Gypsy, Chichester Festival Theatre
There’s a moment of stunned silence in Imelda Staunton’s storming Mama Rose at the Chichester Festival Theatre, a long, long, moment where neither speaking nor singing she conclusively demonstrates what a difference a great actress makes in…
The Scottsboro Boys, Garrick Theatre
You come away from The Scottsboro Boys sure of two things: that the next Cakewalk you ever hear will induce queasiness; and that the show’s director/choreographer Susan Stroman is some kind of genius. This kick-ass UK premiere,…
The Cherry Orchard, Young Vic
For a play in which inertia, atrophy, indecision, and the inability to move forward are key elements – aren’t they always in Chekhov – Katie Mitchell’s marvelously busy and concentrated staging of The Cherry Orchard fair zips…
A Conversation With MAUREEN LIPMAN
Maureen Lipman, the much-loved and extraordinarily versatile actress who made a sitcom of a commercial and whose stage work has ranged from Olivier’s National Theatre and the musicals of Leonard Bernstein and Rodgers and Hammerstein to a…
BBC Radio 2 Arts Show with Claudia Winkleman
Delighted to be back as a regular guest on the the Radio 2 Arts Show with the amazing Claudia Winkleman 03/10/2014: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04hcmtp 06/03/2015: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b053zw4n… [Read More]
The Girl of the Golden West, English National Opera, London Coliseum
Well, there won’t be any complaints about performing this one in English – or should that be American. Thank heavens Richard Jones has made Puccini’s spaghetti western an operatic-home-counties-free-zone and got his cast delivering Kelley Rourke’s translation…
BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers, Litton, Barbican Hall
The problem with programming Charles Ives’ Fourth Symphony – and only the very bold and resourceful and/or the BBC are ever likely to do so – is that it eclipses everything, and I mean everything, in its…
A Conversation With LINUS ROTH: Crusading for Weinberg
The Polish composer Miecyzlaw Weinberg – his Holocaust opera The Passenger caused quite a stir in David Pountney’s premiere staging – has a new champion. The talented young German violinist Linus Roth has taken his music and…
Otello, English National Opera, London Coliseum
It is 30 years ago – but feels like another life – that David Alden first exploded on to English National Opera’s Coliseum stage with his forever notorious cut-price staging of Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa. None of us there…
In Conversation and in Song with SOPHIE-LOUISE DANN
SOPHIE-LOUISE DANN Sunday 9th November 2014, St James Studio Sophie-Louise Dann is quite simply one of the most engaging and versatile musical theatre performers that the UK has ever produced. Anyone catching her recently in Forbidden Broadway…
