Category: Reviews

Ghost stories are hard to stage as their nature is absolute; there are no degrees of success—if they do not scare the audience, they are a failure. The Other Side, from Switch­­_Mcr, does not hold back on the scares. The first act closes with moving furniture, doors opening mysteriously, a spectral figure at the window… Continue reading The Other Side

Orfeo, poet and musician, the biggest pop star of his era, was endowed with a lyre which he strummed and plucked all day, enchanting everybody and everything, animals, trees, rocks, you name it. He even tamed the Sirens. The golden lyre was a gift from his dad, Apollo, god of music and poetry. The opera… Continue reading Orfeo

I don’t usually review shows like this, but it was an irresistible invitation, so here I am in Seaton Delaval Community Centre, watching Meta4 Dance in Jumpers for Goalposts, their new touring show for families. Meta4 Dance was founded by Lily Horgan and Charlie Dunne in 2018 and has increasing community access to dance and widening… Continue reading Jumpers for Goalposts

With the country and indeed the world facing unparalleled problems, many people have been yearning for life as it used to be. The cost-of-living crisis and energy supply issues have meant that families have had to make cutbacks. For some members of society, making ends meet has become a difficult if not impossible task. So… Continue reading Twopence to Cross the Mersey

In the last but one Tory leadership race, Rishi Sunak told a gathering of ordinary Tory members in some countryside constituency that Labour had been putting money into deprived areas and that the Tories were now taking it out of those areas. An academic listening to that supposed Tory achievement wryly commented, “then they are… Continue reading King Hamlin

A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain, Sami Ibrahim’s latest play, is a poetic fable that begins with a young woman in a field shearing a sheep in a surreal land where the heavy fleece of an unsheared sheep doesn’t weigh it down to earth but enables it to float in the air and shit down… Continue reading A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain

After a short tour of its co-producers—and following the sell-out run of The Book Thief, which is a tough act to follow—this new production of Emma Rice’s adaptation of Brief Encounter arrives in Bolton. The original Kneehigh production was a spectacular West End show that toured to big stages, but director Paul Robinson and designer… Continue reading Brief Encounter

The buzz you get from this play is the kind that keeps your mind racing, long after. It’s about life, the universe and everything—but is so much more than that. Writer Lucy Kirkwood made her name with the award-winning Chimerica, later made into a TV series, and has set a standard for turning epic stories… Continue reading Mosquitoes

A retelling of classical Greek mythology is one thing, but a retelling through the eyes of the Gorgon Medusa, notorious for turning anyone into stone with one glance, is guaranteed to put you on the edge of your seat. In this one-woman show, Deborah Pugh takes us on a nerve-tingling romp through the Trojan Wars,… Continue reading Beautiful Evil Things

My Neighbour Totoro was a hit as soon as ticket sales opened, the best sales ever in the history of the Barbican, which shows what affection the 1988 film by Hayao Miyazakiand Studio Ghibli commands. To hand it to Improbable’s Phelim McDermott to direct and to have Joe Hisaishi’s (he is also executive producer) score played… Continue reading My Neighbour Totoro