The Comedy of Errors. Review by Barbara Lewis. This is the HandleBards’ uplifting summer tour, which after 935 miles of pedalling, brought the cycling players to a picnicking audience in the grounds of Horace Walpole’s Gothic revival mansion at Strawberry Hill, west London.
theatre
Kyoto. Review by Barbara Lewis. If Shakespeare put the English town of Stratford-upon-Avon on the global map, the Kyoto climate treaty arguably did the same for an ancient Japanese capital.
Pirandello In Context. Review by Alan Price. Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) is best known for his 1921 stage play Six Characters in Search of an Author. It was a landmark play that changed theatre.
Swan Lake in the Round. Review by Julia Pascal. This is the most famous of classical ballets and it was conceived for the proscenium arch Italianate style theatre of Imperial Russia when it opened with Marius Petipa’s choreography to Peter Tchaikovsky’s composition at Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet in 1895.
Stephen Sondheim Society. Review by Barbara Lewis. The SSSSPOTY, as it is known in Sondheim circles, technically is a competition, but, like Bonnie Langford, compere of this year’s 16th edition, you may prefer to see it as a celebration.
Romeo and Juliet. Review by Julia Pascal. This production has not been seen in London since 2009. Consequently, most Londoners will know revivals of Kenneth MacMillan’s famous 1965 version which has regularly been performed by the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden.
May Be at Sadler’s Wells. Review by Julia Pascal. I walk into a Paris bookshop and ask if they can offer me play texts by contemporary French authors. The assistant directs me to a shelf of plays by Samuel Beckett. To the French, Samuel Beckett is one of theirs. He wrote in French. He lived most of his life in France. But was he Irish? Anglo-Irish? French?
Cutting the Tightrope. Review by Barbara Lewis. The arts have always had a role in saying the unsayable, making it all but inevitable that Arts Council England’s effort to clarify advice issued early this year on the risk of making political statements would only add to the controversy.
Poetry review – THE TRAPEZE OF YOUR FLESH: Thomas Ovans is impressed by the extensive knowledge behind Charles Rammelkamp’s poetic history of Striptease and Burlesque
Your Lie in April. Review by Barbara Lewis. In the fantasy world of “Your Lie in April”, based on a Japanese manga, adapted into a television series, a film, and now brought to London’s West End, even football is relegated to a poor second to musical prowess when it comes to winning teenage hearts.
Sherlock Holmes: The Valley of Fear. Review by Barbara Lewis. A cast of five tackles all the complexity of Conan Doyle’s fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel that is as clever, contrived and satisfying as a cryptic crossword.
The Trumpeter. Review by Barbara Lewis. Mariupol, where Ukraine for nearly three months in 2022 resisted Russia’s determination to create a land bridge between Crimea and Donbas, became a byword for horror.
By Barbara Lewis • plays, theatre, year 2024 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, plays, theatre