Published in The Mail on Sunday August 21, 2021
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella has finally made it to opening night – but while no pumpkin, it’s a little short on theatrical fairy dust.
Continue reading “Review: Cinderella, Gillian Lynne Theatre”
Category: Theatre
Review: Walden, Harold Pinter Theatre
Published in The TLS June 4, 2021
What kind of work should theatres re-open with? This question has been given a surprisingly forthright answer by the super-producer Sonia Friedman: a season of new writing in the West End, by emerging artists.
Continue reading “Review: Walden, Harold Pinter Theatre”Why Alice is the ultimate icon of children’s books
Published in BBC Culture May 12, 2021
For books that are all about surprising transformations, it should perhaps be no real surprise that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are among the most frequently adapted and reinterpreted stories ever written.
Continue reading “Why Alice is the ultimate icon of children’s books”A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sprinkled With High-Tech Fairy Dust
Published in The New York Times March 12, 2021
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” may be one of Shakespeare’s most performed plays — but its latest version from the Royal Shakespeare Company will be unlike any seen before. Titled “Dream,” the 50-minute streamed production fuses live performance with motion-capture technology, 3-D graphics, and interactive gaming techniques that let the audience remotely guide Puck through a virtual forest.
Continue reading “A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sprinkled With High-Tech Fairy Dust”Rehearsing Othello on Zoom: the theatre students pursuing their dream during a pandemic
Published in The Evening Standard January 21, 2021
While 2020 may be behind us, the new year brings continued uncertainty for the UK’s theatre industry. And if the situation is bleak for staff and freelancers facing shuttered venues, it’s surely even tougher for the next generation of talent: young people still studying – who have had to return to remote learning online this month, as schools and colleges shut once more – as well as those who graduated last summer with little chance of working.
Continue reading “Rehearsing Othello on Zoom: the theatre students pursuing their dream during a pandemic”‘If people can’t go to the panto then it must go to them’: the birth of The Travelling Pantomime
Published in The Telegraph November 29, 2020
Pantomime is a cornerstone of Christmas for families up and down Britain – but few cities are quite as committed to it as York. The annual show at York Theatre Royal is a proper local institution, with generations of families booking the same seats year after year, and prompting queues around the block the day tickets go on sale.
Continue reading “‘If people can’t go to the panto then it must go to them’: the birth of The Travelling Pantomime”Review: Rent, Hope Mill Theatre
Published in The Stage November 5, 2020
“No day but today, no day but today.” The last lines of Jonathan Larson’s 1993 musical Rent have surely never felt quite so applicable: opening night here is also closing night.
Continue reading “Review: Rent, Hope Mill Theatre”Tinuke Craig: ‘Part of me feels Black Lives Matter brought people together; part thinks people were bored’
Published in The i paper October 28, 2020
“I had this anxiety that I would just be extremely rusty,” says Tinuke Craig, with an apologetic smile, when I ask how it feels to be back in a rehearsal room. While the director is thrilled to be preparing for a socially distanced production and live stream of Sarah Kane’s stark, poetic play Crave at Chichester Festival Theatre, she was nervous about getting back to work, too.
Continue reading “Tinuke Craig: ‘Part of me feels Black Lives Matter brought people together; part thinks people were bored’”Rufus Norris on theatre and class: There’s ‘an awful danger’ that only people with money can survive in the industry
Published in The i Paper September 24, 2020
When lockdown was announced, Francesca Martinez’s play All of Us was in its final week of rehearsals at the National Theatre.
Continue reading “Rufus Norris on theatre and class: There’s ‘an awful danger’ that only people with money can survive in the industry”‘There will be positives’: artistic directors on theatre’s terrible year
Published in The Observer September 27, 2020
Last summer, the Observer profiled a group of newly-appointed artistic directors – a fresh surge of talent taking its place at the top of six of our best-loved theatre companies. A notably diverse cohort, they were bursting with optimism and ideas for shaking up the industry.
Continue reading “‘There will be positives’: artistic directors on theatre’s terrible year”