Tag Archives: Headlong

Writer: Penelope Skinner Director: Amy Hodge Reviewer: John Kennedy Sharing similarities with the oppressive dystopian State versus the rebellious heroine tropes of The Crucible, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Hunger Games, Penelope Skinner’s unnamed Scandinavian setting is a post-conflict police/priest state mandated by ultra-orthodox Christian dogma. All are answerable to The Disciples. Thought-crimes of the soul - blasphemy - are punishable by stoning to death. The ...

Writer: Duncan McMillan Director: Jeremy Herrin with Holly Race Roughan Reviewer: Jay Nuttall “People who aren’t addicted to anything are really missing out”. It may sound trite but it is a line in Duncan McMillan’s superbly crafted play that echoes long after the play ends. For anyone addicted to theatre this is one play you really don’t want to miss. ...

Writer: George Bernard Shaw Director: Sam Pritchard Reviewer:  G. D. Mills Sam Pritchard’s bold, experimental production of Pygmalion at the Oxford Playhouse finds innovative new ways to probe the themes of diction and class. Professor Higgins, a phonetics expert, plucks a common flower girl from the streets of London and resolves, through close manipulation of speech, to make a lady ...

Writers: Jack Thorne and Stephen Warbeck  Director: Jeremy Herrin  Reviewer: Clare Howdon  Junkyard, currently playing at Theatre Clwyd after a successful run at Bristol Old Vic, centres around a group of young misfits who are viewed by society at large as 'junk'. Crime, teenage pregnancy and violence abound, while their exasperated headmaster (Kevin McMonagle) struggles to know what to do ...

Writer: Jack Thorne Composer: Stephen Warbeck Director: Jeremy Herrin Reviewer: Tim Wright Jack Thorne’s star is very high in the sky indeed. After numerous screen writing credits and the runaway success of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on stage in London, it’s with no small level of anticipation that his latest work Junkyard arrives in Bristol. Assembled alongside Headlong’s ...

Writer: George Bernard Shaw Director: Sam Pritchard Reviewer:  Selwyn Knight Pygmalion must be one of Bernard Shaw’s most popular plays. First produced in 1913, it tells the story of professor of linguistics, Henry Higgins and his tutelage of streetwise flower-girl, Eliza. Headlong Theatre has taken Shaw’s text and transplanted it into a world of technology as they ask if class ...

Writer: Melissa Bubnic Director: Amy Hodge Reviewer: Stephen Bates “Life is a cabaret, old chum...” sang Sally Bowles in 1930s Berlin but, 80 years or so on, both life and cabaret look very different for the women in Melissa Bubnic's satire of neo-feminism. The Bush Theatre, housed temporarily in Bush Hall and looking somewhat grander than usual, is configured to ...

Writer: Frank McGuinness Director: Jeremy Herrin Reviewer: R G Balgray Almost as soon as the lights come up, we are introduced to the febrile, urgent imaginings and memories of the older Kenneth Pyper. For this is the revival production of Frank McGuinness’s 1985 play, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme; and Pyper’s memories are of his fallen ...