Review: The Shawshank Redemption
The Shawshank Redemption returns in an even stronger production than in 2015: sharper, more visceral, and with a stronger set and sound, frames even more resonant performances
Archives: Reviews 0
Reviews
Review: Farragut North
The finest UK production of this play, certainly the best drama in Brighton this month.
Review: St Nicholas Elia Stavrou Piano Recital
Stavrou’s a deliriously gifted musician with a focus on French piano, and Fauré in particular
Review: In the Net
See In the Net for its ambition, its occasionally gorgeous language, Offie-worthy lighting and in Carlie Diamond, an actor to greet and watch, making I predict one of the most assured debuts of the coming year.
Review: Watch on the Rhine
Hellman’s uneasy drama, reaching out to our own quandaries, has answers that stay news. A must-see.
Review: Irrelevant
Keith Merrill and Debbie Chazen have crafted an Everywoman (and man) for whoever’s gifted yet still never makes it. Look forward to a lot more of this kind from Merrill’s Le Gallienne.
Review: St Nicholas Oliver Nelson and Vasileios Rakitzis Violin Sonatas Recital
First-rank playing, worthy of any venue including the Wigmore
Review: Salt-Water Moon
In exquisitely caught Newfoundland accents, Bryony Miller and Joseph Potter craft a hypnotic, unfamiliar, unforgettable world in David French’s gaunt lyric of a love-song. Their chemistry’s palpable.
Review: Django in Pain
Poignant, charming and meaningful play that is imaginative and vibrant in vision and message.
Review: Rocky Horror Show
The most lucid-voiced Rocky I’ve seen and on balance strongest cast for a long time. Two great reasons to return, or adventure for your first awakening on Planet Transexual.
Review: Nan in Love
Podcast 2 of 3, explores with aural joy, the mystery of why a great never got published for 40 years
Review: Hakawatis Women of the Arabian Nights
Original, bawdy, exploratory, seductive and elegaic in equal measure. A Faberge egg, continually hatching.
Review: James and the Giant Peach
With memorable music and ensemble singing added to a first-rate BLT production, there’s no better Christmas show in town.
Review: Mother Goose
This is more than panto: it’s an affirmation of something that panto here welcomes in, in our time uniquely invoking layers as only Elizabethan/Jacobean drama can.
Review: 12:37
The Finborough produces marvels, though this one, without losing its dazzling, tight DNA, deserves the widest possible transfer.
Review: Henry V
Bracing, fresh, wholly re-thought in every line, emerging with gleaming power, menace and wit. And I defy anyone not to smile at this new take on Shakespeare’s downbeat ending.
Review: David Copperfield
A paean to live theatre; soaring seasonal spirit, struck with tenderness, joy, sorrow, plangent affirmation.
Review: The Snow Queen
A fantastic experience of their very first live performance of a vivacious and proud group of very able people.
Review: Dinner With Groucho
McGuinness produces one of his finest works wrought from the sawdust of others and rendered it the burst of stars that irradiate the end.
Review: The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary!
An outstanding revival, full of fierce fun, pathos and a massive tragedy for Christmas, wrapped in red bon-bons.
Review: Sarah
An unnerving testing of that space between naturalism and hallucination, redemption and blank unknowing, studded with a language that flies off the page.
Review: From Here to Eternity
Grabs you from the towards the close of Act One and doesn’t let go: from here to curtain we’re in heart-stopping eternity.
Review: Here
A major talent with a distinct voice, and the consummate assurance to express it with stamp and precision
Review: The Lavender Hill Mob
Certainly enjoyable and the second act shows what it might be. There’s not a moment’s longeurs
Review: Pericles
Kelly Hunter’s team have wrought a miracle of flight, realised by an outstanding cast who here at least, make us rank Pericles with Shakespeare’s other late Romances.
Review: An Inspector Calls
Still an outstanding production we might take for granted, Stephen Daldry has overhauled it, and crafted new touches of comedy and music-hall exaggeration.
Review: Nan Makes History
A beautifully gentle introduction into a classic journey exploring the works of a classic Scots writer
Review: Troy Hawke: Sigmund Troy’d!
Character comedy takes the audience on an hilarious flight of fancy
Review: Enough of Him
A poignant and personal confrontation of our colonial past with uncomfortable truths we need to confront, or we shall never move on.
Review: Not One of These People
Worth 95 minutes of anyone’s time, you come out heavier with the weight of where you’ve been.
Review: The Seagull
A Seagull for the initiated, a meditation rather than the play itself, it’s still a truthful distillation, wholly sincere, actors uniformly excellent
Review: St Nicholas Evelyne Harrison and Zhanna Kemp Saxophone/Piano Recital
A rare line-up, and a delight.
Review: Cher A New Musical
See it here first before you feel compelled to travel to pay West End prices.
Review: Downs With Love
A brilliant piece of social commentary which uses the right people to examine the wrong things.
Review: All Saints Sara Oschlag Quartet Recital
A sovereign group, with Sara Oschlag a wonderful vocalist at its core
Review: John Collins St Nicholas Organ Recital
Yet another superb Collins recital. A hidden luxury we should enjoy.
Review: Michiko Shimanuki Piano Recital at All Saints, Hove
Consummate exploratory playing by a composer-pianist wholly inside these idioms.
Review: The Solid Life of Sugar Water
What theatre can do, how it can change us, how completely different it is from any other experience, has few examples that come close to this.
Review: Noises Off
An outstanding must-see, even for those who might have seen Noises Off more than once before.
Review: Chapel Royal Peter Sulski and Philippa Mo in Concert Mozart Violin/Piano Recital October 18th 2022
Sulski is sovereign in the viola, and Mo proves a radiant partner. An outstanding recital.
Review: SMC Concert Unitarian October 15th 2022
I can’t remember such unalloyed delight in an SMC concert.
Review: The Crucible
A Crucible of searing relevance; by grounding it in its time, it scorches with clarity.
Review: Short Plays 2022 New Venture Theatre, Brighton
Absorbing and a small feast of theme, acting and writing style.
Review: Unitarian, Kevin Allen Piano Recital
Kevin Allen stands among other composer-pianists who essay this territory: for whom the music is essential as composer and a language to breathe in.
Review: Chapel Royal Jane Faulkner and Gary Peacock in Mozart Violin/Piano Concert
Consummate Mozart performers - with a revelatory unskeining of the Lili Boulanger.
Review: Jews. In Their Own Words.
It’s Jonathan Freedland’s and Tracy-Ann Oberman’s brilliance to bring off-kilter, casual devastation to the stage; in raw unsettlings that for many keep the suitcase packed.
Review: Lost in the Willows
As a definitive staged version of Kenneth Grahame’s life, it will certainly hold the stage in its subsequent tour.
Review: Michele Roszak and Lynda Spinney: Love – Its Depths of Joy and Despair
A terrific way to blow the autumn leaves
Review: Dracula
Robert Hamilton’s novel stage version of Dracula should be published and used widely
Review: Yoko Ono and Paul Gregory Piano/Guitar Recital
Revelatory and a spellbinding introduction than in these performers hands, couldn’t be bettered.
Review: Solos in Spaces
A triptych of uneven but very interesting physical muses on gestures, meditation and beneath the sea.
Review: The Revlon Girl
The Revlon Girl is a masterpiece of displacement as ritual. Tess Gill’s directed many fine shows for BLT, but she’s never bettered this.
Review: Karen Wong Solo flute, piccolo & baroque flute
Karen Wong, solo or playing in trio, is clearly a driving force of new repertoire, often the prelude to a great career
Review: 60 Minutes of Our Lives
A very entertaining show that is unpredictable, well written and well performed!
Review: How to Catch a Karen
Baba Yaga weaves her spells on us, she is enthralling, with endless catch phrases, content tropes and challenges. Also, she goes there, and further!
Review: Bingewatch
Inventive show with humor and drama, very well performed. Every show is completely different!
Review: Love All
Another first-rank revival from JST, specialists in rediscoveries: a fitting end to Tom Littler’s tenure.
Review: Angry Black Woman 101
Moving, relevant, meaningful, entertaining and enlightening show, told by a charismatic performer.
Review: Pretty Beast
Vibrant performance, which runs the entire range of emotions, told with humor, poignance and searing sadness.
Review: Cocky
McLaughlin’s performance and writing are wonderful - poignant and meaningful - told with with humor, pathos and humanity.
Review: Dave, Muhammad and I at the Americana Hotel
Heartfelt and serious story, sincere performance
Review: A Shrewd Idea
Entertaining show about sensitive topics told through the interesting characters
Review: My First Miracle – adventures in bipolar disorder
Entertaining, vulnerable, insightful and brave. Polished performance
Review: Morning Glory
A small masterpiece of amused, unflinching reveal, which does something no-one else has done at all.
Review: Young Oscar, Wilde in San Francisco
Fascinating story and performance about the compelling character of Oscar Wilde
Review: A Scar is Born
Zarifian tells of an interesting life, so far, and her charm, naïveté and gentle coquette style of performance, which gets progressively bold, is compelling.
Review: Yellowman
Phenomenal. It’s Aaron Anthony’s and Nadine Higgin’s phenomenal performances that own the Orange Tree’s stripped-back space, and fill it and Yellowman with complexity, heart and utter conviction
Review: Silence
More of a scattering of earth, ashes and love than simply groundbreaking. But caveats aside, groundbreaking it is.
Review: The Doctor
A triumph for all concerned. Juliet Stevenson even gains in stature. Robert Icke’s revival could hardly go better than this.
Review: I, Joan
The title role goes to Isobel Thom, making their professional debut: the greatest I’ve ever seen.
Review: Breathless
A pitch perfect drama with crafted bittersweet comedy which explores the challenges of navigating life whilst not coping with a mental health disorder.
Review: The Comedy of Errors
One of the most vivid, aesthetically cogent, certainly funniest OFS productions
Review: A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain
A powerful story with mythical qualities about life in the hostile environment
