Michael Blakemore's production of Tosca plays out with a straight bat, period appropriate, detailed sets and clear delineation of character. He lets Puccini work his magic, each act building…
This Cherry Orchard is a production that showcases Michael Boyd, his ensemble, Chekhov and Bristol Old Vic at its very best. I love the theatre when it's this good.
I caught up actor Julius D'Silva one lunchtime at Bristol Old Vic on a break from rehearsal to discuss his work on The Cherry Orchard, reuniting with director Michael Boyd
Macbeth is an obvious box office draw for the theatre and the work is fundamentally solid, but it's hard to shake the feeling it's all a little safe, except for one performance that Bristol …
New Old Friends latest Crimes Under The Sun, opening at the Ustinov before embarking on a lengthy UK tour, is, at least so far, a night distinctly under-nourished, under-written and under-re…
all in all, it's a very solid take on a work that in an era of #MeToo has become ever more complex. Working with an accomplished director as Bill Alexander is obviously paying off.
It's rare for a new production to be demonstrably better than its source text but this one by Frantic Assembly's Things I Know To Be True by Geordie Brookman and Scott Graham shows it can ha…
The sixth form common room in Simon Stephens pulsating Punk Rock is an incendiary point ready to spark. The seven sixth formers the play introduces us too are standing on an edge of a precip…
This was a year where the work touring into Bristol and the work I saw in Latitude, London, the cinema and New York dazzled.
Writer Bea Roberts has subtly altered the tale within the overall framework, and as a result, you watch it not knowing exactly where it is going to end up. A happy ending is likely guarantee…
For Kid Carpet's latest show for the younger generation at BOV is packed full of questions like this. Children's theatre may be seen as the poor relation to the more grown up stuff by some o…
As Black Friday and New Year bashes grow exponentially, child poverty in the UK is on the rise. The Little Match Girl may have her origins in the Victorian era and snow flecked tales of Hans…
If Christmas shows are measured by the smile it puts on our faces and the gales of laughter elicited from the younger ones, then this is a stone-iron smash.
Funny how some plays can disappear completely and take a while to be found. When Fin Kennedy won the John Whiting award for this work, not one theatre had responded to its open submission.
Never let it be said that Cornish theatre company Kneehigh lack in ambition. Gunter Grass' The Tin Drum has accrued significant cultural acclaim since its publication in 1959, gaining its au…
Only the British could have produced as flamboyant and controversial a character as Henry Cyril Paget, the Fifth Marquis of Anglesey who lost his family fortune to a blitz of frocks and jewe…
If we were playing A Desert Island of theatre than Wardrobe Ensemble's Education, Education, Education would be what I would ask for. It ticks all the boxes I most love.
Emma is a role to stand shoulder to shoulder with Rooster from Jerusalem. It wouldn't surprise me in years to come if female actors mention the role in conversations about dream roles in the…
Premiered in 1953 in France and 1955 in London Waiting for Godot was immediately dismissed by a majority of the London intelligentsia as a work of pretentious twaddle. After Harold Hobson an…
The crème of Bristol artistic talent has come together for Ice Road, an immersive work at a former Victorian bathing house near the centre of town, that places its audience directly into th…