There’s an exasperation in Ronen (John Middleton) that was quite palpable as Officer Rogers (Bailey Patrick) paying his sister Allegra (Dame Maureen Lipman) a visit within minutes of a distinctly non-criminal ‘incident’ – that is, singing in a petrol station shop – when it can take much longer for the police to attend when someone…
It’s a nice enough story, and it’s good to know that there are people out there who genuinely look out for one another. Nathan (Matthew Edgar) has a private room in a sauna. He goes outside to smoke a cigarette, and on his return, Franko (Michael Neri) has taken up residence. They are, at least…
This isn’t the only production of A Christmas Carol to become a London seasonal institution in recent years – there’s also Antic Disposition’s production, usually at Middle Temple Hall, a venue steeped in centuries of history. Here, The Old Vic is reconfigured from its usual proscenium arch seating layout into a sprawling but lean stage…
Lizzie Andrew Borden (1860-1927) (Lauren Drew), as this production would have it, triumphed over adversity by getting her own back on a terrible father who mistreated her. The punishment, however, wasn’t proportionate to the crime. On 4th August 1892, she took an axe to her father, Andrew Jackson Borden (1822-1892) and stepmother, Abby Durfee Gray…
The opening scenes do nothing to push back against the caricature of certain Americans like Annie Oakley (SuRie) learning how to operate guns even before they are fully literate. Other elements in Herbert and Dorothy Fields’ book, revised by Peter Stone, provoke some telling responses from a contemporary audience. When the Chief Sitting Bull (a…
I have very little understanding of the world of cricket, though I take some comfort in some of cricket’s fans and followers being as baffled as I am about certain ‘leg before wicket’ decisions. The Wikipedia entry on ‘lbw’ runs to more than 4,000 words, but I shall use two: it’s controversial. There is fairly…
The musical numbers are often delivered at pace, with many of them so wordy it would be a challenge, to say the least, to sing along to them. That in itself is a good reason to pop along to Operation Mincemeat, with showtunes that drive the story forward, such that one isn’t left waiting for…
Like many one-person narratives, Kitty in the Lane only provides the audience with a single perspective on what is otherwise an engaging storyline. Quite how Kitty’s (Áine Ryan) father, brother Dennis, boyfriend Robert or (sort of) best friend Saleisha truly sees things remains an enigma, and as for Kitty herself, you’d be hard-pressed to encounter…