Tag Archives: Jonathan Fensom

Writer: Katori Hall Director: James Dacre Reviewer: James Garrington Kibeho, a small village in Rwanda, 1981. This is a quiet backwater, a place where nothing really ever happens. Then a schoolgirl, Alphonsine Mumureke, claims that she’s seen a vision of the Blessed Virgin. She is ridiculed and scolded by her friends and teachers – but then a second student says ...

Writer: Christine Mary Dunford (adapted from the book by Lisa Genova) Director: David Grindley Reviewer: Joan Phillips Dementia can seem one of nature's cruelest conditions. Young on-set Alzheimer's is even more vicious. Lisa Genova's book Still Alice, published in 2007, was first adapted for the stage by Christine Mary Dunford before it was then made into an academy award winning ...

Writer: Sharr White Director: Claire van Kampen Reviewer: Stephen Bates In American writer Sharr White’s 80-minute one-act play, the other place is a weekend retreat. It is also a dark area of the mind in which memories hide, delusions lurk and old mysteries resolve themselves without recourse to reason. Juliana is 61, a medical practitioner who is now working in ...

Writer: Simon Reade Director: David Grindley Reviewer: Gareth Davies If restless spirits are detected around Edinburgh's King's Theatre this week, they could reasonably be ascribed to the tormented soul of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gyrating in his grave in horror at this latest incarnation of his literary creation. Taking Doyle's famous infatuation was spiritualism towards the end of his life ...

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: 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: Bruce Norris Director: Daniel Buckroyd Reviewer: Fergus Morgan As one member of the audience pointed out in a lively post-show discussion following this performance of Clybourne Park at the Oxford Playhouse, Lorraine Hansberry is enjoying something of a purple patch in British theatre right now. A completed Les Blancs is playing to huge acclaim at the National, Eclipse Theatre’s ...

Writer:Peter Whelan Director:James Dacre Reviewer: Fergus Morgan While the rest of the English-speaking world is indulging in a veritable jamboree of Shakespeare, English Touring Company has mischievously decided to produce Peter Whelan’s The Herbal Bed, about the bard’s daughter and her sexual indiscretions. It is the first time that this 1996 Olivier-nominated play, which was based on a documented 17th ...