Tag Archives: Ustinov Studio

Writer: Feargus Woods Dunlop Director: James Farrell Reviewer: Claire Hayes Returning to the Ustinov for the beginning of the Crimes Under the Sun UK tour, New Old Friends have really honed their brand of comedic Golden Age murder mystery. This third instalment of their Crimes capers, while conjuring up a classic mix of the bygone age of Agatha Christie and Noel Coward, has a ...

Writer: Daniel Kehlmann Translator: Christopher Hampton Director: Laurence Boswell Reviewer: Claire Hayes The Ustinov Studio, under artistic director Laurence Boswell, has garnered a well-deserved reputation for unearthing significant international works to present to a British audience – and then attracting top-flight actors to appear in them. Productions like The Father, with Kenneth Cranham in the lead role, have transferred to ...

Writer: Marius von Mayenburg Translator: Maja Zade Director: Matthew Dunster Reviewer: Claire Hayes   The ambition behind Marius von Mayenburg’s Plastic is dazzling: using the artifice of theatre, its shared space and storytelling communion, to question the boundaries between art and life. If you listen to the narrative of the play’s central character Serge Haulupa, conceptual artist and orchestrator of ...

Writer: Feargus Woods Dunlop Director: Craig Sanders Reviewer: Claire Hayes If you’d prefer to hang on to the festive spirit for as long as possible, fighting back against the January gloom, then Crimes Against Christmas, a New Old Friends and Lichfield Garrick co-production, is an intriguing prospect. A good old-fashioned, grown-up antidote to the traditional family pantomime, this new caper ...

Writer: Alice Childress Director: Laurence Boswell Reviewer: Claire Hayes In the aftermath of a brutal 2016 election dividing the US along racial lines, Trouble in Mind offers a particularly timely glimpse of segregation in mid-20th Century America. Laurence Boswell’s latest production for the Ustinov revives Alice Childress’ trailblazing but overlooked work, originally produced Off Broadway in 1955; a race-play-within-a-race-play. It’s ...

Writer: John Mighton Director: Nancy Meckler Reviewer: Claire Hayes When memories fade, what is there left of us? John Mighton’s play examines issues of memory and identity; how reality blurs with age, the balance shifts and we become more diminished by what we have forgotten than defined by our recall of the past. It’s a subject matter that reflects the ...

Writer: Michel Tremblay (translated by Michael West) Director: Laurence Boswell Reviewer: Claire Hayes The second in the Ustinov’s season of French-Canadian drama, Forever Yours, Marie-Lou (À toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou) comes to Bath with a substantial pedigree already under its belt. Written in 1970 in the French working class vernacular of Montreal, Michel Tremblay’s tragedy of a dysfunctional family ...

Writer: Catherine-Anne Toupin Translator: Chris Campbell Director: Michael Boyd Reviewer: Claire Hayes   The Ustinov Studio’s new season of French-Canadian drama kicks off with Right Now, a psychologically intriguing dark comedy produced in association with Traverse Theatre Company and Bush Theatre. Like Florian Zeller’s The Father and The Mother – recent predecessors on the same stage – in Right Now ...