UK Regional Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 45

BWW Reviews: ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, July 3 2014
by Jenny Antill - July 04, 2014

This production of Entertaining Mr Sloane is the latest submission from London Classic Theatre. Joe Orton wrote the play in 1963 and the show had its first performance the following year at the New Arts Theatre in London, followed by an opening in New York in 1965. His writing has both comedic and p...

BWW Reviews: ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, New Alexandra Theatre Birmingham, July 2 2014
by Jenny Antill - July 03, 2014

Annie Get Your Gun premiered on Broadway nearly 70 years ago and many productions have graced stages across the world ever since then, plus a major MGM film in 1950 starring Betty Hutton. There has been a wide array of leading ladies who have played Annie Oakley including Ethel Merman, Dolores Gray,...

BWW Reviews: KRAPP'S LAST TAPE, Studio Theatre, Sheffield, July 1, 2014
by Carrie Dunn - July 02, 2014

Sheffield Theatres, current UK Regional Theatre of the Year (The Stage Awards), pushes its own desire to lead with the best home grown talent as it presents British icon Richard Wilson in Krapp's Last Tape, a play that explores the past through a series of memories and tape recordings....

BWW Reviews: 20TH CENTURY BOY, Wolverhampton Grand, June 30 2014
by Jenny Antill - July 01, 2014

I was fortunate enough to see 20th Century Boy on its debut outing at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry back in September 2012 and it was probably the best show I had seen that year. The production is the perfect balance between a jukebox musical and a biography detailing Marc Bolan's rise to fame unti...

BWW Reviews: PACIFIC OVERTURES, Union Theatre, July 4 2014
by Gary Naylor - July 05, 2014

Gary Naylor sees a revival of Stephen Sondheim's strange 1970s musical about 1850s Japan, production that borrows from a variety of theatrical styles without ever fully establishing its own....

BWW Reviews: ABOUT MISS JULIE, King's Head Theatre, July 3 2014
by Gary Naylor - July 04, 2014

Gary Naylor sees a perfectly realised adaptation of August Strindbeg's Miss Julie, packed with dramatic tension, big ideas and superb acting. If there's a more satisfying 80 minutes anywhere on the London stage today, I'd be surprised....

BWW Reviews: MY GIRL 2, The Old Red Lion Theatre, June 29 2014
by Gary Naylor - June 30, 2014

Gary Naylor sees a kitchen sink drama for our times that captures the sense of claustrophobia of Britain's (especially London's) debt culture and the swirling social ills that flow in and around inner city's sink estates....

BWW Reviews: ARTHUR PITA: THE WORLD'S GREATEST SHOW, Greenwich Dance Academy, June 28 2014
by Gary Naylor - June 28, 2014

Gary Naylor sees a piece of dance-theatre that covers the familiar ground of the Depression-era US dancing marathons that cruelly manipulated both competitors and audiences with ruthless cruelty....

BWW Reviews: FASHION VICTIM - THE MUSICAL, The Cinema Museum, June 26 2014
by Gary Naylor - June 27, 2014

Gary Naylor has a lot of fun with Fashion Victim, a satire on popular culture with songs, dance, some terrible plotting and some good jokes, but is left wondering if it shouldn't be a lot more....

BWW Reviews: CATCH 22, Richmond Theatre, June 24 2014
by Gary Naylor - June 25, 2014

Gary Naylor sees a long, but rewarding adaptation of Joseph Heller's notoriously unadaptable anti-war novel, Catch 22. Fifty-three years on, its message is still as relevant today as ever....

BWW Reviews: 20TH CENTURY BOY, New Wimbledon Theatre, June 23 2014
by Gary Naylor - June 24, 2014

Gary Naylor sees an evocation of a Seventies superstar in a jukebox musical that delivers all the crowdpleasing moments one could hope for, if ultimately feeling a little light on dramatic tension....

BWW Reviews: HETTY FEATHER, Crucible, Sheffield, 17 June 2014
by Ruth Deller - June 19, 2014

The stage adaptation of Jacqueline WIilson's novel is a lovingly put-together blend of comedy, tragedy and circus performance....

BWW Reviews: WOMAN IN MIND, Birmingham Rep, June 17 2014
by Jenny Antill - June 18, 2014

Woman In Mind is thought of as one of Alan Ayckbourn's best works. It is the English playwright's 32nd play and his earliest using a first-person narrative. The plot centres around Susan who, having hit herself in the head with a garden rake, is found at the start of the play concussed on her garde...

BWW Reviews: MATA HARI, St James Theatre Studio, June 17 2014
by Gary Naylor - June 18, 2014

Gary Naylor sees a beautiful but sad cabaret based on the life of Mata Hari the woman shot by the French Army for spying whose short life contained more dramas than a hundred others....

BWW Reviews: LAST OF THE DUTY FREE, Lyceum, Sheffield, 16 June 2014
by Ruth Deller - June 17, 2014

The 1980s sitcom revival tour hits Sheffield...

BWW Reviews: ENDURING SONG, Southwark Playhouse, June 13 2014
by Gary Naylor - June 14, 2014

Gary Naylor sees a play overly determined by its length and its extreme loudness, a victim of the ambition of a young company that will come back stronger and wiser for the experience....

BWW Reviews: TRISTRAM SHANDY: CONCEPTION, COCK AND BULL, St James Theatre, June 9 2014
by Gary Naylor - June 10, 2014

Gary Naylor sees a delightful resurrection of one of English comedy's founding fathers - the coarse, warm, funny Tristram Shandy, the creation of Irish clergyman Laurence Sterne....

BWW Reviews: THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA, King's Head Theatre, June 8 2014
by Gary Naylor - June 09, 2014

Gary Naylor sees a terrifyingly uncompromising play about women held away from their hopes, their dreams, their desires, distinguished by some brilliant acting and fine use of the venue's tiny, oppressive, space....

BWW Reviews: THE LOVE PROJECT Crucible Studio, Sheffield 2 June 2014
by Ruth Deller - June 07, 2014

Every Day theatre company's The Love Project, which has recently completed its tour across the UK, is an hour-long one-act production that explores different attitudes to love. It's a verbatim piece which uses dialogue and body language from interviews with a range of real-life testimonies....

BWW Reviews: LEAR, Union Theatre, June 7 2014
by Gary Naylor - June 08, 2014

Gary Naylor sees a Lear who walks among us as her (yes, this Lear is a woman) mind comes and goes and her daughters squabble over the prizes she so foolishly has allocated. There are lessons too - for state and family - today....

BWW Reviews: AN AUGUST BANK HOLIDAY LARK, Rose Theatre Kingston, June 4 2014
by Gary Naylor - June 05, 2014

Gary Naylor sees a new play, with lots of music, dancing and singing, set in a traditional Lancashire village as love blossoms, war looms and everyone pays a price....

BWW Reviews: SPOKESONG, Finborough Theatre, May 26 2014
by Gary Naylor - May 27, 2014

Gary Naylor sees a production of a play about what the United Kingdom means to its peoples, the first London production for 37 years, but timely in 2014 when such questions arise again, albeit in a completely different context....

BWW Reviews: JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN, Southwark Playhouse, May 23 2014
by Gary Naylor - May 25, 2014

Gary Naylor sees a timely revival of Bradley Rand Smith's adaptation of Dalton Trumbo's cri-de-coeur novel centred on a soldier left with just a mind and a torso by a shell on the battlefield of 1918. 70 minutes of intense exploration of a broken man's mind follows....

BWW Reviews: SIZWE BANZI IS DEAD, Crucible Studio, Sheffield, May 20, 2014
by Ruth Deller - May 21, 2014

Eclipse Theatre Company's production of the Tony Award-winning Sizwe Banzi is Dead is currently on a brief national tour after its Young Vic run. The 95-minute one-act play focuses on the lives of two men - Styles and Sizwe Banzi - in apartheid-era South Africa....

BWW Reviews: CATCH 22, Birmingham Rep, May 20 2014
by Jenny Antill - May 21, 2014

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller has been dubbed one of the greatest literary works of the 20th Century. The book was published in 1961 followed by a feature film in 1970 directed by Mike Nichols. The story is set in World War II and focuses on a group of US Army Air Force men - one in particular called Ca...