OK. It’s a week since I saw Blasted, and I think I am now sufficiently recovered to make sentient comment. First I must explain something – some months ago my neck was injured in an accident. I have two displaced cervical discs, and somehow I seem unwittingly to have trained my neck-muscles to respond to any semblance of stress with an agonising…[Read more]

Wow. I’m going.

Last Saturday we saw Colin Friels in Scaramouche Jones. I’ll start by saying I adored every moment. I saw the original, with Pete Postlethwaite, and fifteen years on, comparisons are hardly plausible. I remember enough to know that the two were very different; Friels seems to range further with his voice, mimicking many accents and intonations;…[Read more]

We saw MTC’s Ideal Husband last night and it seemed to me that Wilde’s plays are a bit like a gardening suit that used to be Sunday-best. The script still sparkles like chandeliers and champagne, but in amongst the crystal bubbles the cast find little opportunity to express any meaningful passion – it can all seem such a sham. Zinzi Okenyo’s Lady…[Read more]

My background takes me to the theatre with a very different perspective, but I arrived at conclusions almost identical. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has set a monstrous challenge by constructing a play with lots and lots of words, culminating in (but, outwardly, not leading to) a devastatingly shocking act one dénouement, followed by lots and lots more…[Read more]

Food for thought. I don’t type fluently enough to carry this on. Perhaps one day we’ll meet and talk.
One thing I shoild have mentioned: we saw Abigail’s Party on Saturday. Your review is pitch-perfect. The play is good, the cast were right, but seemed man-handled. Anna’s set? I think it didn’t quite work.

Food for thought. I don’t type fluently enough to carry this on. Perhaps one day we’ll meet and talk.

Dear Alison, I was attempting metaphor.
The thing is, a theatre only presenting Art for Art’s sake will:
A. Starve or
B. Turn on its Artistic Director or
C. Both.
Perhaps the wolf-pack must turn to husbandry, feeding, guarding, taming (perhaps caging) its flock to keep it fat.
No, wait – that’s what Disney does.

A theatre company, if it will survive, is a wolf-pack. It roams a vast range, feeding on tbe audience-herds that graze there. Its favourites are the old and infirm, or the weakest and youngest, and it depends upon the cunning of the pack-leader to guide it to them. Sometimes, perhaps once in a season, it will trap the herd in a luscious pasture,…[Read more]