Tag Archives: Bristol

Writer: Bea Roberts from the novel by Mary Norton  Director: Nik Partridge Designer: Rosanna Vize Composer: David Ridley Lighting Designer: Jess Bernberg Reviewer: Leah Tozer With a pitter-patter of petite feet and a-pocketing of confectionery, paper planes, and a crisp packet for a great escape, the Factory Theatre is the magical, mischievous, pocket-sized Clock family’s giant playground this Christmas. With witty, loveably believable writing from Bea ...

Director: Chris Collier Music & Lyrics: Kid Carpet Puppet maker: Dik Downey Reviewer: Julia Beasley What does a naughty fairytale cat have in common with a mythical Greek hero who was destined to kill his father and marry his mother? Absolutely nothing. This makes Puss in Boots and Oedipus perfect components for the latest offering from the Wardrobe Theatre, who ...

Writer: Katori Hall Director: Roy Alexander Weise Reviewer: Julia Beasley What was on Dr Martin Luther King’s mind in the hours preceding his untimely public assassination? Writer Katori Hall examines the probable hopes and fears of the great American civil rights campaigner on the night before his violent death, in this sensitive revival of the Olivier award-winning biopic at 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 ...