Tag Archives: Mark Stratton

Writer: Noel Coward Director: Mark Stratton Set/Lighting: Graham Kirk Costumes: Christine Wall Reviewer: Ron Simpson Since its foundation by actor/director Mark Stratton and producer Sheila Carter in 2005, Esk Valley Theatre has made a huge success of taking over the Robinson Institute in the village of Glaisdale for nearly a month each summer. Not only are a healthy proportion of ...

Writer: Ben Brown Director: Mark Stratton Producer: Sheila Carter Set/Lighting: Graham Kirk Costumes: Christine Wall Reviewer: Ron Simpson As well as being (according to at least one poll) the most popular English poet of his generation, Philip Larkin was an enigmatic and somewhat controversial figure. His poetry suggested that his was a withdrawn existence, sexually deprived, terrified of death. After ...

Writer: John Godber Director: Sheila Carter Designer: Graham Kirk Reviewer: Ron Simpson For 12 years Esk Valley Theatre, in the persons of co-founders Mark Stratton and Sheila Carter, has brought high-quality small-cast theatre to the North York Moors by taking over Glaisdale’s Robinson Institute for the month of August for its annual production. Now EVT has expanded its scale, in ...

Writer: J.B Priestley Director: Barrie Rutter Reviewer: Carol Lovatt J B Priestley’s When We Are Married is a comic masterpiece and a wry observation on the joys and perils of that great institution, marriage.  Most famed for the classic An Inspector Calls, Priestly proved in his time that he was a maestro of wide ability in his capacity to dramatise ...

Writer: J B Priestley Music: Conrad Nelson Director: Barrie Rutter Reviewer: Janet Jepson Playwright J B Priestley was born in 1894 in Bradford, and although he left the city to go to war at the age of 19, he never forgot his native roots, drawing much of the social aspects and moral ideas of his plays from the West Riding ...

Writer: JB Priestley Director: Barrie Rutter Reviewer: Paul Couch The pre-war world of JB Priestley was a very different place to what we know today. After the Depression and before the turmoil of war in Europe, England was pretty much a land of idyll for everyone but the poorest of its populace. This near-octogenarian play has aged reasonably well. True, ...

Writer: Willy Russell Director: Mark Stratton Set and Lighting: Graham Kirk Costumes: Christine Wall Reviewer: Ron Simpson Esk Valley Theatre is one of the more unusual success stories in British theatre. Every August, Mark Stratton and Sheila Carter take over the Robinson Institute in the moors village of Glaisdale. Graham Kirk brings in his considerable construction skills to transform a ...

Writer: William Shakespeare Director: Barry Rutter Reviewer: Abbie Rippon The Merry Wives of Windsor is one of Shakespeare’s lesser performed plays. There is good reason for this. Very few people like to hear a bad word said about the bard but The Merry Wives isn’t his best work. It’s a bit barmy. The plot revolves around Sir John Falstaff (of ...