Gerry & Sewell. Review by Barbara Lewis. Gerry and Sewell are two friends who have little beyond their loyalty to each other and to their team: Newcastle United. Their one dream is to have the money to buy a season ticket.
theatre
Poetry review – THE TRAPEZE OF YOUR FLESH: Thomas Ovans is impressed by Charles Rammelkamp’s extensive poetic history of Striptease and Burlesque
The Wanderers. Review by Julia Pascal. This is a fascinating mess of a play which engages on every level. Anna Zeigler’s conceit is literary as the narrative plays out two parallel timelines within designated chapters.
Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson – Apt. 2B. Review by Barbara Lewis. Popular wisdom maintains that the appeal of the traditional whodunnit is in its reassuring message that problems will be solved and justice will be done. But what if there are no easy answers, asks Tendai Humphrey Sitima.
Prom 55. Review by Julia Pascal. Nelsons led his orchestra in such a way as to suggest that this was also the premiere for Stravinsky, Gershwin and Ravel.
Trouble in Tahiti. Review by Barbara Lewis. Opera typically is the medium for extraordinary emotion on a grand scale. The great straddler of genres Bernstein makes it the vehicle to explore the depressing ordinariness of the countless millions who can’t find their way back to the extraordinary emotion they once felt.
Pension Europa. Review by Barbara Lewis. Austrian-Italian director Martin Gruber and his aktionstheater ensemble have for decades helped audiences to explore what it is to be a human wrestling with the anxieties of the day.
Annie Get Your Gun. Review by Barbara Lewis. Irving Berlin’s “There’s No Business Like Show Business” is the perfect opening for a show and especially for the inaugural show at the Lavender Theatre on Epsom Downs.
The Wind and The Rain. Finborough Theatre. Review by Barbara Lewis. A wistful story of Edinburgh medical students tussling with exams and affairs of the heart was one of the biggest international hits of the 1930s and a staple of British repertory theatre for decades after.
Candide, WNO. Review by Barbara Lewis. Too messy, too long, too anti-Semitic, too misogynistic: there are many reasons to avoid Bernstein’s Candide. And yet, director James Bonas and the Welsh National Opera bravely make a powerful case for staging this attack on the depravity of those in power and the futility of war.
As You Like It. Review by Barbara Lewis. The line “ripeness is all” from Shakespeare’s tragedy of old age Lear could easily be the motto of the RSC’s latest joyful version of one of his most youthful comedies of love.
Safe Haven. Review by Barbara Lewis. “Oh enemy, the Kurdish people live on,” is how the Kurdish National Anthem defiantly begins. In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, the survival of many of them was helped by Operation Safe Haven, an initiative pushed through by then Prime Minister John Major.
By Barbara Lewis • plays, theatre • Tags: Barbara Lewis, plays, theatre