Review: The Girl in the Green Jumper
A first-rate production, with West-End values. A must-see.
Simon Jenner was born in Cuckfield in 1959. Failing everything except art, he learnt to fly instead: discovering poetry forestalled a career in airframes. Belatedly educated at Leeds, then Cambridge, his PhD was paradoxically in ’Oxford Poetry of the 1940s’. Simon’s been Director of Survivors' Poetry since 2003, and from 2008-10, also Royal Literary Fund Fellow, at UEL and Chichester. Simon’s poetry collections are About Bloody Time (2006), Wrong Evenings (2011), Two for Joy (2013) all from Waterloo. Perdika/Poet in the City brought out Pessoa (2009) and commissioned close translations of Propertius Elegies Book I. Agenda Edition’s Airs to Another Planet on music poems is forthcoming. In 2016 his poem ‘Peter Philips’ Part Book Talks to Breugel’ was a prize-winner in the National Poetry Competition. One of six Poet in the City Residencies, Hackney, which launched in 2014 also maked a turning point. It’s where the kernel of Simon’s first play has developed, now being developed by a Guildford company. One adptation of a novel based on First World War flying, and two other plays, one based on a friend’s sectioning, are in development. Simon also writes music criticism.
Review: The Girl in the Green Jumper
A first-rate production, with West-End values. A must-see.
Review: Hide and Seek
An absorbing two-hander with as unexpected an ending as Lauren Gunderson’s I and You
Review: Nye
Through the choreographic sweep, Price crafts a necessary, traditional warning. It’s more than enough. A must-see.
Review: The Lonely Londoners
An outstanding production.
Review: Sister Act
In short, a fabulous example of British talent, now endangered, bringing quadruple threat to a magnificent production. Not all such mainstream shows on tour even approach outstanding, but this truly is.