Tag Archives: York

Writer/Director: Elvi Piper Designer: Antony Jones Musical Director: Rosie Fox Reviewer: Ron Simpson This year the Shakespeare’s Rose season in the shadow of Clifford’s Tower is mounting a commendably full-on Shakespearean assault on the people of York. Four plays rotate on a basis of two performances a day, during term-time some of the day-time performances were aimed specifically at schools, ...

Writer: Malorie Blackman Adapted by: Sabrina Mahfouz Director: Esther Richardson Designer: Simon Kenny Reviewer: Ron Simpson York-based Pilot Theatre now co-produce with four major theatres, including York Theatre Royal, and the current tour of Pilot’s vibrant production of Noughts & Crosses will have played a week or more at no fewer than ten theatres between February and May. Sabrina Mahfouz’s ...

The talk in York at the moment is not about Brexit, I’m A Celebrity or even Strictly, it is far more important than any of these. It is quite simply this, that after performing as Dame in 40 pantos at the City’s Theatre Royal, the much loved and revered Berwick Kaler has decided at the age of 72 to retire ...

Writer: Jane Austen Adapted by: Jessica Swale Director: Juliet Forster Designer: Barney George Reviewer: Ron Simpson The Lakes Season at York Theatre Royal is a terrific idea. Over the summer, The Theatre by the Lake in Keswick presented five plays with the same ten actors, each involved in two or three plays, in either Main Theatre or Studio. Four of ...

Writer: Mick Martin Directors: Jude Wright/Mick Martin Reviewer: Ron Simpson Bent Architect’s Women of Aktion is one of many commemorations of the end of the First World War, but one which approaches it from a unique perspective. Advance publicity made it sound tempting and original, but also confusing, with two different and largely forgotten historical events rubbing up against each ...

Writer: William Shakespeare Director: Lindsay Posner Designer: Lee Newby Reviewer: Ron Simpson In both Lindsay Posner’s contributions to the four-play Shakespeare season at York’s pop-up Elizabethan theatre, he opts for a radical and precise updating. However, while the 1932 Italy setting of Romeo and Juliet is integral to the production and offers a different angle on the play, the contemporary ...

Writer: William Shakespeare Director: Juliet Forster Reviewer: Jim Gillespie The Globe Theatre, on London’s South Bank, has given theatre-goers a real feel for the experience of theatre in Shakespeare’s own time. Open to the elements, and the noises-off from a busy city, intimate and involving, with little of the technical wizardry available in a modern theatre setting. The London Rose ...

Writer: William Shakespeare Director: Lindsay Posner Designer: Lee Newby Composer: Olly Fox Reviewer: Ron Simpson For over two months this Summer Clifford’s Tower in York will be joined by another relic of a bygone age, this one smartly and imaginatively re-created. Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre, a pop-up Elizabethan theatre, sits on the castle car-park with a jolly little “village” of stalls ...