Blog Archives

The cast of THE PANTOMIME ADVENTURES OF PETER PAN. Photo Credit: Phil Tragen

With its audience participation, catchy music, comic innuendos and laugh-out-loud slapstick comedy, THE PANTOMIME ADVENTURES OF PETER PAN ticks all the boxes.

What makes a pantomime? Is it a villain played with comedic menace or his dimwitted sidekick? Is it the audience participation and the music? The innuendo and slapstick? It is all of these things, and this year’s offering from Manchester’s Opera House in the ...

Mesmerising in his delivery, Guy Masterson’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL is one of the best theatre adaptations to grace the stage. 

In 1843 there was a novella published. That novella was A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens and would go on to be one of the most consistently read works on the planet...

Carefully balancing humour with dark fantasy, THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE makes for an enjoyable Christmas show for all the family.

C S Lewis’s THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE is a childhood classic which has stood the test of time, and this latest stage adaptation does not disappoint in re-telling it.

Closely following the original story, THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE tells the tale of four children – Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy – who are sent to the countryside in wart...

Celebrating her legendary 1981 album, Anthem, Toyah delivers a masterclass in longevity and creativity with her latest tour.

It is hard to understate the impact that punk had on the musical landscape of the 70s and 80s and one of the most notable was the number of female artists that arrived through the punk vortex into the popular charts; along with Siouxsie, Toyah was one of the most iconic...

Part performance, part lecture, A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN is a provocative and striking retelling of Woolf’s feminist essay.

October 1928. Virginia Woolf delivers two lectures at Cambridge University on Women and Fiction, which form the basis of her essay A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN, published in 1929...

Despite its stand-out cast performance, THE BEZONIANS is let down by cliches, lack of character development and an incohesive plot.

The world of underground clubs and strong cultural groups is unknown to many...

Abigail Thaw, Sara Crowe, Judy Flynn, Rina Fatania in SHELIA’S ISLAND. Photo: Craig Fuller

With its perfect ensemble cast, SHEILA’S ISLAND is a sharp-witted comedy about four women trying to survive a night of tantrums, tears, and terror.

How well do you know the people you work with? How well do you want to know them, and who would crack first when the going gets tough? These are the central questions in Tim Firth’s SHEILA’S ISLAND, a reworked feminised incarnation of NEVILLE’S ISLAND, which h...

Despite its heavy dialogue, Northern Broadsides deliver an interesting interpretation of Shakespeare’s AS YOU LIKE IT with gender subversion at its heart.

2022 sees 30 years since the formation of the Northern Broadsides theatre company and their first foray in Shakespeare. To celebrate, they have chosen, in collaboration with the New Vic Theatre Company, a new staging of a very old play – AS YOU LIKE IT – taking the idea contained of cross dressing and crossing gender and expanding it.

The pl...

Patricia Hodge and Nigel Havers in PRIVATE LIVES. Photo: Tristram Kenton 

Glamorous, witty, and fast-paced, Nigel Havers’ new production of Noel Coward’s PRIVATE LIVES is as bubbling as a glass of champagne.

In the 90 years since Noel Coward wrote PRIVATE LIVES, society has changed, yet the basics of love, marriage and human nature still ring true, as demonstrated in this new production by Nigel Havers’ new theatre company.

Havers and Patricia Hodge square up as the warring ex-couple Ely...

Jake Ferretti & Niall Ransome in THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. Photo: Pamela Raith

Fun, fast-paced and farcical, THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES is a three-handed masterclass in the art of comedic storytelling

It is 120 years since THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES first seeped into the public consciousness like the fog on Dartmoor. The original serialisation in The Strand magazine is arguably one of the most famous detective stories of all time...