Tag Archives: East Riding Theatre

Writer: Yazmina Reza Translator: Christopher Hampton Director: Martin Hutson Composer: Chris Warner Set Designer: Ed Ullyart Reviewer: Ron Simpson Art is one of the more remarkable theatrical success stories of the past quarter-century. Originally staged in Paris in 1994, it transferred to the West End in Christopher Hampton’s translation two years later, ran for eight years and has never lacked ...

Writer: David Lindsay-Abaire Director: Adrian Rawlins Set Design: Ed Ullyart Lighting: Simon Bedwell Reviewer: Ron Simpson   In the publicity for East Riding Theatre’s production of Good People the strapline, “A comedy with an edge”, is used. Well, yes, up to a point. David Lindsay-Abaire certainly has a gift for verbal and character comedy that slides in on-demand – a gift ...

Writer/Composer: Rob Winlow Director: Timothy Trimingham Lee Musical Director: Arlene McNaught Reviewer: Ron Simpson Austen – the Musical is an enjoyable, if rather predictable, brief life of Jane Austen, generally close to the mark in biographical facts, refreshingly free of distortion and sensationalism, if with no special insight or originality. It provides a welcome reminder of a much-loved author and ...

Writer/Director: Jane Thornton From the novel by: Emily Brontë Designer: Lucy Weller Reviewer: Ron Simpson How do you condense a novel of over 250 pages, with a dense and complicated story-line, into less than 100 minutes of stage time? In the case of Wuthering Heights, with its generational split halfway through, a common method, used in the famous 1939 film, ...

Director: Becky Hope-Palmer Musical Director: Rachel Barnes Set Designer: Ed Ullyart Costume Designer: Tiffany Wilkinson-Morris Reviewer: Ron Simpson  East Riding Theatre in Beverley has made great progress in less than three years, with a remarkable number of impressive home-grown productions. Resident company, She Productions, a collective of talented young female actors and musicians, has had much to do with that, ...

Writers: John Godber, Jane Thornton Director: John Godber Set/Lighting: Graham Kirk Reviewer: Ron Simpson Shakers, written by John Godber and Jane Thornton in 1985 as a sister piece to Godber’s Bouncers, has undergone various re-writes over the years. This latest version, performed by the John Godber Company at the East Riding Theatre, retains the 1980s setting, but is tagged with ...

Writer: Rebecca Lenkiewicz Director: Adrian Rawlins Set Designer: Ed Ullyart Lighting: Simon Bedwell Reviewer: Ron Simpson Amanda in Noel Coward’s Private Lives famously commented on the potency of cheap music. While there is nothing cheap about the Fred Astaire chapter of the Great American Songbook, popular music – from Irish folk song to Marlene Dietrich via Astaire-Rogers classics – is ...

Writer: Richard Vergette Director: Andrew Pearson Set Design: Ed Ullyart Reviewer: Ron Simpson The date for the opening night of As We Forgive Them at the East Riding Theatre was chosen with painful appropriateness. Richard Vergette’s two-hander takes place on the occasions of three American elections. When it was first staged six years ago, Barrack Obama’s first election in 2008 ...