88 stories by "The Tyro Theatre Critic"
My prayers were answered and I finally got myself to "The Book of Mormon". A show so lauded it was surely doomed to disappoint. But it didn't. Relentlessly funny, with hum-along tunes and cr…
The New York City Ballet's biggest event of the fall season has been, without doubt, the premiere of Sir Paul McCartney's new ballet "Ocean's Kingdom". It's probably also going to be the eve…
Deary me. After Monday's radiant "Anna Bolena", I suppose it was almost inevitable that "Nabucco" would fail to live up. As it happens, it failed to live up by quite some margin, looking unr…
Divorced, Beheaded, Died. Divorced, Beheaded, Survived. Thus begins and ends my knowledge of Tudor history. Donizetti's "Anna Bolena" which opened the Metropolitan Opera's season last night …
With "Swan Lake" now in the pleasantly distant past, we can get down to what the New York City Ballet (NCYB) do best. Short works. I'll be hitting up a fair few evenings over the next month,…
I'm becoming something of a Cirque du Soleil junky. A regular dose still blowing my mind however formulaic their productions have become. "Zarkana" is very much par for the course …
This production of Lully's "Atys" has been much lauded by just about everyone and it's hard to deny it is a spectacularly beautiful evening; filled with gorgeous music, fabulous costumes and…
For waspish, caustic wit you couldn't do much better than Diane in Douglas Carter Beane's enormously funny "The Little Dog Laughed". She is the lynch pin of this hysterical, but not altogeth…
This should have been awful. An hour and a half of a cappella strung together by end of the pier, comedy schtick. Heck, just looking at the Voca People brings me out in hives. The first…
The Rattigan fever seems to have crossed the pond with this revival of "Man and Boy". A reworked version of the Maria Aitken's West End staging from 2004, when it had David Suchet in the cen…
I don't really associate the New York City Ballet (NYCB) with big, full length works and off the back of their "Swan Lake", that's probably a good thing. Peter Martins's production is not a …
I'm steadily scoping out the various quirky venues around New York, they are many, but thanks to a recommendation from one of my Uni Professors: I've found my new Royal Court. Play…
Retro or derivative? I fear "Catch Me If You Can" might well be the most painfully conventional and unoriginal new piece of musical theatre I've ever seen. Closing this weekend, Broadway wil…
Two "Master Class" production inside of a year, it's like Christmas come early for the opera/theatre lover. This Broadway revival is a plusher affair than the low key UK Touring production b…
I wasn't lucky enough to catch the original Broadway production of "Rent". I've seen it in a variety of forms, multiple student productions and an ill fated West End reworking, but none have…
I knew little of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" before entering but it rapidly dawned on me this is just "Promises, Promises" with a bit more bounce. Fun and frivolous wi…
With the summer months holding few operatic delights, especially now I've been ripped away from Glyndebourne, I jumped at the chance to catch Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble's production of "Die Za…
Punchdrunk are a company like few others, their conjured worlds are breathtakingly beautiful. They are also a company who haven't managed to much change in the last few years. The strengths …
Nat Cassidy's adaptation of Dostoyevsky's "The Eternal Husband", currently running as part of FringeNYC, has pretty much everything. Moments of sheer terror mixed with darkly funny humour; a…
I've never been strong on fringe theatre but with FringeNYC, the New York International Fringe Festival, happening practically on my new door step, I jumped at the chance to catch a few of t…
First up in my New York adventure came "Billy Elliot", not an exactly adventurous choice it must be said. I saw it when it was new, years ago, but having not been back since, it's now an alm…
Little did I expect when I wrote my last self-indulgent "about me" type post that less than two years later I'd be uprooting myself from London and shipping myself off to New York. That's li…
For the final piece of theatre I'll be catching in London for a good long while, I can't think of a better show than "One Man, Two Guvnors". Only the British could come up with something qui…
The Mariinsky "Swan Lake" is a museum piece. Unfortunately rather a moth eaten one. Opening their fiftieth anniversary tour, you'd think they could have tried a bit harder.The production is …
The English National Ballet have done themselves proud. This can't have been an easy sell but all credit to them for trying. An evening of three Roland Petit ballets all of which produced dr…
