Tag Archives: York

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 ...

Writer: Evan Pacey Director: Wendy Harris Designer: Kate Bunce Composer: Dom Sales Movement: Joel Daniels Reviewer: Ron Simpson Leeds-based, but with strong links to York Theatre Royal, tutti frutti and director Wendy Harris have a sure touch with plays aimed at children from the age of three upwards. Coming now towards the end of a longish tour taking in closed ...

Writer: Vashti Maclachlan Composer: Kieran Buckeridge Director: Jonny Kelly Musical Director: Rebekah Hughes Designer: Celia Perkins Reviewer: Ron Simpson In many ways, you see Mikron Theatre Company at its best in settings like York’s Scarcroft Allotments. The company does pretty well in theatres (see our review of Get Well Soon at the Square Chapel), but it is at its most ...

Writer: Compton Mackenzie Adapted by: Philip Goulding Director: Kevin Shaw Designer: Patrick Connellan Reviewer: Ron Simpson Oldham Coliseum’s touring production of Whisky Galore is based on at least three promising ideas. Unfortunately, in Philip Goulding’s stylish, but dramatically inert, script and Kevin Shaw’s oddly conservative direction, none comes to fruition. Indeed sometimes the intentions seem to conflict with each other. ...

Devised by Annie Castledine, Steve Trafford and Elizabeth Mansfield Writer/Translator: Steve Trafford Director: Damien Cruden Reviewer: Ron Simpson It’s telling that the first credit on Hymn to Love – Homage to Piaf goes to the devisers, not the writer or director. It’s an effective dramatic concept that works well in combination with some timeless songs, but the text is limited ...

Writer: Graham Greene Adapter: Bryony Lavery Director: Esther Richardson Composer: Hannah Peel Designer: Sara Perks Lighting: Aideen Malone Reviewer: Ron Simpson Brighton Rock presents many problems to the maker of a stage adaptation. Apart from a considerable roster of characters named and unnamed, its emphasis on violence, often for its own sake, and Greene’s use of Catholic theology and the ...