Reviews

For any musical theatre enthusiast, West Side Story should need no introduction: the classic Bernstein/Sondheim collaboration of 1950s American home-grown and immigrant gangs (based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet) is a timeless musical gem, with themes that are just as relevant today as when the musical was first staged. What may be less familiar to the uninitiated is the ethos behind RicNic Theatre Company itself: their annual performances at Winchester’s Theatre Royal follow just one month of concentrated rehearsals and, as if that were not impressive enough, they are performed by a group of essentially self-directed youngsters (aged 16-21 years)

London Repertory Players concluded their second summer season at Boscombe’s Shelley Theatre with N.J. Crisp’s taut three-hander, Dangerous Obsession, one of those thrillers reliant for its effectiveness on the quality of the writing as its characters play out their own psychological conflict – from ‘Cold War’ to the heat of battle. The challenge for director and actors is to hold the audience’s attention without resorting to histrionics, straying into melodrama or overplaying the writing. Crisp’s controlled hand is here rewarded with a production that had its first-night audience engaged throughout. After two plays set in London and New York flats/apartments,

If I tell you that next week I will almost certainly make the same 60-mile round trip that I have made this evening, simply for the pleasure of seeing the company’s third and final production of the season, you may realise how much I enjoyed this musical version of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s well-known story about Mary Lennox, the orphaned child sent from India to live with her uncle in Yorkshire, and the difference she makes to the household there. Having taken our seats well before the start, we had ample time to study the excellent multi-purpose set, not least its

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