Reviews

OFS Studio Theatre, Oxford

12th to 16th May 2009

To put on any Shakespeare play is a challenge in itself, but the team behind ‘Twelfth Night’, currently showing at the OFS Studio, succeeded in a performance that was both entertaining and quintessentially Shakespeare. While the show is a thoroughly traditional interpretation of ‘Twelfth Night’, it is not bland – it makes use of essentially modern theatrical aspects, perhaps most visibly and prominently in terms of costume and music, and fuses them with a piece that contains few other interpretative displays. This contrives to make for a sturdy, effective performance – the audience goes to the theatre to watch Shakespeare, and that is precisely what they are treated to.

The cast of ‘Twelfth Night’ is exceptional, and central to the rendering of the play in its conventional mode. It is a performance which does not exhibit any conceptual uniqueness or technical spectacles, but which is still held up by the solid performances and unfaltering characterization offered. Read more »

Milton Keynes Theatre

Howard Ashman and Alan Menken are perhaps the most influential writers of American musicals in the past half century.

Who? Well, they wrote The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast for Disney, and before Ashman’s untimely death at the age of 40 in 1991, they had turned round the company’s fortunes and almost single-handedly revived the glory days.

Little Shop of Horrors had been their first major success back in 1982, based on a Roger Corman B movie and later transformed into a cult film itself. Now it’s touring the UK again in a production that originated at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory, which is fast building a reputation as the home of imaginative, revitalising revivals of half-forgotten classics. Read more »

News

Last night’s audience for His Dark Materials at Oxford Playhouse received a rare treat last night when Philip Pullman, the author of the award-winning trilogy which has been adapted for the stage by Nicholas Wright, made a surprise cameo appearance.

Pullman, an Oxford resident, took to the stage for ten minutes in the non-speaking role of an Oxford scholar. The audience’s only clue to the amateur performer’s true identity was when another character complimented him on his novels. Read more »

Welsh masterpiece reinvented in Northampton

Dylan Thomas’ rich and poetic masterpiece, Under Milk Wood, takes to the stage from Friday 1 to Saturday 16 May at Royal & Derngate, Northampton, in a striking new production.  Young Welsh director Adele Thomas brings together a cast of Welsh actors to reinvent this touchingly comic riot of a play, presenting humanity in all its mad glory.

The five strong ensemble brings to life over 60 characters from the eccentric community of Llaregubb, whose sleeping and waking desires are explored in Under Milk Wood. Moving from the wonderfully vivid dream world of the sleepers’ minds, through to the cacophony of waking life in the village, the mysterious narrator leads the audience through the darker desires of the town’s inhabitants. He unearths the terrifying nightmares and private tragedy behind the town’s respectable veneer, but the inhabitants of Llareggub have a lust for life that fills their world with humour and hope. Read more »

Interviews