Review: Masquerade Mask
Commedia dell’arte at its highest level of quality imagined in its celebratory setting
Genre: Commedia dell'Arte
Review: Heart’s Desire/L’Amore Del Cuore
Anyone admiring Churchill, ferocious comedy or excited by a rare UK foray into Italian theatre must see this.
Review: The Comedy of Errors
One of the most vivid, aesthetically cogent, certainly funniest OFS productions
Review: Cluedo
An object lesson in comic timing; a steep cut above the ‘real’ whodunnits we’re likely to see this year or next.
Review: Glenda and Rita Live at The Rialto
Alexander Joseph and Ro Robertson team return in triumph.
Review: Scaramouche Jones
Shane Ritchie’s phenomenal energy and slidings in and out of tongues, mesmerises.
Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
This surely is the greatest Dream since Peter Brook’s landmark 1970 production.
Review: Tits in Space
A show with a wise sweetness at its core; a brightness to cast the growing shadows out there.
Review: The Messiah
Incestuous stars, passing of the ears, deep heat as a condition not an old muscle unguent. The dotty felicities of Patrick Barlow’s language in The Messiah directed by Rod Lewis are easily masked in the Norman Wisdom-like pratfalls of his hapless duo. Unless you add Mrs Flowers; and you should.
Review: The Handlebards : As You Like It
All the world’s a stage. Well, at least this bit of the Royal Botanic Gardens.
Review: The Miser
The famous adage of farce as tragedy played at breakneck speed begs questions of how much pathos Moliere wished to inject, how fast he wanted to go in The Miser. All teeters towards the tragedy of the absurd. This may not be 1668 very exactly, but it’s the nearest to one side of Moliere we’ve seen for years, and conveys something of the shock of his new.
Review: The Comedy About a Bank Robbery
The Comedy About a Bank Robbery redefines the category, by edging beyond even recent work and revealing a classic structure entering a hall of mirrors and going mad. The musical as well as general ensemble is the most remarkably timed I’ve ever seen in a theatre, and the set designs and shifts the most frantically split into milliseconds. This is an outstanding and redefining farce in every way.
