Sunday, July 7, 2013
Kneehigh’s is a theatre of collaboration. In Tristan & Yseult, their 2003 show which is being revived in a world tour to mark its tenth anniversary, the sense of collective creativity …
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 04:58AMSunday, September 2, 2012
Offended that the director would think her such a natural fit for the role of a faded movie star, the faded movie star Mae West famously turned down the role of Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 06:17AMWednesday, August 8, 2012
At the clowning climax of The School for Scandal, the first production of Bath Theatre Royal’s summer season, a devious aristocrat feverishly skits around the stage in an attempt to keep t…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 03:45PMThursday, July 12, 2012
The contemporary theatrical climate poses a threat to playwrights such as Richard Brinsley Sheridan. His works concern themselves with artifice, gossip and profligacy; The School for Scandal…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 02:40PMFriday, June 29, 2012
At a time when every passing month yields another blog post bemoaning the number and diversity of roles for women in the theatre, this revival of Miriam Margolyes and Sonia Fraser’s…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 05:51AMThursday, June 21, 2012
Writers have as much potential for peril as for reward when they seek either to be pungently contemporary or conceptually bizarre; execution of the former must be wholly on the money to have…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 08:26AMFriday, May 18, 2012
It would be fair to say that I have in the past regarded reviews which accuse a work of ‘resisting understanding’, advising audiences to simply let a performance ‘wash over them’, as…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 06:55PMSaturday, May 5, 2012
Though The Vanishing Horizon is the second Idle Motion production to visit Bristol, it was in fact devised before the company’s astoundingly beautiful The Seagull Effect, which played at t…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 07:22AMFriday, April 20, 2012
For two hours every evening until 28 April atBristol’s Brewery Theatre, something rather peculiar is happening. A journey onto the astral plane, a glimpse into the world beyond, call it w…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 08:05AMTuesday, April 17, 2012
One could not accuse Howard Korder of not having anything to write about. In the programme notes for the UK premiere of his 2010 play In A Garden, he references the relationship between the …
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 06:40AMSaturday, April 14, 2012
“Something is happening.” So begins Pinter’s A Kind of Alaska – the first play of Simon Godwin’s existentialist but eminently watchable double bill at Bristol Old Vic, which also c…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 06:20AMSunday, March 25, 2012
Both practically and ideologically, Away with the Fairies sets out with an optimistic clutch of goals – among them to provide two substantial roles for mature women, to blend the fantastic…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 08:17AMMonday, March 19, 2012
‘Lovable’ is not a word often used in connection with the work of Stephen Sondheim. In fact the prevailing critical view seems to be that entertainment value is hardly worth mentioning. …
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 09:06AMWednesday, March 14, 2012
Terms such as ‘physical theatre’ and ‘multimedia performance’ tend to be painfully overused nowadays, and are often accompanied by the faint, earnest-but-average whiff of GCSE Drama.…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 11:33AMMonday, March 12, 2012
That Adam Rapp’s 2005 play should be staged in Bath is an appealingly ironic happenstance; any of the city’s numerous overseas tourists entering the Ustinov in hopes of a theatrical expe…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 10:34AMFriday, February 17, 2012
Twelve years ago, when Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory staged King Lear as its inaugural production, Andrew Hilton’s direction was much lauded for its unflashy focus on Shakespeare’s…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 07:19AMWednesday, February 15, 2012
It was with a degree of trepidation that I decided to attend and review Love Box: a Valentine’s edition of Word of Mouth at Bristol Old Vic, a monthly event introducing local theatregoers …
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 09:31AMSunday, January 29, 2012
To call FellSwoop Theatre’s fifties cabaret bar aesthetic “realistic” would be a criminal understatement. By framing the story of Madame Souza’s fight to rescue her grandson …
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 07:18AMSaturday, January 28, 2012
In his new, skilfully told solo show at Bristol Old Vic, Tristan Sturrock performs the story of his own brush with death; a tumble from a wall in 2004 that left him with a broken neck. Sturr…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 08:44AMMonday, January 9, 2012
As a subject, religious fanaticism – particularly of the cultish variety – can not be an easy one to write about whilst retaining a sense of honesty, realism and balance. In Haunted Chil…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 12:52PMWednesday, December 28, 2011
In March 2011, the Bristol Old Vic main auditorium closed for redevelopment. One can only admire the tenacity and endeavour of the theatre’s creative team for seeing what many predicted to…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 06:30AMMonday, December 19, 2011
With the Fairy Godmother excised in favour of a plucky flock of birds, and the Christmas season’s standard influx of Slade and Crosby replaced by a bluesy folk band, Sally Cookson and Trav…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 06:11AMTuesday, December 13, 2011
Billed as a “darkly comic retelling” of the 1990 Christmas classic starring Macaulay Culkin, The Wardrobe Theatre’s first in-house production often feels as though it’s g…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 07:25AMTuesday, December 6, 2011
With Marietta Kirkbride’s Sitting with Thistle, Theatre West’s ‘Picture This’ Season at the Alma Tavern comes to an end. Though the project might not have dazzled with its consiste…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 09:26AMTuesday, November 22, 2011
Some critics recently accused Sean Holmes’ Lyric Hammersmith production of Saved of being a touch reverential; of deferring to the text rather than interrogating it. It is an accusation th…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 10:00AMSunday, November 20, 2011
Watching Heather Lister’s story of a blind teenager on the verge of leaving home recalling the events which led to his loss of sight and the subsequent fragmentation of his parents’ rela…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 01:48PMThursday, November 3, 2011
When a theatre company swears allegiance to producing work which is rarely seen in this country, one can be forgiven for wondering pre-show whether this performance hiatus might not be for a…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 04:50AMMonday, October 31, 2011
There is, undeniably, a connection between Mike Leigh’s character-driven devising process and the superb performances which his actors go on to deliver; from Alison Steadman in Abigail’s…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 07:51AMWednesday, October 19, 2011
Rather like the high-octane escapades of the title character in Penny Gunter’s new play Dorian’s Second Life, one-man shows are inherently risky. Sharing the stage with nothing other tha…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 11:41AMWednesday, October 5, 2011
The premise of Theatre West’s Picture This season is an engaging one: in April, 45 south west playwrights were each presented with a random photograph from a collection purchased at a Berl…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 06:28AMWednesday, September 28, 2011
“Shake out the shiver of these dynamite bones.” So begins Coasting, the remarkably rhythmic and lyrical new work from playwright Natalie McGrath. Loaded with assonance and imagery, it is…
SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 09:50AM 
