There’s a reason it’s a lesser known play, all of the usual Tennessee Williams tropes are here; lust abounds, there are layers of manipulation and the sweltering south is almost a charac…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:00AMIt’s an accepted cliché that, whatever the prevailing political mood there is a Shakespeare play that adequately reflects, comments on or holds a mirror up to it. Like all the best clich�…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:00AMAlan Bennett’s Forty Years On is a curious play. His first outing as playwright (back in 1968) is charmingly eccentric, wonderfully witty and every bit a Bennett play. In fact it comes acr…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:00AMHaving read the book a few years ago, I was quite curious to see how Mark Haddon‘s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time would translate to the stage and Simon Stevens adaptati…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:00AMIt’s a rare thing, when you’re a regular theatregoer, to see something that is truly fresh and wonderfully new! Matthew Bourne seems to have knack for it though and his adaptation of The…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 01:00PMBuilt around the acclaimed film and with music by Elton John, Billy Elliott seemed destined for success but I’ll admit I was a little surprised to realise it had run for 11 years in London…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 11:00AMAlex Waldmann is a veteran of the RSC and of Shakespeare productions in general so it was fascinating to get his insight - he's also the founder of theatre company SEARED, whose premiere of …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:00AMThere’s no better way to kick the post-Christmas blues than an early January trip to the theatre, so this year we decided to go an extra step and head to Stratford upon Avon for a short br…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 09:00AMFrom Chichester to Charing Cross, the Globe, Southampton, Menier Chocolate Factory, the Union and the RSC - for those of you who’ve already read our roundup of our favourite performances f…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:00AMThe stage is largely bare when we enter the auditorium, three dolls houses are dotted across the space with a large window filling the rear of the space. It’s a simple but effective way to…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:00PM2016 is nearly over and, despite not getting to see nearly as much theatre as we’d like at Sitting in the Cheap Seats, we’ve seen lots of performances that we will long remember. We coul…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 11:00AMIf you’re an Ayckbourn fan, there’s plenty to enjoy here, and if you’ve not seen his work before – well where better to start than at the beginning?
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 09:00AMFor many actors Lear is the ultimate role, hence the proliferation of productions that appear every year. In 2016 alone we’ve had Timothy West, Don Warrington and Michael Pennington all po…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:30PMKenneth Grahame’s story of Ratty, Mole, Badger and the irrepressible Toad have been a favourite of many for longer than they can remember – I grew up delighting in the stop-motion versio…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 09:17AMI’ll confess to being unsure how well audiences would take to a play that – on the page at least – is a complete mess with no discernible central plot. Thankfully, director Melly Still…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:34AMLong before it became a mainstream subject Larry Kramer’s visceral, semi-autobiographical account of life within the New York gay community’s burgeoning activist organisations shed a lig…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 01:20PMIt must be daunting taking on characters so well known and trying to make them your own, especially when it comes to those from a movie as revered as The Shawshank Redemption. Thankfully thi…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:28PMA couple of years ago the Royal Shakespeare Company paired Love’s Labours Lost with Much Ado About Nothing (renamed Love’s Labours Won) in a gorgeous setting amidst the Great War to much…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:25PMPolitical turmoil. It’s nothing new. And we are certainly reminded of that here! Set during the troubled Labour Government of the mid to late seventies, This House plays out, for the most …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 02:47PMSo, retitled Imogen and set in modern London is the play really “reclaimed” as the publicity suggests? Well… no, not really. Cymbeline may be the title character but it’s always been…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:04AMThe Alchemist, presented here with some script revision from Stephen Jeffreys is a riotous romp through Jacobean London!
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:04AMIt’s a rare feeling to sit in the audience for a play and feel you truly don’t know what to expect – in the age of social media, it’s impossible not to have a good idea what to expec…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 10:45AMAngus Jackson, who recently directed the sell-out RSC productions of Oppenheimer and Don Quixote, is director for the Rome season. He will direct the opening and closing plays of the 2017 sc…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:00AMWe’re confirmed fans of Chichester Festival Theatre here, and for us their announcement of a new season is a bit like Christmas! The Winter 2016 season has a great range of entertainment a…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 10:35AMThe 70s were a hotbed for edgy takes on musical theatre so it’s remarkable that some of the shows that have lingered with us the longest share a common source – the Bible. From the Lloyd…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:05AMThe Union Theatre's founder Sasha Regan, who is a wonderful facilitator and supporter of young talent and vital to a growing industry, doesn’t have to play by the normal rules
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:00AMWith constant depressing news in the wider world, theatre news offers a respite. Recent news to celebrate includes Mark Rylance's West End return, the London premiere of Owen McCafferty's Un…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 09:16AMFracking is something of a contentious subject in West Sussex, so where better to stage Alistair Beaton’s new comedy Fracked! (or: Please don’t use the word). Littered with references to…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 04:30AMThere are times when theatre can seem almost too prescient, where a show can offer a glimpse into a possible future that seems a little too real. There are moments in Michael Strassen’s pr…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 02:52AMShakespeare’s early plays are often problematic, with the bawdier comedies such as The Comedy of Errors the faults are hidden within some gloriously silly slapstick, but in The Two Gentlem…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 11:37AMFlorian Zeller’s name is fast becoming a byword for gripping, fascinating and often brilliantly funny theatre. Productions of The Mother and The Father have racked up critical raves and wh…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 09:27AM
