Martin ThomassonAmanda and Mike meet and bond on a plane while watching the the inflight movie – Pride and Prejudice. Mike prefers the book (more nuanced) but Amanda challenges him to watch the film without shedding a tear. Next thing, Mike is moving in with...
Michael Barker-Caven’s able revival of Phyllida Lloyd’s 1993 production of La Bohème for Opera North, gives us a layered and richly rewarding take on Puccini’s classic tale of bohemian Paris. Lloyd’s transposition of this late Victorian tale to the...
In a 1994 article entitled, “Discussing the Undiscussable”, New Yorker critic, Arlene Croce, explained her refusal to review a piece by choreographer, Bill T. Jones by accusing him of presenting ‘victim art’. Jones’s show, Still/Here, employed...
If you remember the 2014 controversy regarding certain Birmingham schools and the so-called ‘Trojan horse’ revelations, you most probably recall it as a conspiracy by certain Muslim governors to take over and radicalise British schools, a conspiracy...
Flo, the most junior of doctors, wearing her scrubs, already weary, stressed, overloaded with information and feeling out of her depth, excluded from case conferences by her white-coated seniors, is in need of a night’s rest, to take it all in, to...
Kimberley Sykes is clearly on a mission to take control of theatre in the northwest. Her production of Maxine Peake’s Beryl has just opened at Bolton’s Octagon theatre, and now here she is, directing the RSC’s touring production of As You Like It...
Yorkshire cyclist, Beryl Burton (1937-1996), has a strong claim to being the greatest sporting hero Great Britain has ever produced and yet, as Kimberley Sykes’s production of Maxine Peake’s biographical piece makes us painfully aware, she remains...
After a run out at the Edinburgh Festival, a reworked version of ‘Everything I See I Swallow’ has come home to the Lowry, its commissioning theatre. Written and performed by Tamsin Shasha and Maisy Taylor (with assistance in the devising from Helen...
It’s hard to create new work – sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s brave for theatres to commission new work – sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s hard to review a piece written/devised to honour a dear friend...
You can approach Trajal Harrell’s new work, Maggie the Cat, as a purposeful critique of the politics of race, gender and class, inspired by (note: ‘inspired by’ not ‘based upon’) Tennessee Williams’s classic, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; or you can go in...