Reviews

As audiences we all secretly love those moments in the theatre when things don’t go quite according to plan, and many of us have a store of memories of those moments – some of which are all we actually do remember of that production, the rest having disappeared into the mists of time. A couple of mine are a malfunctioning set in the original production of Martin Guerre and an equally malfunctioning pair of silk pyjamas in a 1970s production of Private Lives, and I can remember both instances as clearly as if they happened yesterday. What an ingenious idea,

The problem with writing a review of a mystery is that I have to avoid giving away what happens, because a significant number of the people who will read this will not want to know until they see it. For example, I can’t refer to individual performances by actors who appear as part of the denouement or reveal that some characters may not be all that they appear to be. I don’t think I am giving anything away by stating that the play was written in 1923 by Arnold Ridley, who famously played Private Godfrey in Dad’s Army, as that

Annie is a show that can be put on adequately by any reasonably competent group, but so much is good about it that it really flies in the hands of a company brimming over with talent, enthusiasm and technique: a company like Swish of the Curtain, in fact. It is a ludicrous story – sweet little orphan sees nothing but good in everything, gets to meet Franklin Roosevelt and, by singing to his cabinet about how the sun will come out tomorrow, is the real inventor of the New Deal – but somehow its daftness is part of and even

When I was asked to review this, I agreed with, if I’m being honest, a bit of a heavy heart. Why? Well, I’m a bloke. A fella. A chap. And this to me sounded like the theatrical equivalent of a chick-flick – the sort of movie I have managed to avoid ever since being forced by an old girl-friend to sit through Waiting to Exhale, starring Whitney Houston, in the early ’90s. Well, I was wrong – very, very wrong – to worry. This piece by one of my favourite comic actresses, Amelia Bullmore, is so very well written that

Victoria Wood’s name first came into my consciousness way back in the early 1970s when she had a regular spot on Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life, singing and playing self-penned topical songs. Within a very few years she had established herself as a comic writer/comedienne extraordinaire, and she continued to be a familiar face on our TV screens until shortly before her untimely death less than a year ago. Most, if not all, TV tributes to this super-talented lady have consisted of archive material of Victoria herself performing, so a local company’s decision to base half an evening on such a

The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Jack Nicholson, is regarded as one of the cinema’s most shocking and influential horror films, not only tearing the veneer from madness and family conflict but digging its gory fingers deep into those topics at their starkest and rawest. So it is a brave choice for the students of Arts University Bournemouth in what they term ‘a devised, immersive performance’: one which must provide a major learning experience for those taking part. A writer, Jack, takes on the job of winter caretaker at an isolated hotel, accompanied by his wife, Wendy, and