Tag Archives: Flora Spencer-Longhurst

Writer: Maxine Peake Director: Kimberley Sykes Reviewer: May Mellstrom An all-time cycling legend, Yorkshire-born Beryl Burton’s list of achievements is extraordinary; winning more than ninety national championships, seven world titles and even surpassing every male rider in a 12-hour time trial, setting a women’s record that stood for an incredible fifty years. Despite such a remarkable career, Burton remains largely ...

Writer: Jesse Briton Director: Jessica Daniels Reviewer: Stephen Bates Can greatness be taught? A Pupil, Jesse Briton’s new 90-minute one-act play, an all-female four-hander, poses that question, asking also whether talent can thrive without discipline and whether discipline, in turn, will suffocate talent. Ye is a gifted violinist of Chinese origin, who is disabled and confined to a wheelchair as ...

Writer: Tom Stoppard Director: Stephen Unwin Reviewer: Steve Turner Written and first performed in 1982 Tom Stoppard’s study of love, deception and infidelity retains its raw edge and soft underside and still feels very contemporary. Perhaps as a reflection of how little change there is in our feelings about love and friendship, the only things in the script which date ...

Writer: Tom Stoppard Director: Stephen Unwin Reviewer: Gareth Davies In 1982, when Tom Stoppard’s play was first staged, Ronald Reagan had made the perhaps unlikely journey from film star to commander in chief, transitioning from an acting career to become President of the United States. Thirty years later, in the era of ‘fake news’, the question of truth, authenticity and ...

Writer: Tom Stoppard Director: Stephen Unwin Reviewer: Claire Hayes Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing dazzled when it was first produced in 1982, both for the intelligence and precision of his writing and the performances of Felicity Kendal and Roger Rees in the leading roles. Thought to be one of his most autobiographical plays, its themes of marital infidelity and the pursuit of ...

Writer: William Shakespeare Director: Christopher Luscombe Reviewer: James Garrington Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Gregory Doran. tells us in the programme notes that he has long held the opinion that Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing belong together. At the end of Love’s Labour’s Lost two of the lovers, Berowne and Rosaline, are unable to be ...

Writer: William Shakespeare Director: Lucy Bailey Reviewer: Harry Stern There’s an awful lot of blood in Shakespeare’s most viscerally Jacobean of plays and Lucy Bailey’s production doesn’t shy away from showing it in all its gory glory. Rather, it revels in the sanguinary to the extent that it has been likened to the work of the celebrated and gruesome cine-ghoul ...

Book: Enda Walsh Music and lyrics: Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová Director: John Tiffany Reviewer: Ian Foster [rating:5] Unusually for a West End musical, Once gently pulses rather than powerhouses its way into the affections, beating very much to its own unique rhythm with a sublimely sensitive story of the power of music and the pain of untimely love. From ...