Why can’t every show be like Slava’s Snowshow? Creating a childlike sleeping fantasy of elation and melancholy, played out by fools. Lots of people, me included, say they hate or fear clowns. But that’s only when those clowns are hiding behind make...
I think it would be good if one day a pop group musical could make us all believe in ourselves and go out into the ether changing our world for the better. And today, I will carry that through and try and be the best me that I can be. Because Here...
This ghost story, directed by Matthew Dunster and written by Danny Robins, has enjoyed huge audiences and many rave reviews. A leap of faith is necessary to believe what happens, although it is directed and acted the best it could be. Two hapless...
All the hype over the past few weeks is true – A Knight’s Tale is a firework of a show. And I mean literally at points. Figuratively it zings, glitters and explodes. Faux leathering their way through one jukebox banger after the other, the...
It isn’t horror’s job to be kind to you. It goes to the very extremes of negative emotions. Fear and paranoia are in charge of a horror story, and with Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s Ghost Stories they have a very tight grip. The premise is that...
After 30 years of accolades, Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake still has audiences on their feet at the end, enthralled, moved and wanting more. This deconstructed and thematically enhanced version of the original ballet is an unflinching look at royalty...
We can say it now – anything set in the 80’s has become a period piece and The Curve’s production of An Officer and a Gentleman, the Musical, is as 80’s as legwarmers in shoulder pads. Douglas Day Stewart’s original story was an 80’s hit film...
In the Convent of the Three F’s, Mother Superior (Katy Owen) runs a tight ship of fun activities and a safe, if uneasy space. She tells a tail of Bluebeard (Tristan Sturrock), a dark and alluring magician who holds terrible secrets. Three characters...
With the Emma Rice adaptation of Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter this Christmas, the Royal Exchange has become an oaken art deco music box, playing songs of love’s young dream, heartbreak, hope and the sass and sadness of a brief and beautiful...
Quiz, the story of cheating to a million on Who Want’s To Be A Millionaire? is a highly theatrical narrative of blindsiding, hoodwinking and Craig David’s first album.After being dead good at quizzes down the pub, Diana Ingram (Charley Webb) along...
Cathy Crabb