Eastern Angles’ Red Skies is a great idea, much of it well performed and imagined, but if ever a play needed cutting, especially in the second half (unwisely, as long as the first or longer) this is it.
NEWS: UK’s leading touring theatre companies will join forces to present Signal Fires
The UK’s leading touring theatre companies are uniting this autumn to present Signal Fires, a nationwide project inspired by one of the original forms of theatre – storytelling around a fire.
‘You can’t fault the atmosphere’: THE TIDE JETTY – Touring ★★★
You can’t fault the atmosphere: Jasmine Swan’s set takes you straight to the wide skies and muddy, reedy mystery of Breydon Water, where the Norfolk and Suffolk Broadland rivers meet and strange old structures rot quietly into history.
‘Sharpen up that ending and it becomes a very fine and honest play’: POLSTEAD – Touring ★★★★
MARIA MARTEN STRIDES AGAIN: A WOMAN’S STORY Founding this touring company 36 years ago, Ivan Cutting swore a great oath that one local story they wouldn’t do was Maria Marten, murdered in the Red Barn by … Continue reading →
‘Performances are fine, nuanced & credible’: GUESTHOUSE – Touring ★★★
Nicola Werenowska has certainly found fertile ground for the setting of her play: the decline of English seaside towns (in this case Clacton) from the first flashback to 1963 up to today.
‘General glee’: THE LADYKILLERS OF HUMBER DOUCY LANE – Touring ★★★
Everyone loves the film. Something in the nostalgic British psyche likes to think of a gang of ruthless desperadoes lodging with a dear old lady, pretending to be a chamber music quartet, but being foiled by her innocence and their own incompetence.
WE DIDN’T MEAN TO GO TO SEA – Touring
Eastern Angles having a cleaner mind than BBC Films, Titty gets to keeps her name in this faithful, ingenious, charming and oddly moving re-telling of Arthur Ransome’s best sailing book. Best, because while the others are fine chronicles of childlike playfulness and imagination this one places the four siblings – John, Susan, Titty and Roger – in genuine and unforeseen danger, at ages presumed to be from 14 down to about 9.
SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND – Touring
In 1942 the Americans came to rural Britain: the US Eighth Air Force, its members often outnumbering local villagers 50 to 1. Many were black, often from the segregated Southern states. This fascinating starkly set four-hander by Polly Wiseman draws on records and East Anglian memories of how it was: notably (since the older generation is nearly gone) conversations with those who were local children: slipping (as children will) in and out of the bases, making friends across fences, listening to parents’ conversations, noticing big sisters’ flirtations.