Tag Archives: Mercury Theatre Colchester

Writer/Director: Daniel Buckroyd Director: Daniel Buckroyd Reviewer: Michael Gray This sparkling Snow White – Daniel Buckroyd’s fourth panto for Made in Colchester – is a delightful cocktail of glamour, glitter and good old-fashioned fun. David Shields’ designs feature giant candles, surrounding the flown title, and later the magic mirror and the Princess’s glass coffin. There’s an impressive dungeon laboratory, as ...

Writer: Eric Idle Music: John Du Prez with Eric Idle Director: Daniel Buckroyd Musical Director: Carlton Edwards Choreographer: Ashley Nottingham Reviewer: Michael Gray Is this what a definitive Spamalot would look like? This perennially popular show, originally a Python spin-off, has found success on Broadway and in the West End, not to mention on the am-dram scene, as this very ...

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 ...

Book: Tony Franchi and Marion Wells Music and Lyrics: Tony Franchi Director: Lindsay Lloyd Musical Director: John Chillingworth Choreographer:Irene Lincoln Reviewer:Michael Gray   This tuneful true-life story first surfaced in 2012, just before Lord Lloyd Webber’s ill-fated Stephen Ward, a musical which ploughs the same murky waters. They share the same (real-life) characters, and one song title (You’ve Never Had ...

Writers: Tom Mallaburn, Phil Mulryne, Jon Edgley Bond, Cal McCrystal Director: Cal McCrystal Reviewer: Michael Gray   Fringe favourites Fitzrovia Radio Hour bring their unique Dracula to the well-appointed 1930s wireless studio on the stage of the Mercury. It could be argued that the rough edges and the cheap and cheerful approach is part of their charm, but fortunately the ...

Author: Frederick Knott Director: Lucy Bailey Reviewer: Michael Gray   Starting its revival tour at the Mercury, Lucy Bailey’s stunningly stylish Dial M For Murder (first seen in 2009) is a triumph of stage design. Mike Britton’s enclosed box set, all oppressive scarlet walls, the furniture and a front door the only realistic elements, with a red gauze on a ...

A 21-strong team will take to the stage this spring in the new touring co-production of Betty Blue Eyes. Fresh from his rôle with The Book of Mormon, Haydn Oakley stars as Gilbert Chilvers. Amy Booth-Steel, currently appearing in the National Theatre’s The Light Princess, will play Gilbert’s wife, determined social-climber Joyce Chilvers The rest of the confirmed cast are:Sally ...

Writer: Martin McDonagh Director: Paul Kerryson Reviewer: Michael Gray [Rating:4.5]   Mags and Maureen, mother and daughter, living a life of mutual loathing in remotest Connemara. A bleak backwater, brilliantly conjured up by Juliet Shillingford’s realistic set: holy images, green gloss paint and rain streaming down the panes of the casement. Rain is the tab curtain, too, a drenching downpour ...