Writer: Eugene O’Hare Director: Phillip Breen Reviewer: Maryam Philpott With family dramas there’s always a skeleton in the cupboard waiting to be released in a big reveal at the end of the play to explain the permanent underlying tension. Eugene O’Hare’s new play Sydney & the Old Girl, making its debut at the Park Theatre is an accomplished psychological study ...
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Writer: John Vanbrugh Director: Phillip Breen Reviewer: James Garrington Lady Brute is bored. She married in haste and her husband has turned out to be a tedious drunk who’d rather spend time with his friends than with her. So, helped by her niece Bellinda, she decides to spice up her love life by having a dalliance with a younger man ...
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Adapter: Lee Hall (based on the screenplay by Marc Norman & Tom Stoppard) Director: Phillip Breen Reviewer: Dominic Corr We all know the life and loves of William Shakespeare, don’t we? One tale you may not know however is the impassioned romance of Shakespeare and Viola De Lesseps. The two star-crossed lovers embark on a burning, yet undeniably troubled affair. ...
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Writer: Lea Hall, adapted from the screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard Director: Phillip Breen Reviewer: Dave Smith Up-and-coming Elizabethan playwright Will Shakespeare (Pierro Niel-Mee) is in the grip of a bad case of writer’s block and is struggling to come up with a plot for what he hopes will be his next big hit, Romeo and Ethel the ...
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Writer: Richard Bean Director: Phillip Breen Reviewer: James Garrington One thing you can pretty much guarantee with a Richard Bean script – you won’t be bored. Set at the beginning of the English Civil War, The Hypocrite is based on a true story. Hull has the largest military arsenal outside London – with signs of civil war looming, whoever takes ...
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Writer: Bryony Lavery, from the book by Robert Louis Stevenson Director: Phillip Breen Reviewer: Selwyn Knight As Robert Louis Stevenson said of Treasure Island, “it [is] a story for boys … women were excluded”, and its cast of characters certainly bears that out. But history also tells us that 18th-century women did do physical work and were even pirates. It ...
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Writer: Mike Poulton Directors: Phillip Breen and Becky Hope-Palmer Musical Director: Richard Shephard Reviewer: Rich Jevons After a gap of some 16 years,the Mystery Plays are back in York Minster, reviving a tradition that dates back to the 14th Century. Designed both to educate and inspire, the plays tell the Biblical story from Creation to the Last Judgement. It is ...
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Writer: Edmund Rostand Adaptor: Anthony Burgess Additional Poetry: Twm Morys Director: Phillip Breen Reviewer: Mel Duncan It would be impossible to attempt to stage Cyrano De Bergerac without a degree of panache – in fact the play is responsible for the introduction of the word into the English language. Cyrano (Steffan Rhodri), a larger than life character with a penchant ...
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