192 stories from The Tyro Theatre Critic
Hello everyone!Long time no see. I, to all intents and purposes, became a veritable web hermit after stopping this blog, taking a self-imposed exile from Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook and ev…
The time has finally come for me to hang up my reviewing boots. It's been a blast but life moves on and with just over 750 reviews, and their accompanying shows behind me, I've decided to gi…
There's little love lost between Rossini's "La Cenerentola" and me. Undeniably packed with great tunes, the overture is a cracker, but it's a painfully mundane take on Cinderella, not exactl…
Melly Still was presumably hired to make-over Janacek's "The Cunning Little Vixen" after her gorgeous "Rusalka" of a couple of seasons ago. Alas, a similar approach has not reaped such …
Trying to make classical theatre relevant is both easy and very hard. Easy in that texts such as Sophocles's "Antigone" have a timeless quality that has sustained them for several thousand y…
Danny DeVito isn't your typical piece of celebrity casting. In "The Sunshine Boys" he delivers a whirlwind of fiercely acted energy. A performance that ranks amongst the best in London, DeVi…
Based on the manner in which the English National Opera marketed "Caligula" (Exhibit A: the poster above) it will come as no surprise to anyone that it really is a grisly bit of theatre. Beg…
To find the Royal Ballet performing Balanchine during my couple of weeks in London didn't exactly fill me with joy (the NYCB producing close to wall to wall Balanchine). "La Sylphide" on the…
To describe the latest West End "What The Butler Saw" as disappointing is a bit unfair but that was certainly the feeling I had as I left the theatre. Joe Orton's spicey 60s farce has much t…
Verdi's "Falstaff" is one of the funniest operas ever written and Michael Carsen has honed in on this very fact in his new production for the Royal Opera. It's hard to complain when you're h…
Jonathan Kent's quite impeccable new production of Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeny Todd" seems to take its tone from Michael Ball's assumption of the title role: lean, muscular and efficient. Ope…
Jay-Z and Kanye West in concert together... the mere presence of two such superstars in combination more or less ensured that "Watch The Thone" was going to be disgustingly good fun. It was …
I love culturally diverse takes on Shakespeare. Dutch Tragedies and Japanese Comedies have been some of the highlights of my theatregoing life. "Two Roses for Richard III" by Companhia …
One table, one puppet, three puppeteers: pure magic. I didn't really have any expectations of "The Table" by Blind Summit Theatre, but even if I did, it would have blown them out of the wate…
Oh dear. After last night's "Traviata" I lived in hope that Jurgen Flimm might find something fascinating in Mozart's "La clemenza di Tito". It was not to be, Flimm's production is a terribl…
After two nights of aging productions, next up was "La Traviata" in a new production by Jean-Francois Sivadier from earlier this season. As massively different from those traditional staging…
Fresh from the moth balls of the previous evening's "Salome", night two of my brief Vienna trip was "Il Barbiere di Sivilia" in a production that is, if you can believe it, even older. Some …
The Vienna State Opera could easily claim to have the most diverse line-up of productions in its repertory anywhere in the world. You can be watching regietheatre at its most extreme one nig…
Hmmmm. I'd like to say "Babel" is great, a big community project with its heart in the right place, but I'm afraid it isn't. In fact it isn't even good, "Babel" is absolutely terrible. Site-…
When John Hodge's "Collaborators" walked away with Best Play at the Oliviers it immediately sprung onto my list of must sees. Bizarrely almost everyone I had spoken to viewed it as a good no…
I've missed the English National Opera. For all their ups and downs they produce the sort of opera that virtually isn't seen in New York. Opera as living breathing theatre, not some sacred c…
"La Fille Mal Gardee" is a ballet that manages to surprise me every time I see it. I wear enormous rose tinted goggles regarding my trips to it as a child and yet it still reliably bowls me …
Back in the UK and straight back to the National Theatre. "Misterman", a one-man show written and directed by Enda Walsh and starring Cillian Murphy, was actually briefly seen in New York la…
I'm going to be away for almost the entirety of the New York City Ballet's (NYCB) summer season this year but I thought I'd catch a single bill before I went. An all-Robbins bill w…
The cast of "The Best Man" by Gore Vidal is an ideas driven piece with characters artfully constructed to score philosophical points. Though the odd moment transcends the device ridden struc…
