Category: Uncategorized
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The Sound of Absence at the Omnibus Theatre is an introspective monologue about grief with piano accompaniment. Lenore (Yanina Hope) lives a long way from her father and arrives home too late to see him before he dies. Her relationship with her father was complex, something we discover through her recollections and stories, and the…
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Mary Todd Lincoln is a grieving woman in a man’s world, and in John Ransom Phillips’ play, Mrs President at the Charing Cross Theatre, she is fighting not only to find her own identity but against her grief and the ‘creative vision’ of a celebrity photographer. Mrs President tell’s Mary’s (Keala Settle) story through a…
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Kate Chase (Wallis Currie-Wood) was the daughter of politician Salmon P Chase (Darrell Brockis) and was famed as a society hostess. She was intelligent, had a keen social intuition and political awareness. In Thomas Klingenstein’s play Our American Queen, we see Kate garnering support for her father’s efforts to take the Republican Party nomination from…
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It’s ironic watching a play called The Good Landlord when the Government has announced that more rights for tenants are coming into law. The title is also ironic because neither of the two landlords in Pound Road Productions’ play behaves in ways that are good. Jack (Jason Adam) is being evicted from a damp, mouldy,…
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Othello review transcript: Othello at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, starring David Harewood as Othello, Toby Jones as Iago and Caitlin FitzGerald as Desdemona, is a good, solid production of Othello. It’s got some really interesting features and ideas in it. Toby Jones stands out for me particularly. All the cast is good, but he particularly…
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Having spent 15 years publishing Rev. Stan’s Theatre blog on Typepad, I got the news the platform was closing down. So this is Rev. Stan’s Theatre reborn on WordPress. It’s a continuation in content terms – reviews and interviews – but with a new URL and refreshed design. If you are new to Rev. Stan’s…
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Paper Cut, Park Theatre June 2023 l-r: Callum Mardy and Joe Bollard. Photo credit: Stefan Hanegraaf Andrew Rosendorf's play Paper Cut is about an American soldier Kyle (Callum Mardy), on deployment in Afghanistan who is gay and trying to keep that a secret. An IED puts a sudden end to his active service and career,…
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Women, Beware the Devil, Almeida Theatre Feb 2023 Women, Beware The Devil at the Almeida Theatre is a difficult play to pin down. It starts in the modern day with the 'literal' devil (Nathan Armarkwei-Laryea) breaking the fourth wall to lament how he isn't evoked or blamed for anything anymore. He also cheekily spoils the…
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I really enjoy making my 60-second video reviews, but it doesn't always go smoothly. One-take recordings are quite rare. Sometimes I need a few takes to get my thoughts straight; sometimes, I mix up my words, forget what I want to say or am just incoherent. Here's a little compilation of some of my cock-ups.…
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You know when you are watching a play, and you become acutely aware of how an actor is moving around the stage and what they are doing with their hands. It feels conscious and, as a result, distracting. This was how Walden started. I felt like I was watching a series of acting and directing…