Directed by Joyce Branagh, Chester Storyhouse Theatre hosts the word premiere of Tim Firth’s brand new musical Now Is Good. In all, this play is something very different. It is laced with subtle morals, themes and messages. Celebrating life, tackling loneliness, being afraid to move on but yet offering hope and a sense of community over a fig roll and a sing song.
‘Ends up feeling slight & inconsequential’: ALYS, ALWAYS – Bridge Theatre
Nicholas Hytner finally directs a play by a woman but Lucinda Coxon’s adaptation of novel Alys, Always is a disappointment for me at the Bridge Theatre.
NEWS: Final cast details announced for Alys, Always at the Bridge Theatre
Final casting details have been announced for the premiere of Lucinda Coxon’s Alys, Always, directed by Nicholas Hytner and based on the novel by Harriet Lane, starring Joanne Froggatt and Robert Glenister.
‘By turns cynical, touching & with a rogue twinkle in its eye’: ALLELUJAH! – Bridge Theatre
By turns cynical, touching and with a rogue twinkle in its eye, Allelujah! doesn’t set the stage alight, and as both a black comedy and state-of-the-nation play it feels underpowered, but Bennett remains a bastion of not just British playwriting, but Britain as a whole.
Could Allelujah!’s transfer from stage to screen change our perception of the production?
Screening Alan Bennett’s Allelujah! on the big screen may well alter the viewer’s perspective, placing it within the tradition of television and film drama that lends itself to the cliffhanger-based six-part series that Bennett’s broad and episodic approach calls upon.
‘It is Bennett’s lasting gift to amateur dramatic societies up and down the country’: ALLELUJAH! – Bridge Theatre ★★★★
I am fully content to hail Alan Bennett as a National Treasure, and while I enjoyed many aspects of Allelujah!, I still hoped for even better and a return to his form in, say, The Madness of George III.
‘There are zero complaints about the acting, it’s the play that is on life support’: ALLELUJAH! – Bridge Theatre
In some ways, Allelujah! is perfectly symptomatic of the problem I have with the Bridge Theatre. Does London really need any new theatres, no matter how much people think they want interval madeleines?
‘Extremely funny & has something very urgent to say’: ALLELUJAH! – Bridge Theatre
Allelujah! is not a masterpiece, mainly because most of the characters are underdeveloped and there is too much going on, but it is extremely funny and it has something very urgent to say, and says it without compromise.
‘A love letter to the NHS, masterfully written’: ALLELUJAH! – Bridge Theatre ★★★★
A love letter to the NHS, masterfully written by Alan Bennett with lots of lovely touches – the 25-strong cast is impressive and really brings the play to life.
‘The crafty old bugger still has a gnarled finger on the nation’s trickier pulse points’: ALLELUJAH! – Bridge Theatre ★★★★
Alan Bennett has perhaps by chance hit two topical news hot-potatoes – barely a week old – even while deliberately tackling more obvious fave targets like NHS cuts and the Thatcher legacy.
NEWS: Paul Nicholas & Wendi Peters star in Ronald Harwood’s Quartet on tour
Producer Mark Goucher follow The Dresser with another Ronald Harwood play, The Dresser, starring Paul Nicholas, Wendi Peters, Sue Holderness and Jeff Rawle at Cheltenham and on tour.
Queer Theatre at the National: Bent
Harrowing is barely the word to describe this dramatisation of the way in which the Nazis persecuted gay men in Germany before and during World War II.
RAISING MARTHA – Park Theatre
There’s a madcap edge to David Spicer’s new comedy that spoofs so much of modern England.
Stephen Boxer is Gerry Duffy, a middle aged frog farmer who’s been supplying amphibians for dissection in schools for years, but who recently has become the target of animal-liberation activists.
RAISING MARTHA – Park Theatre
Raising Martha is a production that has been hit by various casting changes, firstly Morgana Robinson was replaced by Game of Throne’s Gwyneth Keyworth and in a less high profile change Jasper Britton was replaced by Stephen Boxer. The production hasn’t suffered for it.
RAISING MARTHA – Park Theatre
Here’s a tonic for this flat, glum season! Divinely tasteless, bracingly cynical, hootingly funny and directed with pacy intelligence. David Spicer has written what should be a breakthrough play, in a gorgeously black-hearted Ortonesque spirit. Michael Fentiman’s cast could not be better.
NEWS: Felicity Kendal stars in A Room with a View tour before West End
Felicity Kendal stars in A Room with a View, adapted from EM Forster’s novel by Simon Reade and directed by Adrian Noble. Full cast is now announced for the production which opens for a two-week run at the Theatre Royal Bath from 28 September to 8 October 2016, before touring until 3 December to Brighton, Richmond, Guildford Norwich, Cambridge and Chichester followed by a West End transfer.
LAWRENCE AFTER ARABIA – Hampstead Theatre
Howard Brenton’s new study of desert warrior T E Lawrence is more like a frustrating mirage than a nourishing oasis.
HIGH SOCIETY – Old Vic Theatre
Joe Stilgoe, the piano man, holds the stage as we settle, receiving a fusillade of unhelpful audience requests (“Bolero! Summertime! Pink Panther! Prokoffiev’s ninth!” – that last from Andrew Marr, cheeky monkey). Brilliantly, he delivers them simultaneously, singing Summertime over Bolero chords, and getting audience participation in Fever. Crafty to set a cabaret mood before we get down to business with “Come see the rich of Oyster Bay / On this their daughter’s wedding day!” as the silver piano sinks ingeniously into the floor.
Review: Untold Stories (Duchess Theatre)
Untold Stories was a hasty project for Alan Bennett: started in 2005 when he believed he was dying of cancer and wanted to get down some confessional and anecdotal biography he believed would be published posthumously. That his cancer went into remission is a cause for national celebration, although the two stories chosen for National […]
The post Review: Untold Stories (Duchess Theatre) appeared first on JohnnyFox.
Review: Untold Stories (Duchess Theatre)
Untold Stories was a hasty project for Alan Bennett: started in 2005 when he believed he was dying of cancer and wanted to get down some confessional and anecdotal biography he believed would be published posthumously. That his cancer went into remission is a cause for national celebration, although the two stories chosen for National […]
The post Review: Untold Stories (Duchess Theatre) appeared first on JohnnyFox.