Reviews

It has long concerned me that people can be slandered by others, whether because of jealousy, spite or some other reason; it also troubles me that there are those who will willingly believe such slander, accepting it as the truth despite there being not a shred of evidence to back up the claims. Lillian Hellman’s 1934 play deals with just such a situation: two women, both teachers, have gone without the finer things of life for years in order to buy an old farm and set up a boarding school for girls. Just as they are beginning to reap the

The Winslow Boy is based on a real case of 1908 in which a thirteen-year-old cadet at the Osborne Naval Academy on the Isle of Wight was accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order and expelled. He and his family protested his innocence and began a protracted series of legal proceedings against the Admiralty and the Crown. Terence Rattigan’s 1946 play covers the same story but changes the names, moves the story a few years closer to the start of the Great War and introduces a feminist interest by making the boy’s sister a suffragette. The Edwardian era drawing room

There is something distinctly appealing about the thought of escaping some of life’s less happy moments by stepping into a wardrobe and finding oneself in an alternative universe – although given our current cold, damp weather, I’d probably prefer somewhere rather less snowy than Narnia. This adaptation of C S Lewis’s classic novel by Glyn Robbins is relatively short – and in this production may be even shorter by the end of the week as scene changes speed up – but contains all the elements necessary to grip the audience’s attention from beginning to end. The hall is fairly small,

Which is preferable: a good play disappointingly performed or a poor play notably well acted? It’s an academic and slightly futile question, but this production of Immaculate is a good example of the second category. It is perhaps a bit unjust to call it a poor play, but it is fair-to-middling at best. What is beyond doubt is that it produces six really excellent performances. The play, by Oliver Lansley, starts with a young woman, Mia, discovering that she is six months pregnant: a clever trick since it is nine months since she last had sex. That was when she

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown is a 1967 musical comedy with music and lyrics by Clark Gesner, based on the characters created by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz in his comic strip popularised in this country via the Daily Mail, ‘Peanuts’. The musical has been a popular choice for amateur productions because of its small cast and simple staging and Showstoppers have again pulled out the stops to provide joyous entertainment from start to finish. This simple show, enhanced by a new catchy and lively score by Andrew Lippa, is vignettes of the daily struggles our favourite characters have at

The Pied Piper of Hamelin is an unusual subject for a pantomime, but Alayn P Frayn’s script, in taking the familiar story and hanging on it all the traditions of panto, works well. The gags come fast and furious, with a good Donald Trump joke and one scene consisting almost entirely of pig-based jokes (eg. What do you get if you cross a pig and a flea? Pork scratchings). The fact that the story is set in Germany is a gift, as the German language always sounds faintly comical to an Englishman. If you are adding panto traditions to a