‘Tis the season to remember those less fortunate than ourselves and David Edgar’s stirring new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, for the Royal Shakespeare Company, doesn’t stint on political rhetoric.
Mates blogger: Anne Cox
Anne Cox is one of over 45 theatre bloggers who are part of the MyTheatreMates collective. This page features Anne's posts on MyTheatreMates. Take a look at our full list of theatre bloggers and our aggregated feed of all our Mates' posts. We’re always looking for new theatre bloggers. Could that be you? Learn about how to join us.
Anne Cox is a journalist and blogger with more than 35 years’ experience and a passion for the theatre. Over the years, she has covered am-dram, regional and national theatre. As a critic for her own site Stage Review, she now reviews professional productions within about a two-hour drive of her home patch of Bedfordshire - from the RSC in Stratford, through the Home Counties and London to Chichester. She now runs her independent theatre website Stage Review and tweets @stage_review.
The latest from Anne on MyTheatreMates
A CHRISTMAS CAROL – Old Vic ★★★★
The Old Vic’s gloriously exuberant production is a wonderful combination of classic Dickens with a touch of Brucie’s Generation Game thrown in. Presiding over it all is the belligerent Ebenezer Scrooge played to gleeful excess by Rhys Ifans.
THE WOMAN IN WHITE – Charing Cross Theatre ★★★
The Woman In White, a play about a vulnerable woman, preyed upon by a powerful man, couldn’t be more timely with strong performances from its cast.
HEDDA GABLER – Touring ★★★★
Unpredictable, thrilling and tense. Lizzy Watts is bold and fearless as Hedda Gabler in Patrick Marber’s engrossing update of the Ibsen classic.
SUNSET BOULEVARD – Touring ★★★★★
Ria Jones dazzles in the poignant, wonderfully melodramatic and tragic Sunset Boulevard that is both a love letter to movies and a eulogy to Hollywood’s silent era.
FLASHDANCE – Touring ★★★
It’s more than 30 years since the world fell in love with Jennifer Beals’ bad-ass welder turned dancer, Alex Owens, in the iconic dance movie Flashdance. The stage adaptation, Flashdance The Musical, now touring the UK, has a lot to live up to.
THE SECRET THEATRE – Sam Wanamaker Playhouse ★★★★
Patriotism, propaganda and paranoia are played out in the shadowy and thrilling tale of spies and intrigue in Anders Lustgarten’s The Secret Theatre.
JAMAICA INN – Tabard Theatre ★★★★
London’s Theatre Lab Company has triumphed with Lisa Evans’ dark and atmospheric adaptation of the Daphne Du Maurier classic, Jamaica Inn. It’s a thrilling production with, at its heart, a luminous performance by Kimberley Jarvis as the spirited heroine.
TIGER BAY – Cardiff ★★★★★
The Wales Millennium Centre has come of age with its first major foray into story-telling on a truly epic scale. Tiger Bay The Musical is the most significant, largest and innovative production ever produced by WMC.
QUIZ – Chichester ★★★
James Graham has turned his attention to national greed and our addiction to TV game shows for his latest factional stage play, Quiz, which opened last night on the Minerva stage at Chichester Festival Theatre.
THE TAILOR-MADE MAN – White Bear Theatre ★★★★
At one time Billy Haines, the subject of Claudio Macor’s play, The Tailor-Made Man, was as big as Clark Gable, Ramon Novarro and Montgomery Clift (look ’em up if the names mean nothing to you). A clean cut, Hollywood matinee idol, at the advent of talkies, he was feted and adored.
THE RETREAT – Park Theatre ★★★
Peep Show co-creator Sam Bain’s first play, The Retreat, opened at London’s Park Theatre this week and carried huge promise from the outset.
MACBETH – Bussey Building ★★★★
This is a timeless Macbeth, stripped down to the bone and taken back to its original text – slightly abridged to get it into two hours – bloody, brutal and uncompromising.
THE RED LION – Trafalgar Studios ★★★★★
The Red Lion is more than a play about football – thank god. It is terrifically well written, beautifully acted by all three men but particularly the outstanding Tompkinson, and superbly directed by Max Roberts.
THE EXORCIST – West End
With Stage Review’s editor, Anne Cox, still too traumatised from seeing the film as a teenager more than 40 years ago (yes, it’s true – ed), I was packed off, with nerves of steel and crucifix in pocket, into the pitch-black, creaking, dress circle of London’s Phoenix Theatre for The Exorcist.
THE EXORCIST – West End
With Stage Review’s editor, Anne Cox, still too traumatised from seeing the film as a teenager more than 40 years ago (yes, it’s true – ed), I was packed off, with nerves of steel and crucifix in pocket, into the pitch-black, creaking, dress circle of London’s Phoenix Theatre for The Exorcist.
CABARET – Touring
If you know anything about pre-war Berlin it is that it was known for its hedonism and excess. Weimar Berlin was the uninhibited party capital of Europe, offering every perversion, debauchery, depravity and vice imaginable.
NEWS: Matthew Parker announces Hope’s spring 2018 season, directs Foul Pages premiere
Matthew Parker has announced the spring season in his fully curated year of shows at The Hope Theatre, an award-winning performance space in North London. The year features a mix of new writing and established work with a 50/50 gender split of writers and containing a world premiere directed by artistic director Parker. 2018 gets […]
The post Brush up your Shakespeare. Parker curates a year at The Hope Theatre appeared first on Stage Review.
WHEN MIDNIGHT STRIKES – Drayton Arms Theatre ★★★★
It was the night when everything would change. The internet, still in its infancy, would crash – possibly – 9/11 was 21 months away and Friends was still the most popular comedy on TV.
WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION – County Hall
What better venue to have the protagonists in this enthralling production play to the gallery? Literally. The impassioned arguments from the immaculately spoken David Yelland and his nemesis, Philip Franks, as silks Robarts and Myers, fill the room and echo down the corridors.