Tag Archives: The Drum

Writer: Anders Lustgarten (adapted from David Peace book) Director: Rod Dixon Reviewer: Joan Phillips If you are a certain age and if ‘the beautiful game’ is, as Bill Shankly put it, ‘more important than life or death’ then this is a play for you. Based on David Peace’s eponymous novel, The Damned United is the story of Brian Clough’s doomed ...

Writer: Created and devised by The Wardrobe Ensemble Directors: Jesse Jones and Helena Middleton Reviewer: Joan Phillips Set the day after Tony Blair’s New Labour landslide victory in May 1997, Education Education Education takes a very funny, but hard, look at life inside a typical UK secondary school 20 years ago. German language assistant Tobias, is excited to be working in ...

Writer: Little Bulb Theatre Director: Alexander Scott Reviewer: Becca Savory Fuller The stage is strewn with musical instruments. A weighty set of timpani drums and a curvaceous double bass are harboured to one side of the stage. A school of stringed instruments are safely stowed in the centre of the space. Microphones bob like buoys across our field of vision. ...

Created by: Told By An Idiot Director: Paul Hunter Reviewer: Joan Phillips ‘A complete mash-up’ of myth, children’s story, colonial history and TV soap opera is probably the best way to describe Told By An Idiot’s Heads Will Roll co-produced by Theatre Royal Plymouth. This wonderfully silly idea converges the legends around the mythical city of El Dorado, ancient stories ...

Written, directed and performed by: Shon Dale-Jones Reviewer: Karen Bussell It’s all about values. Shon Dale-Jones, best known perhaps as Artistic Director of Hoipolloi or his chatty alter ego, Hugh Hughes, recounting tales of a drifting Anglesey or Snowden ascent, challenges The Duke’s audience to consider worth. Tickets are free, with many venues on the tour providing the space without ...

Writers: People’s Company Director: Christopher Elmer-Gorry Reviewer: Hannah Stamp Intensely current and controversial, the People’s Company’s production Short Changed presents a feast of difficult topics blended with humour and glitz within the fickle world of fame and reality television. Provoking us to ask difficult questions about the morality of many forms of light entertainment, while also involving the audience in ...

Writer:Mikhail Durnekov Translator:Noah Birksted-Breen Director:Michael Fentiman Reviewer: Joan Phillips   The War Has Not Yet Started is a composite of 12 short stories reflecting some of the very human anxieties of today’s troubled world. Written by Mikhail Durnenkov and translated from the original Russian by Noah Birksted-Breen, this 80-minute play bleakly captures some of society’s deepest, sometimes hidden, and often ...

Writer: Joe Sellman-Leava Reviewer:Marina Waters   The multi-award winning fringe sensation Labels is a vibrant, original, and sublimely constructed piece of theatre that effortlessly blends humour with hard-hitting issues. The one man show delves into the passive (and active) prejudices that lurk beneath the surface of modern multi-cultural Britain and the words and phrases used to assign meaning to a ...