Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Tonight should have been the night that Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s new Out of Joint play Jane Wenham: The Witch of Walkern, inspired by the last woman in England to be charged with witchcraft in…
SOURCE: Terri Paddock at 04:00AMMonday, October 12, 2015
I’m not the only theatre person who was focused on the Conservative Party Conference last week. Though she may not have anticipated quite the extent of the spitting, pig mask wearing p…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:41AMI wish I could have been in Manchester last week for the Conservative Party annual conference. Not because I’ve suddenly gone “true Blue” and definitely not because I wanted to spit at…
SOURCE: Terri Paddock at 06:30AMWednesday, October 7, 2015
How well do you know the work of composer-lyricist Leslie Bricusse? How many songs can you name by this living legend… apart from “Pure Imagination” (and the “Oompa Loompa” theme) …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:17AMTuesday, October 6, 2015
On this Sunday’s Andrew Marr Show on BBC One, in amongst an interview with David Cameron and other reports from this year’s Conservative Party conference in Manchester, I was delighted t…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:16AMMonday, October 5, 2015
I’ve known the Showstoppers for many years, both the company and its producers (James Seabright and Suzanna Rosenthal), and over that time, I’ve seen the show many times – …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:22AMMonday, September 28, 2015
Playwright Barney Norris has followed his award-winning debut Visitors with Eventide, which is now running at London’s Arcola Theatre before touring until 15 November 2015, c…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:00AMFriday, September 25, 2015
I’ve been looking forward to Barney Norris‘ new play ever since I caught his acclaimed four-hander Visitors at the Bush Theatre last year. The play, which centred on an elderly …
SOURCE: Terri Paddock at 10:24AMHave you seen the raft of rave reviews for our Featured Show? The European premiere of Harvey Fierstein‘s Casa Valentina, which is now running at London’s Southwark Playhouse, ha…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:24AMMonday, September 21, 2015
Off-West End, out of town and out of this world. I’ve seen a few shows recently that have left me feeling distinctly disquieted… for their visions of the future, their distortion…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 02:29PMWednesday, September 16, 2015
This morning I’m delighted to be in agreement with most of the overnight critics awarding a slew of four stars to last night’s opening: the London premiere of another New York im…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:15AMTuesday, September 15, 2015
I love it when I disagree with the critics. No, really I do. I’m fascinated that we can all have such widely variant opinions on the same thing – and I’m very happy for min…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:21AMSunday, September 13, 2015
I’ve witnessed at first-hand two regime changes over the past few days and curiously they have a man in common: Ed Miliband. The political regime change, the announcement of Jeremy Cor…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:29PMTuesday, September 8, 2015
How many shows can you name that have their opening night more than a fortnight after their run was scheduled to end? Dusty is London’s own Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, a fraught hig…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:32AMThursday, September 3, 2015
A couple of weeks ago, as part of the ongoing Hamlet hysteria, I was amazed that such an apparent uproar was caused by director Lyndsey Turner’s experimenting with the placement of the…
SOURCE: Terri Paddock at 08:27AMWednesday, September 2, 2015
I was pleased to be invited to an event at the Arcola Theatre last night, to hear Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn launch his new Arts Policy document. This is the latest in more th…
SOURCE: Terri Paddock at 04:38AMTuesday, September 1, 2015
Yesterday wasn’t just a miserably wet Bank Holiday Monday in London (and most of the rest of England): north of the border, it was also the conclusion of the world’s largest arts festiva…
SOURCE: Terri Paddock at 05:15AMFriday, August 28, 2015
We owe the phrase “you won’t succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews” to Spamalot – so it only officially entered the theatrical lexicon circa 2005 when the Monty Python mus…
SOURCE: Terri Paddock at 06:50AMWednesday, August 26, 2015
As one critic stated upfront: the press night is a major anti-climax. Nevertheless, while the verdicts don’t make a blind bit of difference to the box office on a production that sold …
SOURCE: Terri Paddock at 04:47AMWednesday, August 19, 2015
Apart from my Edinburgh blitz, I like to take August a little slow on the theatregoing front. These few weeks offer a brief respite while many people are away on holiday or still up at the F…
SOURCE: Terri Paddock at 10:01AMTuesday, August 11, 2015
Food poisoning, the infamous “festival flu” or some other strain of (literally) gut-wrenching misery? Whatever it was, I became quite violently ill on the train journey home from…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:24AMWednesday, August 5, 2015
Dear reader Writing a blog in the form of the letter (as I did with my Conversation with Caitlin Moran series) about the stage adaptation of the 2012 book Dear Lupin allows me to both use …
SOURCE: Terri Paddock at 01:10PMMonday, August 3, 2015
Birth-wise, more than three decades separate The Who’s Tommy and Green Day’s American Idiot, but location-wise, the distance is only three short train stops, from London’s Charing Cro…
SOURCE: Terri Paddock at 07:58AMMonday, July 27, 2015
I had ninety, non-stop magic moments at the Menier Chocolate Factory earlier this month at the opening of What’s It All About? Bacharach Reimagined. Sat on one of the (extremely comfy…
SOURCE: Terri Paddock at 05:00AMSaturday, July 25, 2015
If you have never been unlucky enough to find yourself in the middle of a legal dispute, I can almost guarantee you – or, at least, 99% of you – that you can’t afford it. Certainly not…
SOURCE: Terri Paddock at 02:39PMSunday, July 19, 2015
I had a life-changing moment on Thursday night. I showed up to an event where I didn’t know anyone and discovered it was exactly where I belonged. Relationships aside, I’ve had t…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 04:07PMWednesday, July 15, 2015
Since I got back from my month of remote working in Mallorca, I’ve been lucky enough to pack in lots of trips to the theatre, including this quintuplet of limited season plays that are all…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 11:41AMTuesday, July 14, 2015
Comics were out in force and applauding warmly at last night’s opening of The Mentalists, in which fellow stand-up and The Office co-creator Stephen Merchant made his West End acting debut…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:01AMFriday, July 10, 2015
Have you seen the raft of four-star reviews for our current Featured Show? The House of Mirrors and Hearts, just opened on Tuesday at London's Arcola Theatre, is a haunting new chamber music…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 10:28AMTuesday, July 7, 2015
The adage – usually attributed to Sondheim – that “musicals aren’t written, they’re rewritten” was central to the post-show discussion that I hosted …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:23AMMonday, July 6, 2015
Shakespeare aside, is there any playwright more quotable than Oscar Wilde? And, of all his plays, is there any more quoted than his 1895 comedy of manners, The Importance of Being Earnest? A…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:08AM 
