Tag Archives: Review

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: Nessah Muthy Director: Daniel Winder Reviewer: Stephen Bates A smell of burning incense fills the air and a faint haze lingers. Hoxton Hall, with its dark walls and ornate decorations, was once a Victorian Music Hall and it is certainly not short on atmosphere for Iris Theatre’s family-friendly telling of fables of the fabulous and fearsome, drawn from a ...

Writer:  Albert Camus Adaptor: Ben Okri Director:  Abbey Wright Reviewer:  Richard Maguire Hot on the heels of Neil Bartlett’s adaptation of The Plague at the Arcola, Booker Prize winner Ben Okri now adapts Albert Camus’ other great work, The Outsider (L’ Étranger). Playing at the atmospheric Print Room, existentialism has never looked so good. In surely what will be a break-out role ...

Writers and Directors: Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne   Reviewer:  Richard Maguire London theatre is currently in existential crisis with two works by Albert Camus, The Plague and The Outsider, on at The Arcola and The Print Room respectively, and now The Prisoner by theatre legend Peter Brook comes to the National. This new play examines how we find freedom in an ...

Writer:  William  Shakespeare Director: Elizabeth Freestone Sound Designer: Giles Thomas Reviewer: Julia Beasley England is at odds with France. the country sees the people across the Channel as the enemy. The air is thick with jingoistic rallying cries: "Once more unto the breach…cry God for Harry, England and St George!" We’re just about to do battle with our old foes. The ...

Writer & Performer: Tom Marshman Reviewer: Leah Tozer You may find this morally wrong. I don’t. This is the irreverent, fearlessly truthful, revolutionary reaction of Geoffrey Patrick Williamson, a teenager arrested in Taunton in the fifties after approaching a plain-clothes police officer while travelling on a train. His crime? Existing as a homosexual, and what a haunted existence it was.  A Haunted ...

Writer: Dawn King Director: Rachel O’Riordan Reviewer: Stephen Bates It is a bit like old times at the Ambassadors Theatre, the original home of The Mousetrap. Dawn King’s play, first seen at the tiny Finborough Theatre in 2011, is a creepy thriller set in an isolated part of rural England, where any knock on the door carries a threat. This ...

Book, music and lyrics: Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe Director: Andy Fickman Reviewer: Stephen Bates When Veronica, the 17-year-old heroine of Heathers The Musical, gets trapped in a cow field, confronted by two threatening thugs, we feel inclined to ask why she does not pick up her mobile ‘phone. But this is 1989 and we quickly realise that curses can ...