Reviews

My introduction to regular theatre-going – and the beginning of my life-long love of the stage – started when my school friends and I, at the age of about 13, were regularly taken by our English and Drama teacher to see the repertory company that was based at the old Palace Court Theatre in Bournemouth. In the fullness of time rep sadly went out of fashion but thankfully it is back, as indeed is this company after a successful summer season in 2016. Neil Simon’s 1960s comedy is the second of their three plays this year. It centres round brothers

Like many of my generation, my first experience of theatre-going was provided by the repertory theatre in our small town. We took it for granted then that there would be something new for our entertainment every week or fortnight, and several of the performers used the demanding experience to go on to greater things. Today, ‘cutting your teeth in rep’ is an experience mostly denied to young actors, as is the fun for the audiences of seeing the same faces in different guises, so it is a splendid development that a brief season of professional rep is playing at the

London Repertory Players spent two weeks in residence at Boscombe’s Shelley Theatre in August last year, presenting two small-cast thrillers, The Business of Murder and Dead of Night. Director Vernon Thompson and team seem to have enjoyed that visit as much as those of us who saw those productions: enough to have returned twelve months on. This time, they bring three productions, with a slightly larger company, at the heart of which are three actors – Barbara Dryhurst, Mark Spalding and Al Wadlan – who featured prominently during their 2016 season. This summer’s season opens with Frederick Knott’s classic crime

Thanks to numerous screenings of the film on TV, not to mention a number of theatrical productions of the show in recent years, there can be few people now who are not familiar with the story of a disco diva, Deloris Van Cartier, who witnesses her boyfriend commit murder and, for her own safety, is put into protective custody in the one place she is unlikely to be found – a convent. However, if perchance you’ve been marooned on a TV- and theatre-less desert island and have never come across this heart-warming show, do go along to the Tivoli Theatre

Arriving at the Regent Centre, I was delighted to see an old car, a Ford Cortina of course, delivering the lead characters in the show to the theatre for opening night: Beth Chumley, who played Rita O’Grady,  Daniel Murrell (her husband, Eddie) and their two children, Finlay Wright Stephens as Graham O’Grady and Gabriella Nicol as his sister, Sharon. Highcliffe Charity Players never fail to ensure that the scene is set for the audience from beyond the stage and even beyond the auditorium and foyer, so that we are in no doubt of the society’s intention to embed the era

The weather was appalling during the day, but the rain abated at teatime and the performance went ahead as scheduled. Although I have seen many open-air Shakespeare productions before, this was my first experience of the Brownsea Open Air Theatre (BOAT) variety and what a very good experience it was. I had assumed a relatively low level of staging, lighting, effects and so on, but the experienced BOAT crew have been doing this for a very long time – since 1964 in fact (the Assistant Stage Manager told me it was his 23rd year!). There is tiered seating on three