Leah Tozer Playing God in an Anglican chapel is, like Frankenstein’s Creature, ‘fearless, and therefore powerful’. Amongst the gravestones at Arnos Vale, Red Rope Theatre stitch together and stage their agonized, magnificently imagined Frankenstein’s Monster at the cemetery’s Victorian altar in Matt Grinter’s elegiac, gorgeously gothic imagining of Mary ...

Devised by: Ellie Dubois, Francesca Hyde, Kate McWilliam, Michelle Ross, Alice Gilmartin, Camille Toyer, Lisa Chudalla  Director: Ellie Dubois Reviewer: Leah TozerA lot of grit, graft, and grazed knees go into greatness, yet for ‘showgirls’ in the ‘greatest show on earth,’ the nightly danger is disguised by grace, discipline, glitz, and offstage doughnuts. Ellie Dubois’s circus celebrates the blood, sweat, and bruises of ...

Company: Limerence Productions Reviewer: Julia Beasley How easy is it to be a gay man? Quite difficult, as it turns out – for Sammy and El at least, a couple of queer flatmates who are as different as chalk and cheese. Whilst El is a bitchy drag queen always on the prowl for sex, Sammy is a gentler, socially awkward ...

Writer: Jonathan Harvey Director: Mike Tweddle  Music: Thomas Johnson Designer: Anisha Fields Lighting: Chris Swain Reviewer: Leah Tozer Once I believed that when love came to me, it would come with rockets, bells, and poetry – but with me and you, it just started quietly, and grew… and it’s getting better. Beautiful Thing at the Tobacco Factory Theatres begins with a beautiful chorus of Mama Cass’s It’s ...

Devised by the company from Sharp Teeth and The Wardrobe Theatre Directed by: Steph Kempson & Andy Kelly Reviewer: Leah Tozer God Save the (drag) Queen: part drawing-room comedy, part clowning, and part drag, Parlour Games is a most unconservative portrait of the Victorians. With a grande dame, a Deutsche clown prince, and any delusions of grandeur doused with playful ...

Director: Tom Morris Writer: David Greig Movement director: Sasha Milavic Davies Designer: Ti Green Composer: Jon Nicholls Lighting designer: Chris Davey Reviewer: Hugh McCann This adaptation of Touching The Void retells the classic autobiographical account of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates’ death-defying climbing trip in the Andes, written by Joes Simpson. The piece begins with Joe’s sister Sarah (Fiona Hampton) ...