Tag Archives: Bristol

Writer: Thomas Meeham Music: Charles Strouse Lyrics: Martin Charnin Director: Nicolai Foster Reviewer: Francesca Parker The classic rags-to-riches story has once again been brought to life on stage. Despite being set in New York at the time of the Great Depression, Annie is the anything but downbeat. The heart-warming tale of a young orphan whose life changed irrevocably after a chance encounter, ...

Writer: Harvey Fierstein Composer: Cyndi Lauper Director & Choreographer: Jerry Mitchell Set Designer: David Rockwell Costume Designer: Gregg Barnes Lighting Designer: Kenneth Posner Reviewer: Leah Tozer Trust your feet in Price and Son, our work is tried and true: practical, pragmatical, steadfast, and steady, too. So echoes the omnipresent theme of Price and Sons shoe factory, yet this musical is as far from practical and pragmatic as the ...

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 ...