Reviews

We theatre snobs like to say that the stage has virtues to which the cinema can never aspire, but the truth is also that film can do lots of things that theatre cannot do. Quite apart from being able to portray wide open spaces, a talented film director has many more devices at his disposal to create an atmosphere or to trigger the audience’s reactions. Take, for example, the 1955 film of The Ladykillers, the well-known story of a gang of bank robbers who set out to dupe an old lady, Mrs Wilberforce, but get their come-uppance. Even though it

I’m not too proud to admit that, as I don’t know everything about everything in theatre, I had a quick squizz at Wikipedia before venturing out to see this play, to give me a sense of what to expect. On the one hand, I’m glad I did as it proved a useful insight. On the other, however, what I expected from my interpretation of the aforementioned squizz and what I then witnessed were starkly different. Not the story, but the telling of the story. Blimey! The story (it says here…) is a semi-autobiographical one from playwright John Osborne, who was

Sweet Charity is well loved within the amdram community, particularly due to the well-known musical numbers, the broad range of minor roles and the large number of female parts available. This makes it an ideal choice when your company is predominantly women, as so many societies are these days. Of course, it also benefits from good singers and dancers, and the age mix needs to be right, but it is possible to get away without these qualities and still put on a good show. The musical itself premiered on Broadway in 1966, but most people will have seen the iconic

When the lights fall dark at the end of a rehearsal (or during!) how different are the actors in real life? What are their relationships? How do actors interact with each other and the director? What would push you into murdering the leading actress? These were all the questions that Lyndhurst Drama and Musical Society are asking in their latest offering, Murder in Play, a murder mystery comedy by Simon Brett. Without wanting to give too much away, the play focuses on the murder of the leading actress, Renee Savage (Hilary Causey) in Boris Smolensky (Richard Barnett), a budding Director’s,

Nora Helmer is devoted to her husband, Torvald, and their children, so much so that when she sees the opportunity to secure a loan to pay for a restorative trip to ‘save my husband’s life’, she thinks nothing of forging her father’s signature to ensure that it happens. When her fraudulent activities are used against her, she is shocked by the turn of events and the reactions of those around her…. As director Bruce Macintosh observes in his programme notes, the socio-political background to Nora and Torvald’s marriage is less obvious today (and some aspects are no longer present at

Like most of Ayckbourn’s later work, Life of Riley is darker, more contemplative and less overtly comical than the plays with which he originally made his name. There are plenty of flashes of his ironic wit, though, in this story of the dying George Riley (who never appears) and the effect he has on his ex-wife, her new partner and four of his friends, while the familiar themes of family relationships and the disconnect between men and women are never far away. The play takes place in four gardens, each of which occupies a corner of the set, with downstage