Tag Archives: Old Red Lion Theatre

Writer: Peter Hamilton Director: Ken McClymont Reviewer: Richard Maguire The Old Red Lion’s new production comes with so many trigger warnings that you climb the stairs to the theatre with some trepidation. Sheets of A4 pasted to the walls above the bannisters repeat the warnings on your short ascent. Scenes of murder! Loud noises! Strobe lighting! Offensive language! You may ...

Devisor: Phil Young Director: PJ Stanley Reviewer: Stephen Bates Phil Young, a one-time associate of Mike Leigh, devised the short play Crystal Clear in 1982 using improvisation techniques. It is hard to see why White Deer Theatre has opted to to revive such a stilted piece now, although not seeing is what it is all about. The Old Red Lion ...

Writer and director: Dan Daniel Reviewer: Stephen Bates To tie the knot or untie it? Those are the questions facing the two men in Dan Daniel’s play. One fights the faceless bureaucracy of United Kingdom immigration officialdom to bring his future wife to the country, while the other wrestles with the complexities of our divorce laws. Their plights benefit no ...

Writer: Emma Hemingford Director:  Rosalind Brody Reviewer: Stephen Bates They say that writers should begin by writing about what they know best and there are more than a few hints that Emma Hemingford has followed that advice to the letter with her new one-act play, Flinch, a screwball relationship comedy. In it, she plays Jess, an out-of-work actor who takes ...

Writer: Jacqueline Saphra Director: Tamar Saphra Reviewer: Stephen Bates It’s a dog’s life in Jaqueline Saphra’s new one-act play, a creepy canine thriller, directed by her own daughter. Family pet Luna has been a naughty girl, stealing chicken from the dinner table and then…well, best not to tell more. Her punishment is to be shut in a small box room, ...

Writer: Tom Ratcliffe Director:  Andy Twyman Reviewer:  Richard Maguire There’s a school of thought that thinks that there should be a limit on LGBTQ+ plays and films that depict their characters as lonely and suicidal. Such narratives as these can only perpetuate the beliefs that gay lives are sad and self-destructive. LGBTQ+ people, this argument suggests, will mirror the narratives ...

Creators: Broken Words Productions Reviewer: Maryam Philpott H.P. Lovecraft’s stories readily lend themselves to very different kinds of performance and at the half-way point of The Old Red Lion Theatre’s Lovecraft Festival, there has already been dramatic readings, musical compositions, cabaret and biographical sketches. Broken Words Productions’ new show The Lurking Fear takes a more traditional approach to telling a scary ...

Writers & Directors: Dominic Allen and Simon Maeder Reviewer: Maryam Philpott While of the stories of H.P. Lovecraft maybe full of impending doom and demonic characters, his own life was no less dramatic. Turnpike Productions bring their biographical drama Providence: The Shadow Over Lovecraft to the Old Red Lion Theatre’s Lovecraft Festival, using the writer’s life to explore the odd family ...