Loyalty is an odd thing. It embraces so many concepts: ideas, people, identities, countries, the list is endless. But no matter how much someone expresses their loyalty to something, there is a breaking point, when they have to consider which is more important, their loyalty or themselves. And this, I believe is the message that…
There had, I thought to myself, be some acts of violence to witness in a show called Love and Other Acts of Violence. With hindsight (I am not wholly convinced it is necessarily a ‘benefit’), it was quite a ridiculous thought, but then a title like this evokes all sorts of musings, at least in…
The bereaved homecoming is a tried-and-tested dramatic device, be it Chekhov’s Three Sisters (1901); Langford Wilson’s Burn This (1987) or Tracy Letts’ August: Osage Country (2007). Amongst heightened emotions, familial tensions and uncovered secrets, tragedy and farce have a natural opportunity to reveal themselves and intensify in the claustrophobic confines of gathering for funeral rites…
During the past year, memories of the Open Air Theatre Regent’s Park kept coming back to me a la Proust dipping his biscuit into coffee. So to go back last night and experience it again was incredible. It is the most perfect venue to see a show, with the trees encircling the space as if…
As regular readers know, I love a good old-fashioned musical, and this summer, one of the first musicals I have ever seen returns to London for a limited run at the iconic Barbican Centre. So, I donned my sailor suit, walked up the gangplank, took my seat and settled back to revisit Anything Goes. In…
It’s not often that you can get to see a Broadway/West End lead performer in a 100-seater black-box theatre in SE1 but that’s what’s happening at the moment at The Little at Southwark Playhouse where Rachel Tucker is appearing in John & Jen. She should have been appearing on Broadway in Come From Away, a…
