Reviews

The day may not be here yet, but there will come a time when an audience will be gender, BAME, LGBT+ [add a very long list] blind. What will matter is the right person for the right role. Importantly, there is a tendency to force this issue at the moment and yt2’s version of Hamlet is no different. The more we come to look at this as the way forward, and less like a gimmick, the more enriched our community becomes. Joanne Denson Stockdale, in an accomplished production, perhaps should have allowed the “conscience of a King to be pricked”

  This was my first opportunity to see both P&P and the play. Richard Harris, perhaps better known for comedies such as Stepping Out and Outside Edge, wrote this psychological thriller in the 1990s. His career has also included many television dramas such as The Sweeney. This play concerns the aftermath of the death of John Haddrell from a heart attack at the wheel of his car. His lover Julia is with him, and whilst recovering from the injuries sustained in the ensuing crash, she is helped by Anne the counsellor and Gary the possessive handyman, who lacks interpersonal skills,

I’ve been looking forward to this play for a while; I always love watching different material being delivered by talented local theatre enthusiasts. This play boasts a) being different and b) talent; furthermore, I was surprised to find out it was also a musical! Co-Directors Harriet Cairnes and Julie Sturmey must be brimming with pride with this most recent production. The play was written by Kjartan Poskit and it was originally created for a large am-dram group. Over 300 hundred performances later, the play has landed in Poulner Players’ very capable hands. If you don’t know who Henry VIII is,

Get ready to be blown away by this terrific production of Peter Pan. Having watched practically every show Swish have performed at the Pavilion I have never yet been disappointed, and this was no exception. For those of you not familiar with the J M Barrie’s story, Peter Pan (a boy who never gets grows up) and his friend Tinker Bell, a fairy, whisk away siblings Wendy, John and Michael to the island of Neverland, where Captain Hook seeks vengeance against Peter for cutting off his hand. Sofia Ferreira, the Storyteller and later the grandmother, was exceptional in her storytelling.

I never saw the original production of this adaptation of Peter Pan, although I’ve treasured its cast recording for years, and so I was very much looking forward to seeing CPYT perform it. Having seen many adaptations of this story (a lifelong personal favourite), I knew already that George Stiles and Anthony Drewe had created a charming score with some lovely melodies and lyrics both witty and touching. It was a pleasant surprise to discover that Willis Hall’s book, while retaining a fair amount of J M Barrie’s original dialogue, is still very much its own creation. Surprisingly, the adaptation has dispensed

A working-class Jewish boy from the Bronx and a middle-class Englishman educated at Haileybury can’t have much in common, can they? Yet Neil Simon and Alan Ayckbourn share the gift of taking ordinary people in a domestic setting and using them to reveal eternal truths about the human condition – the weaknesses, the passions and the fears which we all experience and which many of us hate to reveal. What makes both writers geniuses is that they also write superbly crafted comedies which can be enjoyed just for their stylishness and wit. Proof for such high-flown claims can be found