Fight for a Ticket to the Talisman's "Unfriend"
“The English would rather commit a felony than say ‘please go away’”
The Unfriend, by Steven Moffat at The Talisman Theatre Kenilworth. SOLD OUT!
Credit: Robert Warner for the Talisman Theatre
British comedy is the art of not saying the thing you are very obviously thinking, while American friendliness is the art of saying everything you’re thinking and then asking for a hug. The Unfriend parks itself precisely in that cultural lay-by, hazards on, and invites us to watch what happens when overtness collides with restraint at motorway speed.
Steven Moffat’s play understands a deep and ancient truth: nothing terrifies the English more than enthusiasm accompanied by eye contact. The titular American is not a villain in the traditional sense—no poisoned chalices or moustache-twirling—but a smiling, oversharing cruise companion who refuses to take the hint, largely because the hint has been wrapped in politeness, posted second class, and then apologised for. The resulting panic has the tight, clockwork precision of Marc Camoletti—doors opening at precisely the wrong moment—married to the muscular propulsion of Ray Cooney, where lies pile up like coats on a spare bed no one was meant to see.
What follows is farce with a sharp manicure: brisk, vulgar in the best sense, and quietly cruel about the things we pretend not to mean. It’s a play that knows the English would rather commit a small felony than say, “Please go away,” and that Americans, bless them, would much prefer you just said it.
Into this social minefield wander Peter and Debbie Smith (the excellent Mark Plastow and Esther Riggs), a comfortably middle-class British couple whose defining characteristic is that they would rather rearrange their own organs than cause offence. On a cruise—already a suspiciously intimate setting for the English—they make the catastrophic mistake of befriending Elsa (the utterly superb, mesmeric Julie-Ann Randell), an American widow whose grief is worn lightly, like a loud scarf, and whose friendliness has the tensile strength of industrial Velcro.
Back home in suburban Chiswick, Peter and Debbie assume the friendship will dissolve naturally, as all holiday acquaintances should: through silence, distance, and mild guilt. Instead, Elsa arrives. With luggage. And opinions. And a terrifying sincerity that bulldozes straight through the Smiths’ passive resistance. She settles in as if invited, interprets politeness as consent, and treats British discomfort as a charming regional tic.
What follows is a farce of escalating evasions. Peter attempts manly firmness and collapses into apology. Debbie tries moral reasoning and retreats into panic. Their neighbour (the brilliant Phil Reynolds) becomes an unwilling accomplice, lies metastasise, and every attempt to be kind makes things markedly worse. The plot tightens with Camoletti precision—people appearing when they shouldn’t, secrets held together with duct tape—while Moffat’s relentless momentum ensures that no bad decision goes unpunished, but always hilariously.
In Vanessa Comer’s watertight, precise and witty production for the Talisman Theatre, she is supported by a professional cast clearly operating at the very top of their game. True, Randell is an award-winning professional actress in her own right and is quite simply stellar here, but she is surrounded by an ensemble that recalls the great Theatre of Comedy companies of the 1980s. Adam Turner (in his best performance to date) and Alais McClusky (where did this talent come from?) are quintessential teenagers—gaming angst, adolescent idiosyncrasy, and finely judged timing. Reynolds, following his superb work in Dancing at Lughnasa at the Loft Theatre Leamington, reminds us why he is the area’s finest and most versatile character actor as the show’s rectumnally tight neighbour.
Technically, the production is faultless. John Ellam’s evocative set captures suburban English new-build life so vividly I can almost smell the carpet glue. Chris Williams’ video work keeps the pace snapping along, adding skilful footage and visual punctuation, while Saira Roper’s costumes neatly establish a contemporary American openness before retreating into British understatement.
At its heart, The Unfriend is less about an uninvited guest than about a national inability to say no, confronted by a culture that hears “perhaps” as “absolutely.” And the joke, of course, is that everyone is behaving exactly as they were raised to.
The Talisman has set an absurdly high bar for 2026 with an extraordinary showcase of the very best it has to offer. It is sold out, as it should be, and my advice is to call the theatre nightly for returns. This show, this cast, and this direction are why I do this. I can offer only my thanks and respect to this company. This show, this cast, this company are funny, sublime and actually deserve a longer run. They would sell-out.
Mark Pitt
Steven Moffat’s play understands a deep and ancient truth: nothing terrifies the English more than enthusiasm accompanied by eye contact. The titular American is not a villain in the traditional sense—no poisoned chalices or moustache-twirling—but a smiling, oversharing cruise companion who refuses to take the hint, largely because the hint has been wrapped in politeness, posted second class, and then apologised for. The resulting panic has the tight, clockwork precision of Marc Camoletti—doors opening at precisely the wrong moment—married to the muscular propulsion of Ray Cooney, where lies pile up like coats on a spare bed no one was meant to see.
What follows is farce with a sharp manicure: brisk, vulgar in the best sense, and quietly cruel about the things we pretend not to mean. It’s a play that knows the English would rather commit a small felony than say, “Please go away,” and that Americans, bless them, would much prefer you just said it.
Into this social minefield wander Peter and Debbie Smith (the excellent Mark Plastow and Esther Riggs), a comfortably middle-class British couple whose defining characteristic is that they would rather rearrange their own organs than cause offence. On a cruise—already a suspiciously intimate setting for the English—they make the catastrophic mistake of befriending Elsa (the utterly superb, mesmeric Julie-Ann Randell), an American widow whose grief is worn lightly, like a loud scarf, and whose friendliness has the tensile strength of industrial Velcro.
Back home in suburban Chiswick, Peter and Debbie assume the friendship will dissolve naturally, as all holiday acquaintances should: through silence, distance, and mild guilt. Instead, Elsa arrives. With luggage. And opinions. And a terrifying sincerity that bulldozes straight through the Smiths’ passive resistance. She settles in as if invited, interprets politeness as consent, and treats British discomfort as a charming regional tic.
What follows is a farce of escalating evasions. Peter attempts manly firmness and collapses into apology. Debbie tries moral reasoning and retreats into panic. Their neighbour (the brilliant Phil Reynolds) becomes an unwilling accomplice, lies metastasise, and every attempt to be kind makes things markedly worse. The plot tightens with Camoletti precision—people appearing when they shouldn’t, secrets held together with duct tape—while Moffat’s relentless momentum ensures that no bad decision goes unpunished, but always hilariously.
In Vanessa Comer’s watertight, precise and witty production for the Talisman Theatre, she is supported by a professional cast clearly operating at the very top of their game. True, Randell is an award-winning professional actress in her own right and is quite simply stellar here, but she is surrounded by an ensemble that recalls the great Theatre of Comedy companies of the 1980s. Adam Turner (in his best performance to date) and Alais McClusky (where did this talent come from?) are quintessential teenagers—gaming angst, adolescent idiosyncrasy, and finely judged timing. Reynolds, following his superb work in Dancing at Lughnasa at the Loft Theatre Leamington, reminds us why he is the area’s finest and most versatile character actor as the show’s rectumnally tight neighbour.
Technically, the production is faultless. John Ellam’s evocative set captures suburban English new-build life so vividly I can almost smell the carpet glue. Chris Williams’ video work keeps the pace snapping along, adding skilful footage and visual punctuation, while Saira Roper’s costumes neatly establish a contemporary American openness before retreating into British understatement.
At its heart, The Unfriend is less about an uninvited guest than about a national inability to say no, confronted by a culture that hears “perhaps” as “absolutely.” And the joke, of course, is that everyone is behaving exactly as they were raised to.
The Talisman has set an absurdly high bar for 2026 with an extraordinary showcase of the very best it has to offer. It is sold out, as it should be, and my advice is to call the theatre nightly for returns. This show, this cast, and this direction are why I do this. I can offer only my thanks and respect to this company. This show, this cast, this company are funny, sublime and actually deserve a longer run. They would sell-out.
Mark Pitt
"Tommy" The Musical, Townsend, Et al.
The Criterion's First Post-Renovation Production.
Photo: Credit The Criterion Theatre
Photo: Credit The Criterion Theatre
The Criterion Theatre has been reborn in velvet and gold, looking like it expects royalty, critics and champagne. What it got instead was Tommy, a production so catastrophically wrong that future historians may use it to explain the collapse of Western culture.
The evening began with a sound so loud and confused it felt like Heathrow had opened a runway in the stalls. The band didn’t so much play as assault the audience with amplified chaos. Microphones screamed in feedback, notes collided like shopping trolleys in a car park, and any concept of balance was hunted down and executed.
This was not music. This was an industrial accident.
Nathan Holding’s Captain Walker sang heroically near the correct pitch, bravely exploring musical notes that do not technically exist. It was like watching a man try to parallel park a melody — endlessly close, never successful. Sue Randall, as Mrs Walker, briefly reminded us what theatre looks like when someone has met the script before, though it was rather like spotting a violinist calmly playing while the Titanic goes down.
Then arrived Tommy, glowing in symbolic white, like a haunted duvet. Sadly, symbolism was the only thing working. He sang with all the confidence of a child being forced to apologise in public, and acted as though emotion were an optional extra you could purchase later. It was performance by vague suggestion.
Tommy should be electric — a roaring collision of rock and theatre that lifts you into exhilaration. This one dragged itself across the stage like a wounded animal. By “Pinball Wizard” the audience wore the hollow stare of people who have accepted they will die here.
The direction favoured endless pauses, perhaps to allow shame to settle. Scenes stopped. Restarted. Stopped again. “Acid Queen” unfolded with the sensual electricity of a PowerPoint presentation. Any choreography appeared to have been ordered from a discount catalogue: one emergency somersault, several confused wanderings, and a lot of standing about looking regretful; an archaeological dig into awkward silence. Scenes paused so long that I half-expected interval refreshments to be served mid-song.
The ensemble moved as one — unfortunately that one was a shopping trolley with a broken wheel. Chemistry was entirely absent. They bonded only in their shared inability to know what was happening.
This was not a revival. It was a public execution of a classic. If the Who’s Tommy is a cathedral of rock opera, this production is a poorly assembled flat-pack coffin.
The Criterion deserved celebration. Instead it hosted a noise complaint.
Some shows ask for applause. This one should come with a refund, an apology, and possibly counselling.
Oh, there was some consummate talent at the show tonight, two of this city's finest actors were in the audience. At least I had the chance to ask them what they were lending their talent to next.
Mark Pitt
The evening began with a sound so loud and confused it felt like Heathrow had opened a runway in the stalls. The band didn’t so much play as assault the audience with amplified chaos. Microphones screamed in feedback, notes collided like shopping trolleys in a car park, and any concept of balance was hunted down and executed.
This was not music. This was an industrial accident.
Nathan Holding’s Captain Walker sang heroically near the correct pitch, bravely exploring musical notes that do not technically exist. It was like watching a man try to parallel park a melody — endlessly close, never successful. Sue Randall, as Mrs Walker, briefly reminded us what theatre looks like when someone has met the script before, though it was rather like spotting a violinist calmly playing while the Titanic goes down.
Then arrived Tommy, glowing in symbolic white, like a haunted duvet. Sadly, symbolism was the only thing working. He sang with all the confidence of a child being forced to apologise in public, and acted as though emotion were an optional extra you could purchase later. It was performance by vague suggestion.
Tommy should be electric — a roaring collision of rock and theatre that lifts you into exhilaration. This one dragged itself across the stage like a wounded animal. By “Pinball Wizard” the audience wore the hollow stare of people who have accepted they will die here.
The direction favoured endless pauses, perhaps to allow shame to settle. Scenes stopped. Restarted. Stopped again. “Acid Queen” unfolded with the sensual electricity of a PowerPoint presentation. Any choreography appeared to have been ordered from a discount catalogue: one emergency somersault, several confused wanderings, and a lot of standing about looking regretful; an archaeological dig into awkward silence. Scenes paused so long that I half-expected interval refreshments to be served mid-song.
The ensemble moved as one — unfortunately that one was a shopping trolley with a broken wheel. Chemistry was entirely absent. They bonded only in their shared inability to know what was happening.
This was not a revival. It was a public execution of a classic. If the Who’s Tommy is a cathedral of rock opera, this production is a poorly assembled flat-pack coffin.
The Criterion deserved celebration. Instead it hosted a noise complaint.
Some shows ask for applause. This one should come with a refund, an apology, and possibly counselling.
Oh, there was some consummate talent at the show tonight, two of this city's finest actors were in the audience. At least I had the chance to ask them what they were lending their talent to next.
Mark Pitt
Animal Farm at The Loft Theatre
Mark Crossley Directs Orwell's Allegorical Play for the Leamington Theatre.
Animal Farm is one of those texts that flatters the unwary. It looks simple, like a children’s book that has wandered into the wrong syllabus, until you try to stage it. Then it turns feral. Orwell’s parable is not a fable but a vice: ideological, claustrophobic, and cruel. It should tighten around the audience’s throat. This production merely pats them on the head.
What we get is not menace but earnestness, that most English of theatrical sins. The show proceeds with the wobbling confidence of a school project that believes enthusiasm is the same thing as authority. It isn’t. Authority has weight. It has silence. It has the confidence to let cruelty breathe. Here, everything is busy, fussy, and fatally polite.
Some of the cast understand what they are in. Others behave as though Animal Farm were an exam text revised on the bus. The result is theatrical apartheid: experience marooned among students, each group playing in a different key, occasionally colliding but never harmonising. When the play should feel like a single tightening system of power, it instead resembles a badly run committee meeting.
Mark Crossley’s direction wanders through the evening like a tourist who has heard something important once happened here but can’t quite remember what. Scenes are laid end to end like crates in a dockyard strike—nothing stacked, nothing secured. There is no spine, no accumulating dread, no sense of inevitability. Orwell’s great achievement is to make tyranny feel banal and unstoppable. This production makes it feel optional.
The cruelty is missing. Not softened—absent. The play needs danger; it supplies gestures. It needs tension; it offers activity. The allegory is all present and correct—the pigs, the slogans, the revolutionary fervour curdling into authoritarian sludge—but it’s delivered like a PowerPoint presentation by someone desperate to be liked. We are told what is happening when we should be made to feel complicit in it.
It is all terribly bright. The lighting seems less designed than operated—on, off, repeat. And halfway through the first act, a relentlessly cheery underscore ambles in, apparently under the impression that this is a Disney property. I half-expected a spinning teacup or an actor dressed as a candle to make an entrance. The music does that most unforgivable of theatrical crimes: it explains. This is the sinister bit, it says, wagging its finger. Orwell doesn’t need help. He needs restraint.
There is, however, some good work here, which makes the whole thing more frustrating. Blake Hutchings achieves a genuinely animalistic physicality—alert, grounded, unsettling in the right way. Mark Roberts’ Boxer has heft and sadness; David Bennett’s Napoleon understands power as something oily rather than loud. These are actors who know how to hold a stage. Unfortunately, they are denied the space to do so. They feel like adults trapped in a school play, waiting politely for everyone else to catch up.
This is not to say the production is a disaster. That would at least be interesting. It is something worse: it is boring. Orwell should not bore. Orwell should leave you feeling faintly soiled, morally implicated, and a little afraid. Instead, I left at the interval, serenaded by enthusiastic whooping from what were clearly friends and family, celebrating effort rather than outcome.
I was reminded of a similar experience years ago reviewing a similar project at Malvern College, an evening that ended with boos and stones hurled at my car by boys whose parents believed a term’s fees guaranteed a Grade A. This time, mercifully, my car survived. The Loft’s production, however, summoned the same feeling: a sense that ambition had mistaken itself for achievement.
Simply put, this is not a play to attempt without a director who understands severity. Someone like David Fletcher, for instance—someone unafraid of silence, stillness, and discomfort. Mr Crossley is a fine actor, but this production has the unmistakable air of something that belongs in a university black box: well-meaning, overlit, over-explained, and under-thought.
Animal Farm is not homework. It is a warning. Here, it has been completed, submitted, and instantly forgotten.
Mark Pitt
What we get is not menace but earnestness, that most English of theatrical sins. The show proceeds with the wobbling confidence of a school project that believes enthusiasm is the same thing as authority. It isn’t. Authority has weight. It has silence. It has the confidence to let cruelty breathe. Here, everything is busy, fussy, and fatally polite.
Some of the cast understand what they are in. Others behave as though Animal Farm were an exam text revised on the bus. The result is theatrical apartheid: experience marooned among students, each group playing in a different key, occasionally colliding but never harmonising. When the play should feel like a single tightening system of power, it instead resembles a badly run committee meeting.
Mark Crossley’s direction wanders through the evening like a tourist who has heard something important once happened here but can’t quite remember what. Scenes are laid end to end like crates in a dockyard strike—nothing stacked, nothing secured. There is no spine, no accumulating dread, no sense of inevitability. Orwell’s great achievement is to make tyranny feel banal and unstoppable. This production makes it feel optional.
The cruelty is missing. Not softened—absent. The play needs danger; it supplies gestures. It needs tension; it offers activity. The allegory is all present and correct—the pigs, the slogans, the revolutionary fervour curdling into authoritarian sludge—but it’s delivered like a PowerPoint presentation by someone desperate to be liked. We are told what is happening when we should be made to feel complicit in it.
It is all terribly bright. The lighting seems less designed than operated—on, off, repeat. And halfway through the first act, a relentlessly cheery underscore ambles in, apparently under the impression that this is a Disney property. I half-expected a spinning teacup or an actor dressed as a candle to make an entrance. The music does that most unforgivable of theatrical crimes: it explains. This is the sinister bit, it says, wagging its finger. Orwell doesn’t need help. He needs restraint.
There is, however, some good work here, which makes the whole thing more frustrating. Blake Hutchings achieves a genuinely animalistic physicality—alert, grounded, unsettling in the right way. Mark Roberts’ Boxer has heft and sadness; David Bennett’s Napoleon understands power as something oily rather than loud. These are actors who know how to hold a stage. Unfortunately, they are denied the space to do so. They feel like adults trapped in a school play, waiting politely for everyone else to catch up.
This is not to say the production is a disaster. That would at least be interesting. It is something worse: it is boring. Orwell should not bore. Orwell should leave you feeling faintly soiled, morally implicated, and a little afraid. Instead, I left at the interval, serenaded by enthusiastic whooping from what were clearly friends and family, celebrating effort rather than outcome.
I was reminded of a similar experience years ago reviewing a similar project at Malvern College, an evening that ended with boos and stones hurled at my car by boys whose parents believed a term’s fees guaranteed a Grade A. This time, mercifully, my car survived. The Loft’s production, however, summoned the same feeling: a sense that ambition had mistaken itself for achievement.
Simply put, this is not a play to attempt without a director who understands severity. Someone like David Fletcher, for instance—someone unafraid of silence, stillness, and discomfort. Mr Crossley is a fine actor, but this production has the unmistakable air of something that belongs in a university black box: well-meaning, overlit, over-explained, and under-thought.
Animal Farm is not homework. It is a warning. Here, it has been completed, submitted, and instantly forgotten.
Mark Pitt
“Chaos in a Lab Coat: Young Frankenstein Goes Nuclear”
"Young Frankenstein" Mel Brooks
The Liverpool Playhouse transfer of the Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester Production.
Directed and Choreographed by Nick Winston
The Liverpool Playhouse transfer of the Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester Production.
Directed and Choreographed by Nick Winston
Credit: Mark Senior
Young Frankenstein arrives like a champagne hangover in a thunderstorm: effervescent, deafening, and faintly immoral. It is a musical that knows it is ridiculous and treats that fact with the reverence normally reserved for state funerals and particularly rare cheeses. Mel Brooks’s jokes—once trim and surgical—have been pumped full of helium, strapped to show tunes, and released into the auditorium with a grin as wide as the Monster’s shoulders and about as subtle.
This is not horror; it is vaudeville in a lab coat. The gags tumble down relentlessly like cutlery in a tumble dryer: dented, shiny, and impossible to ignore. Silence is clearly forbidden. The score bounces along with caffeinated hysteria, while the choreography thrashes about with the confidence of people who know they look ridiculous and have decided that this is, in fact, the point.
Beneath the foam and fizz, Young Frankenstein is about inheritance: the sins of the father, the eyebrows of the grandfather, and the dubious afterlife of German Expressionism once it has been fed Broadway tap shoes and a kebab. The production is monochrome in soul but Technicolor in appetite—stuffed to bursting with puns, pratfalls, and a sort of cheerful vulgarity that dares you not to laugh.
Daniel Broklebank’s Dr Frankenstein is, for much of Act One, a polite disappointment. He does the job, says the lines, hits the notes, and yet stubbornly refuses to ignite. There is charisma somewhere in there, but it doesn’t fully emerge until Act Two, when he finally loosens his tie and embraces the lunacy. The early scenes, alas, cruise along respectably when they ought to be screeching through the village at midnight. Curtis Patrick offers an impressively Feldman-esque Igor—one half expects him to start swivelling independently of his own face—but even this cannot quite haul the opening stretch into the manic altitude the show requires.
Salvation arrives, goose-stepping, with Simeon Truby’s Inspector Kemp. From the moment he enters, the production snaps into focus and becomes unmistakably itself. Truby is the evening’s comic linchpin, his timing immaculate, his Teutonic bluster deliciously grotesque, recalling Gert Fröbe at his most gloriously continental. Once he’s onstage, the audience stops watching and starts colluding. Laughter becomes inevitable, almost compulsory. If director Nick Winston has been gambling on sheer comic instinct to carry the evening, this is the moment the roulette wheel finally lands on black.
Jessica Martin delivers a satisfyingly flinty Frau Blücher, while Amelia Adams makes an inspired pairing with the seven-foot Pete Gallagher as the Monster. Gallagher, in particular, proves an unexpectedly deft comic presence—gentle, precise, and far more charming than any man of that height has a right to be.
The choreography is muscular and knowingly excessive, the ensemble numbers fizzing with enough energy to power the lighting, which is cleverly show-offy without being vulgar—no small feat here. Technically, the production is impressively slick. Projections are used with intelligence, fusing cinema and stage into a Frankenstein hybrid of their own.
The evening is framed as a film, complete with rolling credits before and after. It is, strictly speaking, unnecessary. It is also entirely on brand: a final, indulgent wink in a show that has never met a joke it didn’t think was worth doing twice, louder.
So, has this shw a life? Absolutely. The tiny Hope Mill Playhouse has delivered a production worthy of the Liverpool Playhouse, worthy of a national tour. It's not a big show, but it has all of the chaotic charm that Mel Brook's would approve of. And, if Daniel Broklebank were to release some of his early angst and simply dive into the pool with the rest of the company, it would be positively sublime.
Mark Pitt
This is not horror; it is vaudeville in a lab coat. The gags tumble down relentlessly like cutlery in a tumble dryer: dented, shiny, and impossible to ignore. Silence is clearly forbidden. The score bounces along with caffeinated hysteria, while the choreography thrashes about with the confidence of people who know they look ridiculous and have decided that this is, in fact, the point.
Beneath the foam and fizz, Young Frankenstein is about inheritance: the sins of the father, the eyebrows of the grandfather, and the dubious afterlife of German Expressionism once it has been fed Broadway tap shoes and a kebab. The production is monochrome in soul but Technicolor in appetite—stuffed to bursting with puns, pratfalls, and a sort of cheerful vulgarity that dares you not to laugh.
Daniel Broklebank’s Dr Frankenstein is, for much of Act One, a polite disappointment. He does the job, says the lines, hits the notes, and yet stubbornly refuses to ignite. There is charisma somewhere in there, but it doesn’t fully emerge until Act Two, when he finally loosens his tie and embraces the lunacy. The early scenes, alas, cruise along respectably when they ought to be screeching through the village at midnight. Curtis Patrick offers an impressively Feldman-esque Igor—one half expects him to start swivelling independently of his own face—but even this cannot quite haul the opening stretch into the manic altitude the show requires.
Salvation arrives, goose-stepping, with Simeon Truby’s Inspector Kemp. From the moment he enters, the production snaps into focus and becomes unmistakably itself. Truby is the evening’s comic linchpin, his timing immaculate, his Teutonic bluster deliciously grotesque, recalling Gert Fröbe at his most gloriously continental. Once he’s onstage, the audience stops watching and starts colluding. Laughter becomes inevitable, almost compulsory. If director Nick Winston has been gambling on sheer comic instinct to carry the evening, this is the moment the roulette wheel finally lands on black.
Jessica Martin delivers a satisfyingly flinty Frau Blücher, while Amelia Adams makes an inspired pairing with the seven-foot Pete Gallagher as the Monster. Gallagher, in particular, proves an unexpectedly deft comic presence—gentle, precise, and far more charming than any man of that height has a right to be.
The choreography is muscular and knowingly excessive, the ensemble numbers fizzing with enough energy to power the lighting, which is cleverly show-offy without being vulgar—no small feat here. Technically, the production is impressively slick. Projections are used with intelligence, fusing cinema and stage into a Frankenstein hybrid of their own.
The evening is framed as a film, complete with rolling credits before and after. It is, strictly speaking, unnecessary. It is also entirely on brand: a final, indulgent wink in a show that has never met a joke it didn’t think was worth doing twice, louder.
So, has this shw a life? Absolutely. The tiny Hope Mill Playhouse has delivered a production worthy of the Liverpool Playhouse, worthy of a national tour. It's not a big show, but it has all of the chaotic charm that Mel Brook's would approve of. And, if Daniel Broklebank were to release some of his early angst and simply dive into the pool with the rest of the company, it would be positively sublime.
Mark Pitt
Priory Panto' is "Just Right."
Goldilocks and the Three Bears reviewed at The Priory Theatre, Kenilworth.
Mike Brooks directs the Kenilworth Company.
Mike Brooks directs the Kenilworth Company.
Paul Sully in Goldilocks and the Three Bears at the Priory, Kenilworth (c) Priory Theatre
Britain is currently overrun by bears. Paddington has colonised the Savoy, and now Goldilocks and her three has ransacked the Priory. One half expects the woodland creatures to unionise. Still, if we must endure ursine saturation, this is a tolerable way to do it.
This is pantomime, yes — but pantomime that has discovered money. Or at least credit. The Priory has flung its future budget gleefully at the stage, which now glows, pops and smoulders with intelligent lighting, pyrotechnics and costumes of such polish they threaten to upstage the performers wearing them. It is all very handsome, and mercifully free of that municipal gloom that afflicts so much regional Christmas theatre.
The script — possibly by Steve Boden, though certainty is neither expected nor required — is comfortingly vulgar. Double entendres are delivered with the subtlety of a custard pie to the face, the audience is bullied into participation, and sweets fall from the sky like benevolent litter. It knows exactly what it is and never pauses to apologise for it. This alone places it ahead of much contemporary pantomime, which too often mistakes irony for intelligence.
It is loud. It moves quickly. It does not ask for contemplation. This is correct. The musical numbers arrive, do their work, and leave before becoming tedious — a minor miracle. The end of Act One, nodding approvingly towards Billy Elliot, is efficient, energetic and a stand-out.
The show’s beating heart is the double act of Paul Sully and Connor Cunningham, who play Dame Sadie Spinalot and Jake the Clown with the loose confidence of performers who know the rules well enough to break them safely. Their banter feels improvised even when it isn’t, and occasionally the plot is treated as an optional suggestion. At one point Sully asks whether there is, in fact, a script — a line that works precisely because you suspect the answer might be no. It is old-fashioned panto craft, executed with enviable ease.
Sharon Sully’s Baroness Winkle Hoffer slinks on like a rejected Bond villain from the early 1970s — glamorous, faintly absurd and clearly enjoying herself. George Haughie’s Pedro, her sporadically loyal henchman, has a running gag so brief and stupid that it becomes, against one’s better judgement, reliably funny every time. Repetition, it turns out, is not the enemy here.
At the centre, Rose Bird’s Goldilocks is disarmingly sincere. She sings beautifully, moves well and possesses that elusive panto quality of being earnest without cloying. In a genre riddled with overperformance, she simply is — and the show is better for it.
Good pantomime is not embarrassed by itself. It does not wink too hard or apologise for existing. It offers noise, silliness and communal release without condescension. Many theatres get this wrong, either drowning in chaos or sanitising the joy out of the room. The Priory does neither.
Claudia Temple’s choreography is sharp and purposeful, and the young ensemble — likely drawn from her Viva Theatre Arts stable — are disciplined, alert and impressively stage-aware. They look like performers who have been taught how to behave on stage, not just how to fill it.
The real authority here, though, is director Mike Brooks. His staging is clean, his pacing assured and his judgement sound. He understands pantomime as a form rather than a novelty — where to push, where to stop, and when to trust the audience. This is not innovation for its own sake; it is competence elevated to craft.
The show is sold out. Unsurprisingly. This Goldilocks and the Three Bears is brash, confident, generous and unapologetically enjoyable. It knows exactly what temperature it should be — and gets it just right.
Bottom Line - **** Pantomime just right, just as it should be. I adored it.
Mark Pitt
This is pantomime, yes — but pantomime that has discovered money. Or at least credit. The Priory has flung its future budget gleefully at the stage, which now glows, pops and smoulders with intelligent lighting, pyrotechnics and costumes of such polish they threaten to upstage the performers wearing them. It is all very handsome, and mercifully free of that municipal gloom that afflicts so much regional Christmas theatre.
The script — possibly by Steve Boden, though certainty is neither expected nor required — is comfortingly vulgar. Double entendres are delivered with the subtlety of a custard pie to the face, the audience is bullied into participation, and sweets fall from the sky like benevolent litter. It knows exactly what it is and never pauses to apologise for it. This alone places it ahead of much contemporary pantomime, which too often mistakes irony for intelligence.
It is loud. It moves quickly. It does not ask for contemplation. This is correct. The musical numbers arrive, do their work, and leave before becoming tedious — a minor miracle. The end of Act One, nodding approvingly towards Billy Elliot, is efficient, energetic and a stand-out.
The show’s beating heart is the double act of Paul Sully and Connor Cunningham, who play Dame Sadie Spinalot and Jake the Clown with the loose confidence of performers who know the rules well enough to break them safely. Their banter feels improvised even when it isn’t, and occasionally the plot is treated as an optional suggestion. At one point Sully asks whether there is, in fact, a script — a line that works precisely because you suspect the answer might be no. It is old-fashioned panto craft, executed with enviable ease.
Sharon Sully’s Baroness Winkle Hoffer slinks on like a rejected Bond villain from the early 1970s — glamorous, faintly absurd and clearly enjoying herself. George Haughie’s Pedro, her sporadically loyal henchman, has a running gag so brief and stupid that it becomes, against one’s better judgement, reliably funny every time. Repetition, it turns out, is not the enemy here.
At the centre, Rose Bird’s Goldilocks is disarmingly sincere. She sings beautifully, moves well and possesses that elusive panto quality of being earnest without cloying. In a genre riddled with overperformance, she simply is — and the show is better for it.
Good pantomime is not embarrassed by itself. It does not wink too hard or apologise for existing. It offers noise, silliness and communal release without condescension. Many theatres get this wrong, either drowning in chaos or sanitising the joy out of the room. The Priory does neither.
Claudia Temple’s choreography is sharp and purposeful, and the young ensemble — likely drawn from her Viva Theatre Arts stable — are disciplined, alert and impressively stage-aware. They look like performers who have been taught how to behave on stage, not just how to fill it.
The real authority here, though, is director Mike Brooks. His staging is clean, his pacing assured and his judgement sound. He understands pantomime as a form rather than a novelty — where to push, where to stop, and when to trust the audience. This is not innovation for its own sake; it is competence elevated to craft.
The show is sold out. Unsurprisingly. This Goldilocks and the Three Bears is brash, confident, generous and unapologetically enjoyable. It knows exactly what temperature it should be — and gets it just right.
Bottom Line - **** Pantomime just right, just as it should be. I adored it.
Mark Pitt
Robinson Crusoe at the Talisman Theatre
Lacking any Heart or Soul, the Talisman's Panto is Vanilla and Dated.
Robinson Crusoe by Stephen Duckham. Directed by Gill Halford.
Robinson Crusoe by Stephen Duckham. Directed by Gill Halford.
Pantomime is supposed to be loud, vulgar and faintly unhinged: a form that survives entirely on confidence, noise and nerve. Strip it of those things and what remains is a civic punishment. Stephen Duckham’s Robinson Crusoe is exactly that: two hours of contractual obligation performed in fancy dress, a production so joyless it feels less like theatre and more like a disciplinary measure.
The script has the exhausted stench of something endlessly reheated. The jokes arrive embalmed, wheeled out like museum pieces from a time when Noel Edmonds was still considered mischievous. Every gag lands with the dull thud of offal hitting laminate flooring. Nothing sparkles, nothing surprises, and nothing suggests that anyone involved has ever laughed at anything new.
Harry Bowser’s Robinson Crusoe is a heroic void. He has a voice, technically, but it appears to function independently of pitch, drifting freely like a helium balloon released into the wrong sky. Songs are delivered to backing tracks that sound as though they were sourced from a charity-shop hi-fi, and the effect is less musical theatre than karaoke night in a dying pub. His acting is neither bad nor good—merely present, like furniture.
Ben Ionoff’s dame is a triumph of wardrobe over wit. He changes costumes constantly, presumably in the hope that one of them might contain a joke. None do. There is no danger, no timing, no glint of subversion—just a man in frocks obediently reciting material that should have been euthanised years ago. The script is so leaden with cliché that even talent would suffocate beneath it. Mercifully, talent is in short supply.
This is writing not merely past its sell-by date but actively decomposing. One understands that Mr Duckham produces these scripts annually, but repetition is not renewal. It is the theatrical equivalent of serving mouldy bread and insisting it is traditional. Even performed with competence—and this is not—it would be intolerably predictable. Children, allegedly the target audience, seemed baffled rather than delighted. Adults looked shell-shocked.
At the interval, the stranger next to me leaned over and said, “This is not very good, is it?” It was the most incisive line of the evening. I agreed, and shortly afterwards left, thereby restoring a sense of dignity to my night.
Technically, matters deteriorate further. Gill Halford’s direction trudges along as though dragging a reluctant corpse. Radio microphones come in late or not at all, backing tracks begin in lonely isolation, and performers are audibly “found” several bars too late. The puppeteer for the “Rodney Rat” sequences is clearly visible, annihilating illusion with the enthusiasm of a man changing a tyre. The villains’ entrance—a moment that should fizz with theatrical menace—is reduced to a weary cloth drop and lighting that looks embarrassed to be involved.
This is not pantomime; it is the simulation of pantomime, performed by people who appear to have read about joy but never experienced it firsthand. It is amateur theatre with professional prices, nostalgia without affection, tradition without talent.
One leaves not offended, not angry, but numbed. Which is perhaps the greatest failure of all. Theatre should stir something—laughter, rage, delight, even despair. This stirs only the urgent desire to go home. If this is what passes for tradition, then tradition deserves a quiet burial at sea.
Mark Pitt
The script has the exhausted stench of something endlessly reheated. The jokes arrive embalmed, wheeled out like museum pieces from a time when Noel Edmonds was still considered mischievous. Every gag lands with the dull thud of offal hitting laminate flooring. Nothing sparkles, nothing surprises, and nothing suggests that anyone involved has ever laughed at anything new.
Harry Bowser’s Robinson Crusoe is a heroic void. He has a voice, technically, but it appears to function independently of pitch, drifting freely like a helium balloon released into the wrong sky. Songs are delivered to backing tracks that sound as though they were sourced from a charity-shop hi-fi, and the effect is less musical theatre than karaoke night in a dying pub. His acting is neither bad nor good—merely present, like furniture.
Ben Ionoff’s dame is a triumph of wardrobe over wit. He changes costumes constantly, presumably in the hope that one of them might contain a joke. None do. There is no danger, no timing, no glint of subversion—just a man in frocks obediently reciting material that should have been euthanised years ago. The script is so leaden with cliché that even talent would suffocate beneath it. Mercifully, talent is in short supply.
This is writing not merely past its sell-by date but actively decomposing. One understands that Mr Duckham produces these scripts annually, but repetition is not renewal. It is the theatrical equivalent of serving mouldy bread and insisting it is traditional. Even performed with competence—and this is not—it would be intolerably predictable. Children, allegedly the target audience, seemed baffled rather than delighted. Adults looked shell-shocked.
At the interval, the stranger next to me leaned over and said, “This is not very good, is it?” It was the most incisive line of the evening. I agreed, and shortly afterwards left, thereby restoring a sense of dignity to my night.
Technically, matters deteriorate further. Gill Halford’s direction trudges along as though dragging a reluctant corpse. Radio microphones come in late or not at all, backing tracks begin in lonely isolation, and performers are audibly “found” several bars too late. The puppeteer for the “Rodney Rat” sequences is clearly visible, annihilating illusion with the enthusiasm of a man changing a tyre. The villains’ entrance—a moment that should fizz with theatrical menace—is reduced to a weary cloth drop and lighting that looks embarrassed to be involved.
This is not pantomime; it is the simulation of pantomime, performed by people who appear to have read about joy but never experienced it firsthand. It is amateur theatre with professional prices, nostalgia without affection, tradition without talent.
One leaves not offended, not angry, but numbed. Which is perhaps the greatest failure of all. Theatre should stir something—laughter, rage, delight, even despair. This stirs only the urgent desire to go home. If this is what passes for tradition, then tradition deserves a quiet burial at sea.
Mark Pitt
The Loft's Immaculate Conception
"Dancing at Lughnasa" by Brian Friel at the Loft Theatre.
Directed by Tom O'Connor.
Directed by Tom O'Connor.
Phil Reynolds, Lorna Middleton and Ruth Herd. Photo Credit: Richard Smith for the Loft Theatre
Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa isn’t merely a play; it’s the theatrical equivalent of opening an old biscuit tin filled with family photographs—sepia, curled at the edges, smelling faintly of damp wool and regret. It’s a memory play, yes, but more precisely a séance for things we half-remember and wholly miss. Michael—(Christopher Stanford,) luminous with hindsight—summons the Mundy household of 1936 Donegal with the weary affection of someone revisiting a childhood home only to discover the wallpaper has kept better than the people.
The Mundy sisters exist on the thin, threadbare margin between survival and surrender, bound together by duty, poverty and the type of oppressive Catholicism that mistakes suffering for virtue. They inhabit a cottage so economically precarious it ought to come with a warning sign or a sympathetic priest. Hope blows through their lives like a poorly maintained bus service: late, intermittent, unpredictable, and never quite stopping where you need it.
Enter Gerry (Ted McGowan), father of Michael, a peripatetic purveyor of charm and balderdash. He is a warm gust of pointless enthusiasm—an itinerant optimist whose chief export is disappointment. He arrives bearing promises like a salesman with a suitcase full of broken toys. His tap dancing attempts are delightful in the way a dog learning maths is delightful: earnest, doomed, and not applicable to real life.
And then, from Africa, Uncle Jack (Phil Reynolds) slouches home with his theology replaced by something infinitely more generous, more vibrant, and—in the eyes of parishioners—more suspiciously heathen. Jack’s mind is slipping its gears, his faith scrambled like an inattentive omelette. His presence doesn’t so much disturb the household equilibrium as toss it in the air, juggle it, and quietly put it down somewhere no one can find it anymore. He is, in his disintegration, achingly human—his memory dissolving even as the family’s already precarious economic lifeline dissolves with it.
And then, the dancing. Good God, the dancing. Those wild, pagan ruptures of joy where the Mundy sisters erupt into life, limbs flying like a flock of birds suddenly remembering the sky. These moments are undiluted freedom: brief, ecstatic rebellions against the tyranny of propriety and the eternal dampness of Donegal. Friel, being an honest dramatist rather than a sentimental one, knows joy cannot be kept. It must be paid back with interest.
Why the enduring appeal? Why the Olivier, the Tonys, the film, the near sainthood among theatre lovers? Because Friel, like Chekhov—who understood misery the way some people understand wine—writes about people living at the periphery of everything glamorous. Happiness, for them, arrives in fragments: a shared cigarette, a joke, a dance. Friel reminds us that the margins of society are often where its most stubborn humanity resides.
Which brings us—gratefully—to Tom O’Connor’s Loft Theatre production. The cast list reads like the local theatrical Illuminati, lovingly assembled and then unleashed on an unsuspecting audience. O’Connor directs with a poetic sensibility that borders on the mystical. He treats the play as though he discovered it carved into a standing stone. Everything he does hums with intelligence and a kind of wary reverence, as though he’s afraid to disturb something fragile and ancient.
The sisters—Ruth Herd, Leonie Slater, Rosie Pankhurst, Lorna Middleton and Tina Shinkwin—perform with such seamless unity they might as well share a nervous system. Each is formidable alone, but together they create a performance ecosystem: one sighing, laughing, aching organism. They glide through Friel’s lyrical dialogue with the naturalism of people who could do this in their sleep, but wouldn’t, because it matters too much.
Ted McGowan’s Gerry is the sort of man who flirts by accident. He is magnificent—equal parts hope and hopelessness. You’d be angry with him if he weren’t so irresistibly charming. Phil Reynolds, as Jack, gives a performance of heartbreaking delicacy, a slow, gentle unravelling that leaves threads of memory and dignity drifting across the stage. His calm embrace of Ugandan ritual over Irish doctrine is portrayed not as madness but as liberation—dangerous, beautiful, and utterly doomed in 1930s Donegal. Reynolds is Warwickshire's finest actor of his generation.
And Christopher Stanford’s Michael—the narrator, the ghost of boyhood past—guides us with a voice like warm smoke. His speeches are delivered with the confidence of a man who has stared down his own history and lived to turn it into prose. He binds the play together; without him, it might collapse into a series of exquisite vignettes. With him, it becomes a single, cohesive ache.
O’Connor’s production is not simply well executed—it is quietly, insistently superb. Poetic, humane, and shot through with the sort of melancholy radiance that theatre rarely attempts now. It feels less like watching a play and more like remembering a dream you once lived in.
You leave the theatre changed—not radically, not violently, but softly, as though some small hinge inside you has shifted. And, if you’re lucky, with the faint, private urge to dance.
With sumptuous settings, including luminosity from a sharp, very expensive new projection system, and with this level of direction and acting, please, do not miss this flawless triumph.
Bottom Line: ***** An immaculate conception from Tom O'Connor and the company of "Lughnasa."
Mark Pitt
The Mundy sisters exist on the thin, threadbare margin between survival and surrender, bound together by duty, poverty and the type of oppressive Catholicism that mistakes suffering for virtue. They inhabit a cottage so economically precarious it ought to come with a warning sign or a sympathetic priest. Hope blows through their lives like a poorly maintained bus service: late, intermittent, unpredictable, and never quite stopping where you need it.
Enter Gerry (Ted McGowan), father of Michael, a peripatetic purveyor of charm and balderdash. He is a warm gust of pointless enthusiasm—an itinerant optimist whose chief export is disappointment. He arrives bearing promises like a salesman with a suitcase full of broken toys. His tap dancing attempts are delightful in the way a dog learning maths is delightful: earnest, doomed, and not applicable to real life.
And then, from Africa, Uncle Jack (Phil Reynolds) slouches home with his theology replaced by something infinitely more generous, more vibrant, and—in the eyes of parishioners—more suspiciously heathen. Jack’s mind is slipping its gears, his faith scrambled like an inattentive omelette. His presence doesn’t so much disturb the household equilibrium as toss it in the air, juggle it, and quietly put it down somewhere no one can find it anymore. He is, in his disintegration, achingly human—his memory dissolving even as the family’s already precarious economic lifeline dissolves with it.
And then, the dancing. Good God, the dancing. Those wild, pagan ruptures of joy where the Mundy sisters erupt into life, limbs flying like a flock of birds suddenly remembering the sky. These moments are undiluted freedom: brief, ecstatic rebellions against the tyranny of propriety and the eternal dampness of Donegal. Friel, being an honest dramatist rather than a sentimental one, knows joy cannot be kept. It must be paid back with interest.
Why the enduring appeal? Why the Olivier, the Tonys, the film, the near sainthood among theatre lovers? Because Friel, like Chekhov—who understood misery the way some people understand wine—writes about people living at the periphery of everything glamorous. Happiness, for them, arrives in fragments: a shared cigarette, a joke, a dance. Friel reminds us that the margins of society are often where its most stubborn humanity resides.
Which brings us—gratefully—to Tom O’Connor’s Loft Theatre production. The cast list reads like the local theatrical Illuminati, lovingly assembled and then unleashed on an unsuspecting audience. O’Connor directs with a poetic sensibility that borders on the mystical. He treats the play as though he discovered it carved into a standing stone. Everything he does hums with intelligence and a kind of wary reverence, as though he’s afraid to disturb something fragile and ancient.
The sisters—Ruth Herd, Leonie Slater, Rosie Pankhurst, Lorna Middleton and Tina Shinkwin—perform with such seamless unity they might as well share a nervous system. Each is formidable alone, but together they create a performance ecosystem: one sighing, laughing, aching organism. They glide through Friel’s lyrical dialogue with the naturalism of people who could do this in their sleep, but wouldn’t, because it matters too much.
Ted McGowan’s Gerry is the sort of man who flirts by accident. He is magnificent—equal parts hope and hopelessness. You’d be angry with him if he weren’t so irresistibly charming. Phil Reynolds, as Jack, gives a performance of heartbreaking delicacy, a slow, gentle unravelling that leaves threads of memory and dignity drifting across the stage. His calm embrace of Ugandan ritual over Irish doctrine is portrayed not as madness but as liberation—dangerous, beautiful, and utterly doomed in 1930s Donegal. Reynolds is Warwickshire's finest actor of his generation.
And Christopher Stanford’s Michael—the narrator, the ghost of boyhood past—guides us with a voice like warm smoke. His speeches are delivered with the confidence of a man who has stared down his own history and lived to turn it into prose. He binds the play together; without him, it might collapse into a series of exquisite vignettes. With him, it becomes a single, cohesive ache.
O’Connor’s production is not simply well executed—it is quietly, insistently superb. Poetic, humane, and shot through with the sort of melancholy radiance that theatre rarely attempts now. It feels less like watching a play and more like remembering a dream you once lived in.
You leave the theatre changed—not radically, not violently, but softly, as though some small hinge inside you has shifted. And, if you’re lucky, with the faint, private urge to dance.
With sumptuous settings, including luminosity from a sharp, very expensive new projection system, and with this level of direction and acting, please, do not miss this flawless triumph.
Bottom Line: ***** An immaculate conception from Tom O'Connor and the company of "Lughnasa."
Mark Pitt
"Lughnasa" Dances at the Loft.
Brian Friel Gets a Makeover: Tom O’Connor Drags Lughnasa into the Light with Warwickshire’s Acting Glitterati
Leonie Slater and Ruth Herd, (c) Loft Theatre
The Loft Theatre has assembled what, on paper, resembles a crack platoon of actors — though paper, being the most promiscuous of surfaces, will happily lend its virtue to any old codswallop. Still, this superb cohort is tramping off into the peat-sogged backlands of 1930s Ireland to resurrect Dancing at Lughnasa, Brian Friel’s fog-damp séance of a memory play. It drifts back to his Donegal boyhood like the dying wheeze of a céilí band heard through a sodden Aran jumper — sentimental, melodic, and smelling faintly of something that really oughtn’t be in your house.
Friel ladles out longing, gossip, and that low-level Catholic despondency that clings like turf smoke to a jumper your aunt knitted during a nervous breakdown. The Oliviers devoured it in 1991, of course — London always swoons when domestic misery is dressed in its Sunday-best poetry, like a drunk uncle suddenly speaking perfect Latin.
And yet one forgives The Loft its optimism, if only because this particular cast is the genuine article. Not since the Blitz has Leamington seen quite so many decorated civilians in such a confined space. Six of the eight boast Choppa.com “Best of” nominations, a distinction with the local gravitas of an unexpired parking voucher. To have Herd, Slater, McGowan, Reynolds, Pankhurst, and Middleton in the same rehearsal room is like discovering Branagh and Helen Hunt are running lines in your airing cupboard: absurd, intimate, and slightly inconvenient for the towels.
At the helm is Tom O’Connor, a director whose 2019 Hangmen was — and I say this as a man who once crossed the Atlantic for less — worth the airfare alone. Directors who inspire this sort of creative loyalty are rare; most can’t inspire loyalty from their own reflection. Take Phil Reynolds. I knew him in a previous, more civilised life, back before America took me hostage. He was always reliable, the sort of actor who could inject emotional peril into a shopping list. Twenty-five years on, his Essendine at the Talisman was a controlled detonation of hysteria — revelatory, exact, and one of the year’s best performances, no matter what the pseuds say.
Then come Slater and McGowan, the photogenic dual-engine of Warwickshire’s youth movement. I first saw them in 2022’s Midsummer, where they were… competent — which is the theatrical equivalent of “your child has a lovely personality.” But then Slater erupted into brilliance as Yelena in last year’s Vanya, and the pair followed it with a Constellations so delicate and prismatic it felt like two people falling in love in several dimensions at once.
Ruth Herd is also in it, which is reassuring, as she has the galling habit of demonstrating to an audience what acting is actually supposed to look like. Rosie Pankhurst improves any production simply by entering the building. And Lorna Middleton — luminous, heartbreaking, and radiating that ineffable “please give her better parts” energy — rounds out this improbably gilt-edged ensemble.
So yes — forgive the breathlessness. But I am, in a thoroughly undignified way, giddy for Lughnasa. It opens next week at The Loft, trundling through to December 13. If justice prevails, Donegal won’t know what hit it. Expectations are stratospheric — but since when has anyone willingly anticipated an evening of low ones?
No pressure, Tom.
Mark Pitt
Friel ladles out longing, gossip, and that low-level Catholic despondency that clings like turf smoke to a jumper your aunt knitted during a nervous breakdown. The Oliviers devoured it in 1991, of course — London always swoons when domestic misery is dressed in its Sunday-best poetry, like a drunk uncle suddenly speaking perfect Latin.
And yet one forgives The Loft its optimism, if only because this particular cast is the genuine article. Not since the Blitz has Leamington seen quite so many decorated civilians in such a confined space. Six of the eight boast Choppa.com “Best of” nominations, a distinction with the local gravitas of an unexpired parking voucher. To have Herd, Slater, McGowan, Reynolds, Pankhurst, and Middleton in the same rehearsal room is like discovering Branagh and Helen Hunt are running lines in your airing cupboard: absurd, intimate, and slightly inconvenient for the towels.
At the helm is Tom O’Connor, a director whose 2019 Hangmen was — and I say this as a man who once crossed the Atlantic for less — worth the airfare alone. Directors who inspire this sort of creative loyalty are rare; most can’t inspire loyalty from their own reflection. Take Phil Reynolds. I knew him in a previous, more civilised life, back before America took me hostage. He was always reliable, the sort of actor who could inject emotional peril into a shopping list. Twenty-five years on, his Essendine at the Talisman was a controlled detonation of hysteria — revelatory, exact, and one of the year’s best performances, no matter what the pseuds say.
Then come Slater and McGowan, the photogenic dual-engine of Warwickshire’s youth movement. I first saw them in 2022’s Midsummer, where they were… competent — which is the theatrical equivalent of “your child has a lovely personality.” But then Slater erupted into brilliance as Yelena in last year’s Vanya, and the pair followed it with a Constellations so delicate and prismatic it felt like two people falling in love in several dimensions at once.
Ruth Herd is also in it, which is reassuring, as she has the galling habit of demonstrating to an audience what acting is actually supposed to look like. Rosie Pankhurst improves any production simply by entering the building. And Lorna Middleton — luminous, heartbreaking, and radiating that ineffable “please give her better parts” energy — rounds out this improbably gilt-edged ensemble.
So yes — forgive the breathlessness. But I am, in a thoroughly undignified way, giddy for Lughnasa. It opens next week at The Loft, trundling through to December 13. If justice prevails, Donegal won’t know what hit it. Expectations are stratospheric — but since when has anyone willingly anticipated an evening of low ones?
No pressure, Tom.
Mark Pitt
"This World of Tomorrow." By and starring Tom Hanks. The Shed, New York City.
A Chrome-Plated Snow-Globe of Saccharine Sewage
New York: the city that shrink-wraps its own myth and flogs it to tourists for the price of a pretzel and a prayer. Shake the globe and watch the ambition glitter down like dandruff on destiny. Tom Hanks has been peddling the same tat for decades: the human Hallmark card, the dad who sobs at FedEx tracking numbers, the astronaut who salutes the flag with a single manly tear. Now he’s written a play, and the gift shop has annexed The Shed – a polyester cathedral of nostalgia so cloying it could pickle onions at fifty paces.Act One is a TED Talk that has eaten a history book and shat out a musical.
Corporate-coated eunuchs scuttle about like caffeinated squirrels, bellowing “TELEVISION!” as though they’ve just invented the wheel and it’s shaped like a toaster. Westinghouse! Futurama! The Miracle of the Automatic Can-Opener! It’s less theatre than a corporate away-day for the terminally optimistic, narrated by a barbershop quartet of Boy Scouts who’ve mainlined Ovaltine and optimism. Hanks himself toddles onstage, smaller than his own poster, beige as a beige thing in a beige sale, tripping over lines with the sheepish grin of a man who’s just farted in church and hopes the organ will cover it.The “plot” – stop sniggering at the back – involves time-travel, regret, and a romance so pre-digested it arrives with a side of Tums. Our hero ping-pongs between the 1939 World’s Fair and the 1964 one, collecting historical factoids like a bag lady hoards tins.
The stage erupts in projections: chrome phalluses, grinning housewives, a tomorrow so bright you’ll need welding goggles and a sick bag. It’s staggeringly impressive if your idea of culture is a screensaver with delusions of grandeur.Then – hallelujah and pass the tzatziki – Act Two lobs in Paul Murphy as Nico, a Greek diner proprietor who reeks of honesty, garlic, and glorious contempt for the rest of this drivel. His scenes are a kebab of wit and warmth, skewered and sizzling. For one brief, shining moment the play remembers it’s meant to have people in it, not animatronic nostalgia bots. Murphy is the only creature onstage who hasn’t been focus-grouped into a coma. One could preserve him in brine and use him to cauterise the surrounding treacle.
But fear not, the climax is upon us: a monsoon of MGM rain, trench coats flapping like wet albatrosses, an umbrella the size of a small moon. Hanks gets his girl – her past airbrushed with the moral rigour usually reserved for overdue parking fines – and they clinch in a puddle of pure, weaponised sentiment. Cue the string section, cue the confetti cannon, cue the slow-motion exit to the lobby where you can buy a commemorative snow globe of the snow globe of the snow globe you just endured.Technically, it’s a miracle: sets pirouette, lights copulate, the stage has swallowed a planetarium and burped up a laser show. Sonically, it purrs like a fridge full of tomorrow’s leftovers. But drama? Drama has been evicted, garroted, and buried under a pile of chrome-plated clichés.
This is Hollywood in fishnets, tottering onto Broadway and flashing its celluloid knickers. As cinema it might have induced mild diabetic shock; on stage it implodes like a soufflé in a hurricane of its own hot air.Hanks is a screen demigod because film forgives flab, filler, and flaccid scripting. Theatre is a cruel mistress: it demands blood, bone, and a pulse.
Here we get a chocolate fountain of nostalgia operated by a caterer who’s lost the will to live. The sole redeeming exhibit is Murphy’s diner – steaming, human, heroic. The rest is a World’s Fair of the soul where the only attraction is a gift shop selling disappointment in designer packaging.
Bottom Line: A Glittering Disaster in Two Acts
Mark Pitt
Corporate-coated eunuchs scuttle about like caffeinated squirrels, bellowing “TELEVISION!” as though they’ve just invented the wheel and it’s shaped like a toaster. Westinghouse! Futurama! The Miracle of the Automatic Can-Opener! It’s less theatre than a corporate away-day for the terminally optimistic, narrated by a barbershop quartet of Boy Scouts who’ve mainlined Ovaltine and optimism. Hanks himself toddles onstage, smaller than his own poster, beige as a beige thing in a beige sale, tripping over lines with the sheepish grin of a man who’s just farted in church and hopes the organ will cover it.The “plot” – stop sniggering at the back – involves time-travel, regret, and a romance so pre-digested it arrives with a side of Tums. Our hero ping-pongs between the 1939 World’s Fair and the 1964 one, collecting historical factoids like a bag lady hoards tins.
The stage erupts in projections: chrome phalluses, grinning housewives, a tomorrow so bright you’ll need welding goggles and a sick bag. It’s staggeringly impressive if your idea of culture is a screensaver with delusions of grandeur.Then – hallelujah and pass the tzatziki – Act Two lobs in Paul Murphy as Nico, a Greek diner proprietor who reeks of honesty, garlic, and glorious contempt for the rest of this drivel. His scenes are a kebab of wit and warmth, skewered and sizzling. For one brief, shining moment the play remembers it’s meant to have people in it, not animatronic nostalgia bots. Murphy is the only creature onstage who hasn’t been focus-grouped into a coma. One could preserve him in brine and use him to cauterise the surrounding treacle.
But fear not, the climax is upon us: a monsoon of MGM rain, trench coats flapping like wet albatrosses, an umbrella the size of a small moon. Hanks gets his girl – her past airbrushed with the moral rigour usually reserved for overdue parking fines – and they clinch in a puddle of pure, weaponised sentiment. Cue the string section, cue the confetti cannon, cue the slow-motion exit to the lobby where you can buy a commemorative snow globe of the snow globe of the snow globe you just endured.Technically, it’s a miracle: sets pirouette, lights copulate, the stage has swallowed a planetarium and burped up a laser show. Sonically, it purrs like a fridge full of tomorrow’s leftovers. But drama? Drama has been evicted, garroted, and buried under a pile of chrome-plated clichés.
This is Hollywood in fishnets, tottering onto Broadway and flashing its celluloid knickers. As cinema it might have induced mild diabetic shock; on stage it implodes like a soufflé in a hurricane of its own hot air.Hanks is a screen demigod because film forgives flab, filler, and flaccid scripting. Theatre is a cruel mistress: it demands blood, bone, and a pulse.
Here we get a chocolate fountain of nostalgia operated by a caterer who’s lost the will to live. The sole redeeming exhibit is Murphy’s diner – steaming, human, heroic. The rest is a World’s Fair of the soul where the only attraction is a gift shop selling disappointment in designer packaging.
Bottom Line: A Glittering Disaster in Two Acts
Mark Pitt
“The Pillowman: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups Who Should Know Better”
The Talisman Theatre's Production, Directed by Dave Crossfield
Ewen Weatherburn and Joanna Stevely in The Talisman's "Pillowman"
Credit Robert Warner for the Talisman Theatre
Credit Robert Warner for the Talisman Theatre
McDonagh’s Dark Fable Finds a World-Class Home in Warwickshire
There are plays that amuse and plays that accuse. The Pillowman does both — then pours itself a drink and asks you whether you’re proud of what you’ve just laughed at.
Martin McDonagh’s masterpiece of moral sleight of hand is set in an unnamed police state — the sort of bureaucratic dystopia where paperwork is sacred and children are not. It could be anywhere, but it feels uncomfortably close to America’s future or our own reflection in its Palantir mirror. The story follows Katurian K. Katurian, a writer of macabre fairy tales in which children die in elaborately poetic ways. When real children start turning up dead in precisely those fashions, Katurian is dragged into an interrogation by two policemen: one a silken bureaucrat, the other a brute with a badge.
The plot is a hall of mirrors. McDonagh, that wicked Irish puppeteer, gives us Kafka rewritten by the Brothers Grimm and directed by someone who doesn’t like either. The dialogue fizzes like a shorted wire: jokes spark in the darkness, laughter detonates, and then — almost immediately — we feel guilty for having laughed at all. Every gag is a moral tripwire. Every silence, a trapdoor.
McDonagh’s genius isn’t simply his gallows humour; it’s his theological curiosity. He asks the question most plays tiptoe around: does art make us cruel, or does it merely illustrate the cruelty we prefer not to name? Katurian’s stories are both evidence and absolution, her imagination both crime and confession. It’s an argument about censorship and culpability that feels chillingly relevant in a culture that prefers hashtags to complexity.
I saw The Pillowman first on Broadway years ago in 2003, where the production came armed with budgets, fame and Broadway’s neurotic self-importance. But the version now playing at the Talisman Theatre in Kenilworth is better. Yes, better — not “impressive for a local company,” not “remarkable for the provinces.” Simply, better.
Director Crossfield has done something rare and difficult: he has trusted the writing but refused to worship it. His staging is disciplined, unsentimental and alive to absurdity. Every pause feels loaded, every silence sharpened. The design — bright, metallic, pitiless — conjures a state apparatus that looks like a hospital designed by an interrogator. Lighting is crucial here: harsh fluorescent tubes that seem to cross-examine the actors as much as the characters do each other. When the play slips into Katurian’s stories, the world turns sickly sweet — nursery colours with the aftertaste of sedatives.
This is an intelligent aesthetic: the visual equivalent of eating too much candy and realising it’s been laced with arsenic.
And then there’s the cast — a company of such precision and power it’s almost indecent. Joanna Stevely plays Katurian not as a victim or a saint but as a woman both terrified and complicit in her own undoing. She gives the role a haunted intelligence, moving fluidly between flat-footed naturalism and the lyricism of the storyteller. She reminded me, unavoidably, of Elisabeth Moss in The Handmaid’s Tale — that same simmering intellect behind the eyes, that same brittle dignity when the system insists on breaking you. Stevely doesn’t act; she reveals.
Ruth MacCallum’s Detective Tupolski is something altogether different — feline, sardonic, exquisitely nasty. Her stillness is unnerving; her humour, lethal. There’s something of Sarah Lancashire’s calm authority in her work, but with a vein of steel running colder and deeper. Opposite her, Ewen Weatherburn’s Ariel looms like a brick wall with a temper. He’s funny, dangerous, magnetic — a man who could hug you or throttle you with the same hand and not know the difference until it was done. It’s the kind of performance that makes you grateful he’s on stage and not behind you in a queue.
Henri West’s Michal, Katurian’s damaged brother, could easily have been played for cheap pity. Instead, West gives him dimension and humour — an innocence that exposes everyone else’s moral deformity. He is both the play’s conscience and its most haunting ghost. Around them, Gaili Donaldson and Beverly Latham lend the flashback scenes as the Parents a grotesque tenderness that borders on the mythic, and Grace Sullivan, a child-actor of remarkable composure, makes her brief appearance genuinely disquieting. (No spoilers, but you’ll know when you see it.)
Together they create a world that feels airtight — as if the stage itself were a pressure chamber for guilt and storytelling.
Crossfield’s direction is methodical but not mechanical. He seems fascinated by the absurdity of authority and the quiet poetry of cruelty. There’s something Kafkaesque in his understanding that bureaucrats are scarier when they’re polite. The rhythm of the piece is taut but unhurried, letting the horror seep in like gas under a door.
And what a triumph for the Talisman Theatre — an institution sometimes pigeonholed as a home for well-behaved comedies and polished drawing-room dramas. Here, they’ve staged a play that could go toe-to-toe with the Royal Court or the Almeida. This is precisely the sort of programming that earns a regional theatre its reputation — brave, uncompromising, artistically literate.
Because The Pillowman isn’t “entertainment” in the customary sense. It’s a moral vivisection disguised as a dark fairy tale. It asks us to consider not just what stories mean, but what they do. The laughter it provokes is nervous, the silence that follows it, accusing. By the end, you don’t quite know whether you’ve been entertained or indicted — and that’s the point.
When the lights come up, you feel a strange gratitude that something this disturbing, this intelligent, this alive has been allowed to happen in a quiet corner of Warwickshire. You leave a little shaken, a little ashamed, and secretly proud to have witnessed it.
The Talisman’s Pillowman is not just superb local theatre. It’s an argument for why theatre still matters at all.
It is funny, fearless, and exquisitely impolite.
Mark Pitt
***** Definitive Brilliance from Dave Crossfield. A professional production.
There are plays that amuse and plays that accuse. The Pillowman does both — then pours itself a drink and asks you whether you’re proud of what you’ve just laughed at.
Martin McDonagh’s masterpiece of moral sleight of hand is set in an unnamed police state — the sort of bureaucratic dystopia where paperwork is sacred and children are not. It could be anywhere, but it feels uncomfortably close to America’s future or our own reflection in its Palantir mirror. The story follows Katurian K. Katurian, a writer of macabre fairy tales in which children die in elaborately poetic ways. When real children start turning up dead in precisely those fashions, Katurian is dragged into an interrogation by two policemen: one a silken bureaucrat, the other a brute with a badge.
The plot is a hall of mirrors. McDonagh, that wicked Irish puppeteer, gives us Kafka rewritten by the Brothers Grimm and directed by someone who doesn’t like either. The dialogue fizzes like a shorted wire: jokes spark in the darkness, laughter detonates, and then — almost immediately — we feel guilty for having laughed at all. Every gag is a moral tripwire. Every silence, a trapdoor.
McDonagh’s genius isn’t simply his gallows humour; it’s his theological curiosity. He asks the question most plays tiptoe around: does art make us cruel, or does it merely illustrate the cruelty we prefer not to name? Katurian’s stories are both evidence and absolution, her imagination both crime and confession. It’s an argument about censorship and culpability that feels chillingly relevant in a culture that prefers hashtags to complexity.
I saw The Pillowman first on Broadway years ago in 2003, where the production came armed with budgets, fame and Broadway’s neurotic self-importance. But the version now playing at the Talisman Theatre in Kenilworth is better. Yes, better — not “impressive for a local company,” not “remarkable for the provinces.” Simply, better.
Director Crossfield has done something rare and difficult: he has trusted the writing but refused to worship it. His staging is disciplined, unsentimental and alive to absurdity. Every pause feels loaded, every silence sharpened. The design — bright, metallic, pitiless — conjures a state apparatus that looks like a hospital designed by an interrogator. Lighting is crucial here: harsh fluorescent tubes that seem to cross-examine the actors as much as the characters do each other. When the play slips into Katurian’s stories, the world turns sickly sweet — nursery colours with the aftertaste of sedatives.
This is an intelligent aesthetic: the visual equivalent of eating too much candy and realising it’s been laced with arsenic.
And then there’s the cast — a company of such precision and power it’s almost indecent. Joanna Stevely plays Katurian not as a victim or a saint but as a woman both terrified and complicit in her own undoing. She gives the role a haunted intelligence, moving fluidly between flat-footed naturalism and the lyricism of the storyteller. She reminded me, unavoidably, of Elisabeth Moss in The Handmaid’s Tale — that same simmering intellect behind the eyes, that same brittle dignity when the system insists on breaking you. Stevely doesn’t act; she reveals.
Ruth MacCallum’s Detective Tupolski is something altogether different — feline, sardonic, exquisitely nasty. Her stillness is unnerving; her humour, lethal. There’s something of Sarah Lancashire’s calm authority in her work, but with a vein of steel running colder and deeper. Opposite her, Ewen Weatherburn’s Ariel looms like a brick wall with a temper. He’s funny, dangerous, magnetic — a man who could hug you or throttle you with the same hand and not know the difference until it was done. It’s the kind of performance that makes you grateful he’s on stage and not behind you in a queue.
Henri West’s Michal, Katurian’s damaged brother, could easily have been played for cheap pity. Instead, West gives him dimension and humour — an innocence that exposes everyone else’s moral deformity. He is both the play’s conscience and its most haunting ghost. Around them, Gaili Donaldson and Beverly Latham lend the flashback scenes as the Parents a grotesque tenderness that borders on the mythic, and Grace Sullivan, a child-actor of remarkable composure, makes her brief appearance genuinely disquieting. (No spoilers, but you’ll know when you see it.)
Together they create a world that feels airtight — as if the stage itself were a pressure chamber for guilt and storytelling.
Crossfield’s direction is methodical but not mechanical. He seems fascinated by the absurdity of authority and the quiet poetry of cruelty. There’s something Kafkaesque in his understanding that bureaucrats are scarier when they’re polite. The rhythm of the piece is taut but unhurried, letting the horror seep in like gas under a door.
And what a triumph for the Talisman Theatre — an institution sometimes pigeonholed as a home for well-behaved comedies and polished drawing-room dramas. Here, they’ve staged a play that could go toe-to-toe with the Royal Court or the Almeida. This is precisely the sort of programming that earns a regional theatre its reputation — brave, uncompromising, artistically literate.
Because The Pillowman isn’t “entertainment” in the customary sense. It’s a moral vivisection disguised as a dark fairy tale. It asks us to consider not just what stories mean, but what they do. The laughter it provokes is nervous, the silence that follows it, accusing. By the end, you don’t quite know whether you’ve been entertained or indicted — and that’s the point.
When the lights come up, you feel a strange gratitude that something this disturbing, this intelligent, this alive has been allowed to happen in a quiet corner of Warwickshire. You leave a little shaken, a little ashamed, and secretly proud to have witnessed it.
The Talisman’s Pillowman is not just superb local theatre. It’s an argument for why theatre still matters at all.
It is funny, fearless, and exquisitely impolite.
Mark Pitt
***** Definitive Brilliance from Dave Crossfield. A professional production.
The "Would've Been" Choppa.com Awards
The Choppa.com Theatre Awards 2024/25 – The Results (Unceremoniously Announced)
There will be no ceremony this year. No clinking glasses, no polite applause echoing off hired walls, no half-hearted laughter at a joke that wasn’t meant to be funny. The Priory Theatre, ever the gracious host, withdrew its offer to hold the evening on November 9th, leaving us with that peculiarly British pastime — dignified disappointment.
Still, theatre is an obstinate beast. It persists. And so, without the bother of bunting, badges, or the solemnity of engraved glassware, we present — in digital ink and plainspoken honesty — the results of what would have been the Choppa.com Theatre Awards for 2024/25.
It would have been nice, of course, to gather. To swap knowing smiles over cheap Prosecco and pretend that competition and camaraderie are the same thing. But in the absence of all that ceremony, we’re left with something better: the quiet, enduring admiration for those who make the impossible look effortless — who light a stage, lift a line, and remind us that storytelling is still a communal act of faith.
Here’s to the winners, the nearly-winners, and the tireless few who keep the curtains moving. May next year bring us together again — and, with luck, fewer speeches and a lot more engraved glass! Mark Pitt
There will be no ceremony this year. No clinking glasses, no polite applause echoing off hired walls, no half-hearted laughter at a joke that wasn’t meant to be funny. The Priory Theatre, ever the gracious host, withdrew its offer to hold the evening on November 9th, leaving us with that peculiarly British pastime — dignified disappointment.
Still, theatre is an obstinate beast. It persists. And so, without the bother of bunting, badges, or the solemnity of engraved glassware, we present — in digital ink and plainspoken honesty — the results of what would have been the Choppa.com Theatre Awards for 2024/25.
It would have been nice, of course, to gather. To swap knowing smiles over cheap Prosecco and pretend that competition and camaraderie are the same thing. But in the absence of all that ceremony, we’re left with something better: the quiet, enduring admiration for those who make the impossible look effortless — who light a stage, lift a line, and remind us that storytelling is still a communal act of faith.
Here’s to the winners, the nearly-winners, and the tireless few who keep the curtains moving. May next year bring us together again — and, with luck, fewer speeches and a lot more engraved glass! Mark Pitt
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A Ghost Story that Dies of Thirst.
The Cage Protects Me, By Giles Allen-Bowden, who also directs.
The Loft Theatre, Leamington, Now Running.
The Loft Theatre, Leamington, Now Running.
The Cage Protects Me: Photo Credit, The Loft Theatre
There’s a town in Texas called Drylake — a name so on-the-nose it could have been invented by a novelist still learning irony. It’s your standard American hinterland: God, guns and discount petrol. The Cage Protects Me, Giles Allen-Bowden’s latest exercise in self-regard, sets out to haunt this landscape and ends up haunting the audience’s patience instead.
Red — Peter Daly-Dixon, built like a man who can fix tractors but not his feelings — is accused of bringing wolves into town. Why, how, or whether anyone should care remains a mystery, least of all to the playwright. His wife and daughter are dead — not tragically, just administratively. Grace reappears as a ghost, her blood-red smudge looking more Dulux Autumn Blush than death, while Red sulks in a boarded-up church prettified with ivy, as if Miss Havisham had joined the Southern Baptists.
The set is a Pinterest board of American decay: cracked drywall, graffiti, and one lone stained-glass window still clinging to faith and warranty. The lighting is merciless — bright enough to show every flaw.
Anna Butcher - yes, the excellent Anna Butcher - enters as Elan, whose car has broken down because metaphors have hazard lights. She’s dressed in corporate blue satin and slacks that whisper middle management. Her dead husband staggers on at the end of Act One in a moment so overwrought it could have been staged by a Ouija board with an Equity card.
By then, the audience has achieved the stillness of a crime scene. A few clap out of reflex — the theatrical equivalent of saying “thank you” to a vending machine. The play wanted to be an omen; it settles for a séance in a service station.
Allen-Bowden’s script is a swamp of the mundane, monologues and self-pity. Repetition is mistaken for rhythm, opacity for depth. Whatever allegory about ghosts, grief or guilt he intended remains trapped inside his own skull, rattling for release.
I left at the interval, not wondering who summoned the wolves, but whether Elan ever found a mechanic — and whether he charged extra for emotional labour.
Bottom line: A cast of experienced Loft actors that deserves hazard pay; a play that deserves exorcism. The Cage Protects Me doesn’t so much run dry as evaporate entirely.
Mark Pitt
Red — Peter Daly-Dixon, built like a man who can fix tractors but not his feelings — is accused of bringing wolves into town. Why, how, or whether anyone should care remains a mystery, least of all to the playwright. His wife and daughter are dead — not tragically, just administratively. Grace reappears as a ghost, her blood-red smudge looking more Dulux Autumn Blush than death, while Red sulks in a boarded-up church prettified with ivy, as if Miss Havisham had joined the Southern Baptists.
The set is a Pinterest board of American decay: cracked drywall, graffiti, and one lone stained-glass window still clinging to faith and warranty. The lighting is merciless — bright enough to show every flaw.
Anna Butcher - yes, the excellent Anna Butcher - enters as Elan, whose car has broken down because metaphors have hazard lights. She’s dressed in corporate blue satin and slacks that whisper middle management. Her dead husband staggers on at the end of Act One in a moment so overwrought it could have been staged by a Ouija board with an Equity card.
By then, the audience has achieved the stillness of a crime scene. A few clap out of reflex — the theatrical equivalent of saying “thank you” to a vending machine. The play wanted to be an omen; it settles for a séance in a service station.
Allen-Bowden’s script is a swamp of the mundane, monologues and self-pity. Repetition is mistaken for rhythm, opacity for depth. Whatever allegory about ghosts, grief or guilt he intended remains trapped inside his own skull, rattling for release.
I left at the interval, not wondering who summoned the wolves, but whether Elan ever found a mechanic — and whether he charged extra for emotional labour.
Bottom line: A cast of experienced Loft actors that deserves hazard pay; a play that deserves exorcism. The Cage Protects Me doesn’t so much run dry as evaporate entirely.
Mark Pitt
Director Connor Cunningham is
One to Watch.
The Priory's Wonderfully Tongue-in-Cheek "The Revival" is Perfectly Pitched.
Photo Credit The Priory Theatre, The Cast of The Revival.
Plays about the theatre are the dramatic equivalent of cannibalism — actors chewing on the scenery, and occasionally each other. Add ghosts and parody, and you’ve cooked up a consommé of catastrophe. It’s the sort of undertaking that should come with a priest, a fire extinguisher, and an apology. Yet, astonishingly, this fearless young company takes the dare — and somehow turns the whole soufflé of potential disaster into something that rises, quivers, and holds its shape long enough to be glorious.
The Revival is a play about a play called Scared to Death — a title so sublimely idiotic it ought to win a BAFTA for irony. We’re in the final rehearsal of a 1940s ghost pot-boiler, staged in a theatre that smells faintly of varnish, old tights and unrealised dreams. The cast are a taxonomy of theatrical neurosis: an ingénue who looks as if she was born in soft focus but can’t remember a line to save her soul; a grande dame who remembers every line ever written and insists on performing them all tonight; and two world-weary professionals clinging to irony like a life raft made of gin. Add a ghost story, and the show takes on something ridiculously hedonistic.
Presiding over this joyous chaos is the director, Michael Prentice (the excellent Ben Smith) — a man in black who exudes authority and mild despair in equal measure. He doesn’t so much direct as herd, soothe and occasionally sedate. As the rehearsal disintegrates into flickering lights and frayed tempers, the line between play, parody and possession becomes as blurred as an Equity contract. The “curse” of Scared to Death — supposedly unstageable, unwatchable, fatally daft — begins to feel less like superstition and more like documentary realism.
Rose Bird’s Sophie flutters prettily through her own incompetence, while Jo Banbury’s imperious Diane stalks the stage like Dame Judi with a hangover. Alex Brown and Dan McAteer provide the whisky-dry ballast that stops the piece from floating off into camp oblivion, and Natasha Lee, as theatre historian Gillian Heath, delivers her ghostly warnings with the kind of seductive authority that could make the shipping forecast sound like foreplay.
But the evening belongs to debutant director Connor Cunningham, whose taut, precise, and elegantly unfussy direction turns potential chaos into craft. He understands that the material is pure repertory hokum — Rep, circa 1946 — and plays it straight, trusting the cast to supply the sparkle. The result is theatre that remembers what theatre is supposed to be: entertaining, communal, and blissfully free of ironic detachment.
In an age when regional houses import quiz-show celebrities to flog nostalgia and ticket sales, it’s invigorating to see a company brave enough to play with form, fear, and farce — and actually win.
Bottom line: A fabulous evening. Pure, unbridled entertainment, delivered by one of the best casts and sharpest new directors to grace The Priory in a long time. The Revival doesn’t just raise the dead — it reminds you why theatre’s still alive.
Mark Pitt
The Revival is a play about a play called Scared to Death — a title so sublimely idiotic it ought to win a BAFTA for irony. We’re in the final rehearsal of a 1940s ghost pot-boiler, staged in a theatre that smells faintly of varnish, old tights and unrealised dreams. The cast are a taxonomy of theatrical neurosis: an ingénue who looks as if she was born in soft focus but can’t remember a line to save her soul; a grande dame who remembers every line ever written and insists on performing them all tonight; and two world-weary professionals clinging to irony like a life raft made of gin. Add a ghost story, and the show takes on something ridiculously hedonistic.
Presiding over this joyous chaos is the director, Michael Prentice (the excellent Ben Smith) — a man in black who exudes authority and mild despair in equal measure. He doesn’t so much direct as herd, soothe and occasionally sedate. As the rehearsal disintegrates into flickering lights and frayed tempers, the line between play, parody and possession becomes as blurred as an Equity contract. The “curse” of Scared to Death — supposedly unstageable, unwatchable, fatally daft — begins to feel less like superstition and more like documentary realism.
Rose Bird’s Sophie flutters prettily through her own incompetence, while Jo Banbury’s imperious Diane stalks the stage like Dame Judi with a hangover. Alex Brown and Dan McAteer provide the whisky-dry ballast that stops the piece from floating off into camp oblivion, and Natasha Lee, as theatre historian Gillian Heath, delivers her ghostly warnings with the kind of seductive authority that could make the shipping forecast sound like foreplay.
But the evening belongs to debutant director Connor Cunningham, whose taut, precise, and elegantly unfussy direction turns potential chaos into craft. He understands that the material is pure repertory hokum — Rep, circa 1946 — and plays it straight, trusting the cast to supply the sparkle. The result is theatre that remembers what theatre is supposed to be: entertaining, communal, and blissfully free of ironic detachment.
In an age when regional houses import quiz-show celebrities to flog nostalgia and ticket sales, it’s invigorating to see a company brave enough to play with form, fear, and farce — and actually win.
Bottom line: A fabulous evening. Pure, unbridled entertainment, delivered by one of the best casts and sharpest new directors to grace The Priory in a long time. The Revival doesn’t just raise the dead — it reminds you why theatre’s still alive.
Mark Pitt
The Cage Protects Me: A Ghost Story Beneath a Texan Moon
Giles Allen Bowden's Play is Loft Theatre Main Stage-Bound from October 31st.
Photo Credit: The Loft Theatre. Anna Butcher, Luca Catena and Julien Rosa in The Cage Protects Me.
Preview: The Cage Protects Me by Giles Allen-Bowden
A Ghost Story in Texas—Presumably with Wolves and Existentialism
The Loft Theatre, Main Stage from October 31st
Directed by Giles Allen-Bowden
In keeping with the ghoulish season—and because nothing says “Halloween” like unexplained carnage and metaphorical catharsis—The Loft unleashes The Cage Protects Me, written and directed by Giles Allen-Bowden, who seems to have wrestled both script and vision into submission like some theatrical Steve Irwin.
I understand the piece had a reading in the Loft's Studio some time ago. Now, it’s deemed ripe for the Main Stage—a testament both to the writer and to the robustness of his material.
The Cage Protects Me is billed as a ghost story, though one suspects it’s the kind of ghost story where the ghosts all have complicated feelings and unresolved trauma. Set in the imaginatively named Texan town of Drylake—because presumably Moistgulch didn't make the shortlist—the premise goes something like this: “Each night a pack of wolves descend upon the town, leaving one survivor.”
Now. One would think that when such rumours got around, the locals might consider locking their doors, ordering in a pizza, and watching Love Is Blind. But then, this is Texas. And but for NASA, most of the population remains so backward that Larry Hagman has only just started at Southfork. It’s the America of bigger, better, more—more guns, more brawn, more BBQ. If Texas were personified, it would be Chuck Norris. I digress.
Also—within the preview text—it’s unclear: is it one person who survives each night, or one wolf? Is it a massacre or a cull? Is the survivor blessed, cursed, or simply bad at running? Perhaps that’s the horror. Or the twist. Or the budgetary compromise. Either way, we shall find out.
The Loft’s Instagram helpfully describes the piece as “a perfect Halloween watch, exploring the human relationship with horror and our ability to react to that which is beyond our understanding.” Which is either a synopsis, or the small print on a Ryanair flight.
Giles calls it “a twisted journey of self-discovery,” which sounds intriguing—but also like something scribbled on a whiteboard in a gap year hostel in Peru. Apparently, it’s “about a woman who discovers who she is in a new and dire environment.” One assumes Miss Butcher—Anna Butcher, that is, from Spring Awakening—already had a decent working knowledge of who she was before rehearsals began. One hopes the “dire environment” refers to the narrative setting and not the venue’s plumbing.
Still, Miss Butcher is reliably compelling, and if anyone can discover the inner truth of a woman stalked by metaphysical wolves in a dustbowl hellscape, it’s probably her.
Joining her is Peter Daly-Dixon, who radiates the sort of presence that says, “If I kill you, it'll be quick,” which is exactly what you want in either a werewolf thriller or a one-man Macbeth.
The superb Luca Catena also features, along with the increasingly omnipresent Julien Rosa, who I’m convinced is legally required to appear in every theatrical production staged ever. He’s like theatrical seasoning—you just sprinkle him on and the whole thing tastes better. That is, apart from in a recent thriller at The Talisman, during which the director insisted on murdering the reputations of the cast in what can only be described as a vendetta.
All in all, The Cage Protects Me sounds intriguing, even if it leans heavily on the sort of moody ambiguity that lets critics say “haunting” without really committing. It may well be a hidden gem of the season—or a blood-soaked TED Talk in a Southern accent. But it has wolves. It has ghosts. And it has Anna Butcher finding herself.
What more do you want? Closure?
Just don’t be the last one left in the theatre when the house lights go up.
One survivor, remember.
Mark Pitt
A Ghost Story in Texas—Presumably with Wolves and Existentialism
The Loft Theatre, Main Stage from October 31st
Directed by Giles Allen-Bowden
In keeping with the ghoulish season—and because nothing says “Halloween” like unexplained carnage and metaphorical catharsis—The Loft unleashes The Cage Protects Me, written and directed by Giles Allen-Bowden, who seems to have wrestled both script and vision into submission like some theatrical Steve Irwin.
I understand the piece had a reading in the Loft's Studio some time ago. Now, it’s deemed ripe for the Main Stage—a testament both to the writer and to the robustness of his material.
The Cage Protects Me is billed as a ghost story, though one suspects it’s the kind of ghost story where the ghosts all have complicated feelings and unresolved trauma. Set in the imaginatively named Texan town of Drylake—because presumably Moistgulch didn't make the shortlist—the premise goes something like this: “Each night a pack of wolves descend upon the town, leaving one survivor.”
Now. One would think that when such rumours got around, the locals might consider locking their doors, ordering in a pizza, and watching Love Is Blind. But then, this is Texas. And but for NASA, most of the population remains so backward that Larry Hagman has only just started at Southfork. It’s the America of bigger, better, more—more guns, more brawn, more BBQ. If Texas were personified, it would be Chuck Norris. I digress.
Also—within the preview text—it’s unclear: is it one person who survives each night, or one wolf? Is it a massacre or a cull? Is the survivor blessed, cursed, or simply bad at running? Perhaps that’s the horror. Or the twist. Or the budgetary compromise. Either way, we shall find out.
The Loft’s Instagram helpfully describes the piece as “a perfect Halloween watch, exploring the human relationship with horror and our ability to react to that which is beyond our understanding.” Which is either a synopsis, or the small print on a Ryanair flight.
Giles calls it “a twisted journey of self-discovery,” which sounds intriguing—but also like something scribbled on a whiteboard in a gap year hostel in Peru. Apparently, it’s “about a woman who discovers who she is in a new and dire environment.” One assumes Miss Butcher—Anna Butcher, that is, from Spring Awakening—already had a decent working knowledge of who she was before rehearsals began. One hopes the “dire environment” refers to the narrative setting and not the venue’s plumbing.
Still, Miss Butcher is reliably compelling, and if anyone can discover the inner truth of a woman stalked by metaphysical wolves in a dustbowl hellscape, it’s probably her.
Joining her is Peter Daly-Dixon, who radiates the sort of presence that says, “If I kill you, it'll be quick,” which is exactly what you want in either a werewolf thriller or a one-man Macbeth.
The superb Luca Catena also features, along with the increasingly omnipresent Julien Rosa, who I’m convinced is legally required to appear in every theatrical production staged ever. He’s like theatrical seasoning—you just sprinkle him on and the whole thing tastes better. That is, apart from in a recent thriller at The Talisman, during which the director insisted on murdering the reputations of the cast in what can only be described as a vendetta.
All in all, The Cage Protects Me sounds intriguing, even if it leans heavily on the sort of moody ambiguity that lets critics say “haunting” without really committing. It may well be a hidden gem of the season—or a blood-soaked TED Talk in a Southern accent. But it has wolves. It has ghosts. And it has Anna Butcher finding herself.
What more do you want? Closure?
Just don’t be the last one left in the theatre when the house lights go up.
One survivor, remember.
Mark Pitt
Preview: The Revival, a "Spooky Comedy," at The Priory Theatre, Kenilworth.
The Priory Theatre in Kenilworth, that plucky little stage with the charm of a widowed aunt who once snogged Gielgud in a gin-fuelled haze, is thrusting James Cawood’s The Revival upon us. It’s a ghost story, naturally, about a rehearsal that goes spectacularly, gleefully tits-up—a play about a play haunted by another play, which is the sort of self-referential twaddle that makes theatre nerds weak at the knees and normal people reach for the gin. Imagine Pirandello slumming it in a Hammer Horror flick.
Let’s not dwell. The "cast" are stumbling through their final dress of a 1946 potboiler called—brace yourself—Scared to Death. Yes, a title so gloriously hackneyed it could headline a season at the Winchester Theatre Royal or that Brighton Pier Theatre that went up in flames, which is precisely the point. Plays about theatre are a tightrope act: one step, and you’re either in Woman in Black territory or drowning in a vat of melodramatic syrup. I’m hoping for the former, but I’ll keep my lobotomy-grade optimism in check.
The Priory itself is a character, all wonky beams and whispers of its own ghosts—coughs from nowhere, drafts with a vendetta, and locals swearing the place is haunted with the fervour of a WI meeting discussing UFOs. The town’s puritanical streak doesn’t help: posters deemed too saucy or spooky get the censor’s snip, lending the whole affair a delicious whiff of forbidden fruit. You half expect to find a vicar outside, clutching a Bible and a red pen. So, we’ll perch in the musty dark, ears pricked for a breeze that’s not a breeze, and surrender to The Revival’s dual delights: part ghostly chill, part theatrical cock-up, all wrapped in a title so gloriously daft it’s practically a dare. Directed by Connor Cunningham, it creaks into life from October 25. If Kenilworth’s prudes have defaced the poster, take it as a sign: this town’s not ready for what’s coming. Neither, perhaps, are we.
Mark Pitt
Photo Credit: The Priory Theatre Company.
Let’s not dwell. The "cast" are stumbling through their final dress of a 1946 potboiler called—brace yourself—Scared to Death. Yes, a title so gloriously hackneyed it could headline a season at the Winchester Theatre Royal or that Brighton Pier Theatre that went up in flames, which is precisely the point. Plays about theatre are a tightrope act: one step, and you’re either in Woman in Black territory or drowning in a vat of melodramatic syrup. I’m hoping for the former, but I’ll keep my lobotomy-grade optimism in check.
The Priory itself is a character, all wonky beams and whispers of its own ghosts—coughs from nowhere, drafts with a vendetta, and locals swearing the place is haunted with the fervour of a WI meeting discussing UFOs. The town’s puritanical streak doesn’t help: posters deemed too saucy or spooky get the censor’s snip, lending the whole affair a delicious whiff of forbidden fruit. You half expect to find a vicar outside, clutching a Bible and a red pen. So, we’ll perch in the musty dark, ears pricked for a breeze that’s not a breeze, and surrender to The Revival’s dual delights: part ghostly chill, part theatrical cock-up, all wrapped in a title so gloriously daft it’s practically a dare. Directed by Connor Cunningham, it creaks into life from October 25. If Kenilworth’s prudes have defaced the poster, take it as a sign: this town’s not ready for what’s coming. Neither, perhaps, are we.
Mark Pitt
Photo Credit: The Priory Theatre Company.
“How to Smother a Play with a Pillow (and Call It Sensitivity)”
Dave Crossfield directs "The Pillowman" for The Talisman, Kenilworth. Opening November 3rd.
Photography by kind permission of Robert Warner.
Of course, there’s always more behind it when a theatre folds faster than an origami swan at the first whimper of complaint. The Talisman Theatre, bless its trembling knees, has reportedly altered a poster because someone’s feelings were ruffled. The irony is so monumental it ought to be UNESCO-listed: McDonagh’s The Pillowman is about precisely this — the slow suffocation of art under the smothering pillow of moral propriety. Dave Crossfield’s directing it soon, which feels like divine timing, if the gods of irony have a calendar.
It’s always been the favourite pastime of the thin-skinned and the thick-headed to police art. From Stalin’s war on Shostakovich to the Twitterati’s persecution of Gary Lineker for thinking out loud — the urge to disinfect expression is eternal. Different uniforms, same impulse. The censor is never far away; these days, they just smell faintly of oat milk and Pilates.
Those most offended by art are usually those least acquainted with it. They live in a scented fog of comfort — their lives curated by algorithms and scented candles, where risk is something you do with a new hair serum. They sip their moral smoothies, smiling through veneers of ethical consumption, mistaking tepid decency for intellect. They want art that flatters their virtue, not challenges their vanity. It’s like feeding foie gras to someone who insists they’re gluten-free.
So, a toast to Dave Crossfield, whose irritation at the Talisman’s capitulation is as refreshing as a slap in the foyer. Crossfield is one of the few who still believes theatre is meant to bruise a bit. He’s an honest sort — part actor, part tradesman, part heretic — and I’d wager his direction will have more blood and spit than all the scented lamentations of the committee combined.
It’s high time someone scraped the congealed aspiration off community theatre. The problem isn’t the actors; it’s the administrators — the Nancy-on-the-board brigade who confuse art with outreach and think “edgy” means dimming the lights. They prune and preen until there’s nothing left but a decorative husk, a kind of dramatic bonsai tended by people allergic to passion.
Let’s not pretend this is about a poster. It’s about the slow lobotomy of theatre. About the creeping consensus that art must never discomfort the paying guest. And if the Talisman wants to keep pandering, they might as well rename themselves “The Safe Space for Performing Arts Therapy.” Because once you start censoring, you stop creating.
So go on, do Hello, Dolly! again. Dust off the Agathas. Redo the Russells. Watch the audience age before your eyes until the only thing left on stage is nostalgia itself, clutching a programme and wondering where the theatre went.
The Pillowman opens in Kenilworth on November 3rd.
Mark Pitt**
** The author saw the original production of Martin McDonagh's play in New York.
It’s always been the favourite pastime of the thin-skinned and the thick-headed to police art. From Stalin’s war on Shostakovich to the Twitterati’s persecution of Gary Lineker for thinking out loud — the urge to disinfect expression is eternal. Different uniforms, same impulse. The censor is never far away; these days, they just smell faintly of oat milk and Pilates.
Those most offended by art are usually those least acquainted with it. They live in a scented fog of comfort — their lives curated by algorithms and scented candles, where risk is something you do with a new hair serum. They sip their moral smoothies, smiling through veneers of ethical consumption, mistaking tepid decency for intellect. They want art that flatters their virtue, not challenges their vanity. It’s like feeding foie gras to someone who insists they’re gluten-free.
So, a toast to Dave Crossfield, whose irritation at the Talisman’s capitulation is as refreshing as a slap in the foyer. Crossfield is one of the few who still believes theatre is meant to bruise a bit. He’s an honest sort — part actor, part tradesman, part heretic — and I’d wager his direction will have more blood and spit than all the scented lamentations of the committee combined.
It’s high time someone scraped the congealed aspiration off community theatre. The problem isn’t the actors; it’s the administrators — the Nancy-on-the-board brigade who confuse art with outreach and think “edgy” means dimming the lights. They prune and preen until there’s nothing left but a decorative husk, a kind of dramatic bonsai tended by people allergic to passion.
Let’s not pretend this is about a poster. It’s about the slow lobotomy of theatre. About the creeping consensus that art must never discomfort the paying guest. And if the Talisman wants to keep pandering, they might as well rename themselves “The Safe Space for Performing Arts Therapy.” Because once you start censoring, you stop creating.
So go on, do Hello, Dolly! again. Dust off the Agathas. Redo the Russells. Watch the audience age before your eyes until the only thing left on stage is nostalgia itself, clutching a programme and wondering where the theatre went.
The Pillowman opens in Kenilworth on November 3rd.
Mark Pitt**
** The author saw the original production of Martin McDonagh's play in New York.
Rugby Theatre’s small-town miracle that humbles Broadway and restores your faith in people.
COME FROM AWAY, A NEW MUSICAL.
Directed by Mark Tolchard
written by Irene Sankoff and David Hein
Rugby Theatre, Through October 26th.
SOME TICKETS REMAIN, from £20.00
There are two sorts of musicals in the world. The first arrives in sequins, grinning like a labradoodle on Red Bull, all jazz hands and misplaced confidence — a giddy spectacle determined to entertain you whether you like it or not. It smells faintly of dry ice and ambition. The second creeps in quietly, holding a tray of sandwiches and the best of human nature, and before you’ve finished your tea it’s rearranged your emotional furniture. Come From Away is gloriously, stubbornly, and thank God, the latter.
It tells the true story of Gander, Newfoundland — a town that sounds fictional even to Canadians, the geographical equivalent of the bit of the map where cartographers used to write “Here Be Moose.” In the stunned, trembling days after 9/11, when the skies emptied and hearts filled with horror, thirty-eight planes carrying seven thousand frightened strangers were diverted there — to a population barely big enough to run a raffle.
The locals, whose accents meander somewhere between Irish pub and pirate radio, did what humans used to do before we outsourced empathy to hashtags: they put the kettle on, baked, hugged, shared, sang, and poured. It could have been unwatchably twee — a syrupy sermon in plaid about the healing power of casseroles — but it isn’t. It’s brisk, irreverent, and unexpectedly profound, a foot-stomping hymn to decency performed in sturdy boots.
And now Rugby Theatre — a company with more soul than The Apollo, Harlem — has given us a version that’s not so much a reproduction as a resurrection. Forget pyrotechnics and falling chandeliers; this is theatre stripped of its affectations and given a working pulse. From the first pounding drum of Welcome to the Rock, you know you’re in the company of believers — actor-musicians who don’t just play the notes, they mean them. They are definitive. They are glorious, they are incandescently superb.
Director Mark Tolchard and musical director Jamie Payne have achieved the kind of symbiotic perfection that makes critics suspicious. It’s as if they’ve taken the Broadway original and scrubbed it free of its neon to reveal the grain of real life underneath. What’s left is something tougher, warmer, truer — a musical with calloused hands and a generous heart.
Naming individuals almost feels vulgar when the ensemble functions as one — a communal heartbeat in iffy, borrowed clothing. Still, John Andrews, Steve Bingham, Kenny Robinson and company deserve the quiet awe reserved for those rare nights when everything works. The singing soars without sentimentality, the choreography stomps and shimmies with frontier pragmatism, and the emotion — sharp, unsentimental, utterly earned — sneaks up like a pint of good whiskey.
Libby Lowe (Airline Captain Bass) affords us the kind of performance that people pay a few hundred quid to see on Broadway, her acting is faultless, her voice, well one of God's angels is missing theirs. But no, let's not dwell on individuals when the show relies on the sum of the parts to achieve luminosity. This isn’t a show about stars; it’s about the alchemy of the collective, a group of actor-musicians who stomp, shimmy, and sing with the pragmatic poetry of a frontier barn dance.
Ninety minutes vanish in a heartbeat. You’d happily sit through another ninety, because this is one of those rare evenings where art and humanity shake hands and mean it. You leave blinking, a little tearful, half-ashamed of your earlier cynicism. It’s not just a musical; it’s a reminder that kindness is contagious, and decency, when sung loudly enough, can still bring the house down.
Of course, idiot me stood up too early. I’m that bloke — the one who applauds after the first movement of a symphony and spends the rest of the night pretending it was irony. But then, I went to a comp, a red-brick university, and I hold a season ticket for Coventry City. My theatre doesn’t need chandeliers or cut-glass accents — it needs to be raw, relevant, and truthful. And that’s exactly what this production delivers: no artifice, no pretension, just the pulse of people doing something honest and extraordinary together. Unmissable.
The Verdict⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rugby Theatre’s Come From Away is, quite simply, flawless — not for a local company, not for anything, but flawless.
Mark Pitt**
**The author also saw the original production in New York City, early in its Broadway run.
“Come From Away Touches Down in Rugby”
Come From Away at Rugby is one of two productions of the musical being staged in Warwickshire over the next few months. Kenilworth’s Priory Theatre also sees a staging, directed by Nicki Main. Meanwhile, Rugby Theatre’s production opens this Friday, the 17th.
I first saw Come From Away after spotting it at the TKTS half-price booth in New York City — and I loved it. It’s a folksy piece, but earthy, real, and grounded (if you’ll excuse the pun). Was there one? Yes — Grounded.
Come From Away is that rarest of theatrical creatures: a musical about decency that doesn’t make you want to chew your own arm off. It tells the story of 38 planes diverted to Gander, Newfoundland, on 9/11 — a place so small it makes “remote” sound metropolitan. The locals, hardy as cod and twice as generous, turn mass displacement into a festival of tea and casseroles. It ought to be unbearable — all those accents, all that earnestness — but it isn’t. It’s brisk, funny, and gloriously unsentimental. You leave the theatre blinking, slightly ashamed of your cynicism, thinking that if the end of the world ever comes, you’d quite like to be stuck in Newfoundland.
Of course, Rugby Theatre has set a rather high flight level after what has become my official “Outstanding Production of a Musical” (24/25 season): the indelible Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. So yes, expectations are cruising at flight level 420, and we should be in for a great ride into Canada. I’ve got my mini-bottles at the ready, my tray table in the upright position, and my seatbelt fastened. I’m thrilled to have tickets for opening night.
Tickets are selling fast, so avoid disappointment and book online at rugbytheatre.co.uk.
Mark Pitt
I first saw Come From Away after spotting it at the TKTS half-price booth in New York City — and I loved it. It’s a folksy piece, but earthy, real, and grounded (if you’ll excuse the pun). Was there one? Yes — Grounded.
Come From Away is that rarest of theatrical creatures: a musical about decency that doesn’t make you want to chew your own arm off. It tells the story of 38 planes diverted to Gander, Newfoundland, on 9/11 — a place so small it makes “remote” sound metropolitan. The locals, hardy as cod and twice as generous, turn mass displacement into a festival of tea and casseroles. It ought to be unbearable — all those accents, all that earnestness — but it isn’t. It’s brisk, funny, and gloriously unsentimental. You leave the theatre blinking, slightly ashamed of your cynicism, thinking that if the end of the world ever comes, you’d quite like to be stuck in Newfoundland.
Of course, Rugby Theatre has set a rather high flight level after what has become my official “Outstanding Production of a Musical” (24/25 season): the indelible Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. So yes, expectations are cruising at flight level 420, and we should be in for a great ride into Canada. I’ve got my mini-bottles at the ready, my tray table in the upright position, and my seatbelt fastened. I’m thrilled to have tickets for opening night.
Tickets are selling fast, so avoid disappointment and book online at rugbytheatre.co.uk.
Mark Pitt
Rose Kenny's Superlative "Emma"
Corrina Jacob directs the World Premiere of Andrew Davies's Adaptation of Austin's Voluminous Classic.
The Talisman Theatre, Kenilworth. SOLD OUT, Returns only.
Emma Woodhouse, twenty-one, rich, clever and catastrophically self-satisfied, has one great hobby: other people’s love lives. With no occupation but her own conceit, she takes the pliant Harriet Smith under her wing, nudging her towards suitors entirely unsuitable, while misjudging, misreading and generally mangling the romances of Highbury. She patronises the poor, humiliates the worthy, and convinces herself she knows best — until, of course, she doesn’t. Hovering nearby is Mr Knightley, the only grown-up in the village, who sees through Emma’s vanity, and, inconveniently, into her heart. Austen’s comedy is one of meddling, mortification, and hard-won humility.
Austen’s sugared hand grenade of a novel, lands on stage detonated by Rose Kenny, who gives the sort of performance that rearranges the furniture of the evening. Her Emma Woodhouse is not just clever, pretty, and spoilt; she’s a work of art in hauteur, a young woman who believes herself God’s gift to matchmaking and carries on with the unshakeable confidence of someone who has never once been wrong — until she is. Kenny makes Emma both insufferable and irresistible, an exquisite study in charm weaponised as tyranny. You want to throttle her, then invite her for dinner. This is professional-quality acting, every beat balanced between satire and sympathy.
Ellie Chapman, as Harriet Smith, provides the perfect counterpoint — soft, credulous, as heartbreakingly eager to please as a spaniel. Chapman lifts Harriet beyond comic relief into something far more poignant: the collateral damage of Emma’s meddling. Chris Bird, as Mr Knightley, plays the adult in the room with stoic, simmering restraint. His silences are devastating, his presence the steady keel to Emma’s emotional squalls. And Thomas Holden, fleeting though he is as Robert Martin, radiates such grounded decency that his absence is felt more than his presence. A pity he isn’t given more stage-time; he has the quiet dignity to upend the room.
Support across the company is excellent: Graham Buckingham-Hill’s fretful Woodhouse, Adam Turner’s slyly enigmatic Frank Churchill, and Phoebe Dann’s Jane Fairfax, who sings like a ghost slipping through velvet curtains. Rosie Gower’s costume work is ravishing, Nigel Elliot’s lighting flatters without fuss, and Colin Thomas’s score nudges the action along with brisk, discreet elegance.
Andrew Davies’s adaptation, necessarily pruned, is sharp and unsentimental. Corrina Jacob directs with confidence, intelligence and silk-glove subtlety, trusting her actors to carry the evening. Her tableaux are painterly, the period dancing neatly woven in, and her pacing makes the whole thing breathe. It’s less a costume drama than a village dissected under glass — with wit, precision, and no small amount of affection. Steve Sandley’s set is spare to the point of austerity, but it gifts the actors the freedom to move and converse, and mercifully avoids the traffic-jam of period tat that too often clogs Austen productions.
By the end, Emma has been humbled, Knightley rewarded, and Highbury’s pecking order polished to a shine. But this production belongs to Kenny. Her Emma is the axis on which it all spins, the delight and the danger, the sugar and the sting. She makes Austen’s most maddening heroine not only bearable but unforgettable. Without her, this would be a clever evening; with her, it’s an essential one — like champagne: intoxicating, merciless, and absolutely wasted on anyone who still prefers Pimm’s.
Bottom Line: A beautiful, superbly-directed production from the Talisman. Rose Kenny shines.
Mark Pitt
Emma Woodhouse, twenty-one, rich, clever and catastrophically self-satisfied, has one great hobby: other people’s love lives. With no occupation but her own conceit, she takes the pliant Harriet Smith under her wing, nudging her towards suitors entirely unsuitable, while misjudging, misreading and generally mangling the romances of Highbury. She patronises the poor, humiliates the worthy, and convinces herself she knows best — until, of course, she doesn’t. Hovering nearby is Mr Knightley, the only grown-up in the village, who sees through Emma’s vanity, and, inconveniently, into her heart. Austen’s comedy is one of meddling, mortification, and hard-won humility.
Austen’s sugared hand grenade of a novel, lands on stage detonated by Rose Kenny, who gives the sort of performance that rearranges the furniture of the evening. Her Emma Woodhouse is not just clever, pretty, and spoilt; she’s a work of art in hauteur, a young woman who believes herself God’s gift to matchmaking and carries on with the unshakeable confidence of someone who has never once been wrong — until she is. Kenny makes Emma both insufferable and irresistible, an exquisite study in charm weaponised as tyranny. You want to throttle her, then invite her for dinner. This is professional-quality acting, every beat balanced between satire and sympathy.
Ellie Chapman, as Harriet Smith, provides the perfect counterpoint — soft, credulous, as heartbreakingly eager to please as a spaniel. Chapman lifts Harriet beyond comic relief into something far more poignant: the collateral damage of Emma’s meddling. Chris Bird, as Mr Knightley, plays the adult in the room with stoic, simmering restraint. His silences are devastating, his presence the steady keel to Emma’s emotional squalls. And Thomas Holden, fleeting though he is as Robert Martin, radiates such grounded decency that his absence is felt more than his presence. A pity he isn’t given more stage-time; he has the quiet dignity to upend the room.
Support across the company is excellent: Graham Buckingham-Hill’s fretful Woodhouse, Adam Turner’s slyly enigmatic Frank Churchill, and Phoebe Dann’s Jane Fairfax, who sings like a ghost slipping through velvet curtains. Rosie Gower’s costume work is ravishing, Nigel Elliot’s lighting flatters without fuss, and Colin Thomas’s score nudges the action along with brisk, discreet elegance.
Andrew Davies’s adaptation, necessarily pruned, is sharp and unsentimental. Corrina Jacob directs with confidence, intelligence and silk-glove subtlety, trusting her actors to carry the evening. Her tableaux are painterly, the period dancing neatly woven in, and her pacing makes the whole thing breathe. It’s less a costume drama than a village dissected under glass — with wit, precision, and no small amount of affection. Steve Sandley’s set is spare to the point of austerity, but it gifts the actors the freedom to move and converse, and mercifully avoids the traffic-jam of period tat that too often clogs Austen productions.
By the end, Emma has been humbled, Knightley rewarded, and Highbury’s pecking order polished to a shine. But this production belongs to Kenny. Her Emma is the axis on which it all spins, the delight and the danger, the sugar and the sting. She makes Austen’s most maddening heroine not only bearable but unforgettable. Without her, this would be a clever evening; with her, it’s an essential one — like champagne: intoxicating, merciless, and absolutely wasted on anyone who still prefers Pimm’s.
Bottom Line: A beautiful, superbly-directed production from the Talisman. Rose Kenny shines.
Mark Pitt
Chris Gilbey-Smith and Cheryl Laverick are Flawlessly Superb.
"Beginning" by David Eldridge. The Loft Theatre's superb production is directed by Vicki Betts.
Most of us have marinated in that ungodly hour between one and three in the morning when drink goes rogue and your tongue is upholstered in budgerigar carpet. The sofa is strewn with corpses of the fallen, one poor soul is in thrall to the open fridge as if revelation comes bottled in semi-skimmed. There’s always the “up-for-it” woman, still circling the wreckage, and the “any-port-in-a-storm” man who thinks the saying was written for him personally. Sex at this hour has all the sultry appeal of ramming blancmange through a letterbox.
That, mercifully, is not where we are with the Loft Theatre’s Beginning. Instead, we are given something mesmeric, magnetic, and staged with such precision it could shame many a West End import.
Chris Gilbey-Smith’s Danny is a marvel of understatement. He is every anxious bachelor who ever mistook cufflinks for personality, a Viagra advert’s fever dream, a man smudged by regret but still, somehow, loveable. He doesn’t play the part — he bleeds it, with a vulnerability so true you want to look away but daren’t, because he has you in his pocket from the first stumble to the last word. He is funny, heartbreaking, and courageous in the way that only the truly good actors are — by being unafraid of stillness.
Cheryl Laverick’s Laura is the counterweight, the match, the spark and the flame. She is dazzling: she toys, she seduces, she fences with irony and then slices herself open on the maternal urgency beneath. Laverick has that rarest of gifts on stage — presence. She doesn’t so much act as alter the gravitational pull of the room. Around her, silence becomes eloquent, and a fish-finger sandwich takes on tragic dignity. She is magnetic, heartbreaking, and — let’s not gild the hummus — better than most of the names that currently swagger through Shaftesbury Avenue.
Together they are alchemy, the sort of theatrical pairing that makes you believe in connection, in timing, in chemistry, in the mad human urge to throw yourself against another person and hope something beautiful sticks. They make the ordinary miraculous.
The set is Laura’s Crouch End flat: high ceilings, a designer kitchen, the faint pong of artisanal hummus. It’s kitchen-sink realism, except the sink is brushed steel and the tap costs more than your first car. Cooking happens on stage, because life happens on stage, and this play has the guts to tell you so.
Director Viki Betts conducts this with the delicacy of chamber music. Pauses, glances, silences — every beat is orchestrated with sly intelligence. She doesn’t shout; she whispers. And in the whisper you hear the thing itself: truth.
Beginning is ostensibly about love and babies, about ticking clocks and biological scratchings. But what it’s really about is the hard, hilarious, lonely miracle of being human when the night is over, the party is done, and the kebab shop is closed.
This is one of the finest things the Loft has ever staged. Gilbey-Smith and Laverick don’t just perform; they consecrate the stage.
***** Unmissable.
Mark Pitt
That, mercifully, is not where we are with the Loft Theatre’s Beginning. Instead, we are given something mesmeric, magnetic, and staged with such precision it could shame many a West End import.
Chris Gilbey-Smith’s Danny is a marvel of understatement. He is every anxious bachelor who ever mistook cufflinks for personality, a Viagra advert’s fever dream, a man smudged by regret but still, somehow, loveable. He doesn’t play the part — he bleeds it, with a vulnerability so true you want to look away but daren’t, because he has you in his pocket from the first stumble to the last word. He is funny, heartbreaking, and courageous in the way that only the truly good actors are — by being unafraid of stillness.
Cheryl Laverick’s Laura is the counterweight, the match, the spark and the flame. She is dazzling: she toys, she seduces, she fences with irony and then slices herself open on the maternal urgency beneath. Laverick has that rarest of gifts on stage — presence. She doesn’t so much act as alter the gravitational pull of the room. Around her, silence becomes eloquent, and a fish-finger sandwich takes on tragic dignity. She is magnetic, heartbreaking, and — let’s not gild the hummus — better than most of the names that currently swagger through Shaftesbury Avenue.
Together they are alchemy, the sort of theatrical pairing that makes you believe in connection, in timing, in chemistry, in the mad human urge to throw yourself against another person and hope something beautiful sticks. They make the ordinary miraculous.
The set is Laura’s Crouch End flat: high ceilings, a designer kitchen, the faint pong of artisanal hummus. It’s kitchen-sink realism, except the sink is brushed steel and the tap costs more than your first car. Cooking happens on stage, because life happens on stage, and this play has the guts to tell you so.
Director Viki Betts conducts this with the delicacy of chamber music. Pauses, glances, silences — every beat is orchestrated with sly intelligence. She doesn’t shout; she whispers. And in the whisper you hear the thing itself: truth.
Beginning is ostensibly about love and babies, about ticking clocks and biological scratchings. But what it’s really about is the hard, hilarious, lonely miracle of being human when the night is over, the party is done, and the kebab shop is closed.
This is one of the finest things the Loft has ever staged. Gilbey-Smith and Laverick don’t just perform; they consecrate the stage.
***** Unmissable.
Mark Pitt
Measure of Our Times.
The RSC's explosive, definitive "Measure for Measure" Reviewed Press Night
There has never been a riper, ranker moment to exhume Measure for Measure than now, this peculiar after-dinner mint of history when everything smells faintly of jet fuel, entitlement and dry-cleaning fluid. Shakespeare’s so-called problem play has always been the awkward guest at the banquet — too bawdy for the priests, too pious for the libertines, too clever by half for the sentimentalists. And yet suddenly it is the only dish that tastes of the present: corruption reheated, hypocrisy flambéed, deceit served sous-vide with a sprig of denial.
Corruption isn’t an aberration; it’s the family Labrador of civilisation, always under the table, licking the bones. Shakespeare knew it, and Stratford knows it too. Power never dies; it just changes tailor. Vice doesn’t vanish; it gets rebranded, monetised, bundled into a hedge fund. Angelo today wouldn’t be sniffing round a convent; he’d be chairing an ESG committee for a Silicon Valley leviathan while messaging interns about wellness retreats.
But this production. Oh, this production.
The set is surgical steel and halogen glare — a quadrangle of benches, lightboxes overhead, a room so scrubbed it squeaks. Everything our world conspicuously lacks: character, humanity, the patina of use. It is the aesthetic of compliance training: antiseptic, joyless, compulsory.
Then the projections. Not tasteful abstractions, not heritage wallpaper, but the faces of those who have brought us to this charmless cul-de-sac. Politicians the colour of overboiled ham, media evangelists drunk on their own autocues, and yes, the royals — that hereditary soap opera in ermine. Prince Andrew’s waxen mask swims into view, and for once Stratford resists the urge to genuflect. Even a king, patron or no, doesn’t get diplomatic immunity from theatre.
And inevitably: Epstein. The name that dare not speak its own name, the island that exists both as myth and as evidence locker, the client list everyone knows exists but no one is allowed to read. His ghost hangs over the stage like Banquo’s, reminding us that corruption doesn’t just whisper in corridors of power; it charters planes, books rooms, itemises invoices. This is vice with a business plan and a logo.
But this isn’t sermonising. It wallows. The Duke — Adam James, unsettlingly adroit — shrugs off responsibility with the weary cunning of a leader outsourcing morality to inquiries. Isabella, in Isis Hainsworth’s bruising innocence, becomes not virtue but vulnerability, a commodity to be leveraged by men who declaim piety while pawing at appetites. And when mercy finally arrives, it isn’t justice; it’s exhaustion. A bureaucratic adjournment, not a benediction.
The acting is immaculate, though in truth it barely matters. What matters is the confrontation. When Hainsworth pleads, she isn’t Isabella; she’s every woman who has weighed truth against lawyers and lobbyists. Angelo — Tom Mothersdale’s suit full of appetites — is a collage of Weinstein, Trump, and that HR manager whose name you still won’t say aloud. The comedy — if it can be called that — lies in the continuity: after centuries of supposed progress, a girl’s knickers can still topple empires.
Critics will say it’s heavy-handed, crude to paste today’s villains over Shakespeare’s Vienna. But subtlety is the parlour game of the comfortable. Shakespeare wasn’t subtle. He was lewd, lurid, unbuttoned. And in an age when the headlines themselves have the delicacy of a paving slab through a windscreen, why should theatre play coy?
If anything, Stratford is too polite. The projections could have lingered, the names printed larger, the litany of complicity read aloud until the ushers fainted. But even in rage, English theatre still curtseys.
Still, Emily Burns directs with surgical conviction. She doesn’t interpret Shakespeare; she vivisects him, laying out the viscera for us to prod. This is theatre not for pleasure but for unease, not catharsis but contagion.
Measure for Measure here is no interpretation but an accusation. It doesn’t ask whether Angelo is guilty — it asks whether we are. Whether our silence, our subscriptions, our scrolling ennui are the real instruments of power. And when the curtain falls, we are left not with resolution but with repetition. Not mercy, but adjournment.
It is definitive, it is disturbing, and it doesn’t let you leave clean. Which is exactly what theatre is for.
And the best part? The politicians in the stalls won’t have the faintest idea what Burns is saying about them. They’ll clap, smile, and go home. Which is, of course, the whole joke.
***** Veers into the realm of genius. A production for our time.
Mark Pitt
The Welkin, Lucy Kirkwood.
The Bear Pit Theatre, Stratford
The Welkin – Bear Pit Theatre, Stratford
Runs through Saturday 27th September.
1759, rural Suffolk. A solar eclipse darkens the sky — a portent of the theatrical eclipse that is The Welkin. Sally Poppy, convicted of infanticide, will hang unless she is pregnant. Twelve local women, a “jury of matrons,” are summoned to examine her, transforming what could have been a taut moral crucible into a three-hour exercise in moral bookkeeping, an interminable catalogue of women’s suffering, and an audacious exposé of every conceivable failing of men, past and present.
Lucy Kirkwood’s play aspires to be Twelve Angry Men meets The Crucible, but instead lands somewhere between a history lecture, a feminist pamphlet, and a cautionary tale in monotony. The jurors spar endlessly — arguing, debating, dissecting, and generally proving that verbosity can substitute for drama — while the actual tension flutters by unnoticed like a moth. By the interval, one prays not for resolution but for sedation, or perhaps a sharp poke in the ribs from someone in authority.
Amid this glut, Kumari Venn as Sally Poppy is incandescent. Fierce, defiant, and unpredictably alive, she carries the play on sheer presence, a human flare amid the fog of over-writing. The ensemble of twelve women is uniformly skilled, yet their talents are squandered on endless back-and-forth that reads less like theatre than a very polite riot. One imagines these actors lighting up a sharper play — perhaps Top Girls — instead of being conscripted into a didactic, three-hour roll-call of grievance.
Director Nicky Cox works miracles of clarity, control, and discipline, wringing coherence from a script that is grandiose, inert, and occasionally absurd. But no director could rescue this ship built of paper, wax, and good intentions. The Welkin gestures at grandeur, moral weight, and passion, and fails spectacularly. It is a Passion Play stripped of passion, a Miller without nerve, a roomful of women speaking truth — to a void so vast it could swallow the sun.
In short: overlong, overstuffed, over-ambitious. Moments of brilliance glimmer amid tedium, but the overall effect is exhausting, diffuse, and profoundly underwhelming. The Welkin wants to be a masterpiece — instead, it’s history homework dressed in Sunday best, recited in monotone, while the audience contemplates alternate ways to spend three hours.
Mark Pitt
Runs through Saturday 27th September.
1759, rural Suffolk. A solar eclipse darkens the sky — a portent of the theatrical eclipse that is The Welkin. Sally Poppy, convicted of infanticide, will hang unless she is pregnant. Twelve local women, a “jury of matrons,” are summoned to examine her, transforming what could have been a taut moral crucible into a three-hour exercise in moral bookkeeping, an interminable catalogue of women’s suffering, and an audacious exposé of every conceivable failing of men, past and present.
Lucy Kirkwood’s play aspires to be Twelve Angry Men meets The Crucible, but instead lands somewhere between a history lecture, a feminist pamphlet, and a cautionary tale in monotony. The jurors spar endlessly — arguing, debating, dissecting, and generally proving that verbosity can substitute for drama — while the actual tension flutters by unnoticed like a moth. By the interval, one prays not for resolution but for sedation, or perhaps a sharp poke in the ribs from someone in authority.
Amid this glut, Kumari Venn as Sally Poppy is incandescent. Fierce, defiant, and unpredictably alive, she carries the play on sheer presence, a human flare amid the fog of over-writing. The ensemble of twelve women is uniformly skilled, yet their talents are squandered on endless back-and-forth that reads less like theatre than a very polite riot. One imagines these actors lighting up a sharper play — perhaps Top Girls — instead of being conscripted into a didactic, three-hour roll-call of grievance.
Director Nicky Cox works miracles of clarity, control, and discipline, wringing coherence from a script that is grandiose, inert, and occasionally absurd. But no director could rescue this ship built of paper, wax, and good intentions. The Welkin gestures at grandeur, moral weight, and passion, and fails spectacularly. It is a Passion Play stripped of passion, a Miller without nerve, a roomful of women speaking truth — to a void so vast it could swallow the sun.
In short: overlong, overstuffed, over-ambitious. Moments of brilliance glimmer amid tedium, but the overall effect is exhausting, diffuse, and profoundly underwhelming. The Welkin wants to be a masterpiece — instead, it’s history homework dressed in Sunday best, recited in monotone, while the audience contemplates alternate ways to spend three hours.
Mark Pitt
Priory Theatre Announces New Director
Following AGM.
Nicky Main is Replaced by Karen Shayler at the Kenilworth Playhouse.
The Priory Theatre in Kenilworth has just performed its most predictable piece of theatre: the AGM. It’s less Annual General Meeting than Annual Guillotine Moment, where heads roll not with revolution’s fervour but with the petty spite of a parish council.
Nicky Main, Artistic Director and criminally guilty of raising standards, has been shuffled offstage. Karen Shayler, last seen directing Dead Again, ascends to the throne — though it’s less a throne than a rickety plastic chair in the committee room, upholstered with vendettas. Main’s record was an insult to tradition. Audiences rose 46% in two years, from 6,500 to 9,500 — the sort of increase that would make West End accountants spontaneously combust with joy. She staged Curtains with panache, The Addams Family with wit, and even managed 39 Steps without embarrassing the furniture. She built a Youth Theatre too, producing Our Day Out, which was so unexpectedly good it must have felt like treason. Naturally, she had to go.
Because amateur theatre is not just about art. It is the English at their most ritualistically cruel: a cross between fox-hunting and WI cake judging, except the fox is always the last successful director, and the cake is laced with arsenic. Power is wielded in whispers over instant coffee; loyalty is secured with Battenberg.
The real performance is not on stage but in the wings, where intrigue is choreographed more carefully than any dance number. I once heard a director say, with the satisfaction of a vicar’s wife hiding gin in the organ loft, “Oh, she made sure she got her paws on that one.” It was theatre spoken of as property, plays as conquests, casting as coup d’état. This isn’t a drama society; it’s a vicarage orgy in corduroy trousers, everyone smiling, applauding, and quietly hating each other. They beam, they curtsy, they slice Victoria sponge — and then plunge the knife into a colleague’s back before the second act.
Amateur theatre is the only art form where you can die of kindness, suffocated by compliments offered through gritted teeth. And the audience? God bless them. They shuffle in, like pilgrims to a shrine. Thrilled to see their dentist as Fagin and the woman from the Co-op as Lady Macbeth. And yet — perversely, magnificently — sometimes, amid the gossip and sponge, they conjure a moment of truth, of beauty, of actual art. A tiny miracle, instantly drowned in tea, recrimination, and the warm fug of a raffle.
Main’s removal isn’t just shortsighted; it’s the sort of cultural seppuku carried out with a butter knife by people who think tragedy is when the raffle loses its bottle of sherry. Her ability was incandescent, which made her intolerable to the committee — that peculiar English species of cultural custodian: men upholstered in corduroy the colour of diarrhoea, women who smell faintly of Dettol and boiled poultry, all of them blinking like owls at the sudden, unwelcome light of competence.
We wish The Priory continued success.
Mark Pitt
Nicky Main, Artistic Director and criminally guilty of raising standards, has been shuffled offstage. Karen Shayler, last seen directing Dead Again, ascends to the throne — though it’s less a throne than a rickety plastic chair in the committee room, upholstered with vendettas. Main’s record was an insult to tradition. Audiences rose 46% in two years, from 6,500 to 9,500 — the sort of increase that would make West End accountants spontaneously combust with joy. She staged Curtains with panache, The Addams Family with wit, and even managed 39 Steps without embarrassing the furniture. She built a Youth Theatre too, producing Our Day Out, which was so unexpectedly good it must have felt like treason. Naturally, she had to go.
Because amateur theatre is not just about art. It is the English at their most ritualistically cruel: a cross between fox-hunting and WI cake judging, except the fox is always the last successful director, and the cake is laced with arsenic. Power is wielded in whispers over instant coffee; loyalty is secured with Battenberg.
The real performance is not on stage but in the wings, where intrigue is choreographed more carefully than any dance number. I once heard a director say, with the satisfaction of a vicar’s wife hiding gin in the organ loft, “Oh, she made sure she got her paws on that one.” It was theatre spoken of as property, plays as conquests, casting as coup d’état. This isn’t a drama society; it’s a vicarage orgy in corduroy trousers, everyone smiling, applauding, and quietly hating each other. They beam, they curtsy, they slice Victoria sponge — and then plunge the knife into a colleague’s back before the second act.
Amateur theatre is the only art form where you can die of kindness, suffocated by compliments offered through gritted teeth. And the audience? God bless them. They shuffle in, like pilgrims to a shrine. Thrilled to see their dentist as Fagin and the woman from the Co-op as Lady Macbeth. And yet — perversely, magnificently — sometimes, amid the gossip and sponge, they conjure a moment of truth, of beauty, of actual art. A tiny miracle, instantly drowned in tea, recrimination, and the warm fug of a raffle.
Main’s removal isn’t just shortsighted; it’s the sort of cultural seppuku carried out with a butter knife by people who think tragedy is when the raffle loses its bottle of sherry. Her ability was incandescent, which made her intolerable to the committee — that peculiar English species of cultural custodian: men upholstered in corduroy the colour of diarrhoea, women who smell faintly of Dettol and boiled poultry, all of them blinking like owls at the sudden, unwelcome light of competence.
We wish The Priory continued success.
Mark Pitt
“Heart, Humor, and the Brutal British Truth.
'Our Day Out' at the Priory Excels."
Our Day Out (Willy Russell) is less a play than a doggy bag of Britain’s institutional neglect—lukewarm, under-seasoned, and handed back to the very children it pretends to nourish. The genius—and the fury—of Russell’s work is that it isn’t really about the children at all; it’s about the smug corpse of the British education system, propped up in its coffin and pretending to breathe. These kids aren’t on a trip—they’re on parole from a future already written in biro: factory floors, dead-end jobs, or the dole queue, with an occasional holiday in Strangeways.
Mrs Kay, bless her patchouli soul, is the state’s sticking plaster, a professional apologist whose greatest triumph is ensuring the children have a nice view before they’re herded back into the abattoir of expectation. Mr Briggs, meanwhile, is the system in human trousers—rigid, humourless, sanctimonious—wielding “discipline” like a blunt spoon against a tumour. Russell isn’t writing comedy; he’s writing an autopsy, and the corpse on the slab is Britain’s bright promise to educate its young, reduced instead to a busload of casualties in short trousers.
Nicky Main and Bev Avis Dakin's production for the Priory Theatre, Kenilworth, is all heart with razor edges. Ninety minutes may seem short, segmented, episodic—but their direction stitches the fragments into something visceral, a collage that grips like cold rain on bare skin. The ensemble thrives under their direction. Ben Smith’s Briggs is consummate: constipated on concrete, a man who could wield a ruler and crush rebellion without ever realizing the irony. Alun Armstrong was definitive in the 70s film, but Smith is equal—under-used, under-rated, last seen in Dead Again, here painting a portrait of conformity so complete, the education system itself would blush.
Amelia Webster’s Mrs Kay, is endearing and heartbreakingly real. She battles the tide, swims uphill, and in the end receives only a spoiled reel of film—a day erased, memories flattened, as though the children’s fleeting glimpse of life could never be allowed. Mrs Kay isn’t a teacher; she’s a human damp cloth, forever mopping up the state’s mess.
As for the children: they are brilliant. Jack Shenton-Thompson’s Andrew vibrates with mischief, a kinetic bundle of energy contained only by the flimsiest threads of authority—cheeky without malice, daring without planning, a fuse about to blow under the dull surveillance of Progress Class. Molly Dearing’s Carol is a snapshot of what could be: defiant, sharp, innocent and broken all at once. Her confrontation with Briggs, teetering on the edge of despair, is beautifully played; she is talked down, forced to conform, and the cruelty of that “lesson” lands like a hammer. The ensemble itself deserves a medal: their delight, trust, and love for Main’s direction could be bottled, and it makes the play alive, urgent, and unforgettable.
Ernie Boxall steals every scene he touches, shape-shifting through multiple roles with glee, while Becky Young provides comedic relief reminiscent of a young Victoria Wood, clever and effortless.
Clever projections, period lighting, and a soundtrack that burrows into memory make the evening feel complete: all heart, all beautifully told, and a reminder that theatre can still offer what life often refuses.
Bottom Line: Brilliant stuff—but still, a reminder that the world outside the theatre will not be nearly so forgiving. Nicky Main and Bev Avis Dakin's production is unforgettable.
Mark Pitt
Mrs Kay, bless her patchouli soul, is the state’s sticking plaster, a professional apologist whose greatest triumph is ensuring the children have a nice view before they’re herded back into the abattoir of expectation. Mr Briggs, meanwhile, is the system in human trousers—rigid, humourless, sanctimonious—wielding “discipline” like a blunt spoon against a tumour. Russell isn’t writing comedy; he’s writing an autopsy, and the corpse on the slab is Britain’s bright promise to educate its young, reduced instead to a busload of casualties in short trousers.
Nicky Main and Bev Avis Dakin's production for the Priory Theatre, Kenilworth, is all heart with razor edges. Ninety minutes may seem short, segmented, episodic—but their direction stitches the fragments into something visceral, a collage that grips like cold rain on bare skin. The ensemble thrives under their direction. Ben Smith’s Briggs is consummate: constipated on concrete, a man who could wield a ruler and crush rebellion without ever realizing the irony. Alun Armstrong was definitive in the 70s film, but Smith is equal—under-used, under-rated, last seen in Dead Again, here painting a portrait of conformity so complete, the education system itself would blush.
Amelia Webster’s Mrs Kay, is endearing and heartbreakingly real. She battles the tide, swims uphill, and in the end receives only a spoiled reel of film—a day erased, memories flattened, as though the children’s fleeting glimpse of life could never be allowed. Mrs Kay isn’t a teacher; she’s a human damp cloth, forever mopping up the state’s mess.
As for the children: they are brilliant. Jack Shenton-Thompson’s Andrew vibrates with mischief, a kinetic bundle of energy contained only by the flimsiest threads of authority—cheeky without malice, daring without planning, a fuse about to blow under the dull surveillance of Progress Class. Molly Dearing’s Carol is a snapshot of what could be: defiant, sharp, innocent and broken all at once. Her confrontation with Briggs, teetering on the edge of despair, is beautifully played; she is talked down, forced to conform, and the cruelty of that “lesson” lands like a hammer. The ensemble itself deserves a medal: their delight, trust, and love for Main’s direction could be bottled, and it makes the play alive, urgent, and unforgettable.
Ernie Boxall steals every scene he touches, shape-shifting through multiple roles with glee, while Becky Young provides comedic relief reminiscent of a young Victoria Wood, clever and effortless.
Clever projections, period lighting, and a soundtrack that burrows into memory make the evening feel complete: all heart, all beautifully told, and a reminder that theatre can still offer what life often refuses.
Bottom Line: Brilliant stuff—but still, a reminder that the world outside the theatre will not be nearly so forgiving. Nicky Main and Bev Avis Dakin's production is unforgettable.
Mark Pitt
The Warwickshire Theatre Season's Outstanding Work
It’s been a vintage year for local theatre — a year that made you lean forward, slack-jawed, wondering if you’d accidentally wandered into the West End. Most shows falter somewhere: brilliant acting undone by shoddy design, clever direction undone by limp performances. But occasionally, everything clicks. Here are the six productions that did.
1) Uncle Vanya — The Loft Theatre
David Fletcher’s Vanya was a rare beast: complete, poetic, and heartbreakingly funny. Too often Chekhov drowns in melancholy; here, the humour surfaced alongside the sorrow, each note landing perfectly. The ensemble breathed together, not a weak link in sight. Subtle design framed the action like a master’s canvas. A Vanya this seamless appears once every few seasons, if that.
2) Present Laughter — The Talisman Theatre, Kenilworth
Coward’s world of ego and absurdity gleamed under Vanessa Comer’s direction. Phil Reynolds as Garry Essendine was charming, exasperating, and palpably terrified of irrelevance. Around him, the ensemble shone — McGrath’s motherly tenderness, Turner’s manic energy, Linnett’s icy calculation. Sharp, elegant staging and a fluid rhythm made Coward feel alive, merciless, and utterly irresistible.
3) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time --
The Criterion Theatre, Coventry
Charlie Maline doesn’t just play Christopher — he carries the production. Minimal staging, clever ensemble, and Ingall’s precise direction immerse us in Christopher’s mind. McGrath, Grove, and Bevan provide subtle, affecting support, but it’s Maline’s fearless, nuanced performance that makes this night unforgettable.
4) Everybody’s Talking About Jamie — Rugby Theatre
Rugby Theatre has no right to be this good. Louis Dutton is magnetic as Jamie, the ensemble dances and sings like a West End troupe, and Kevin Bright’s direction is fearless. Jo Walker’s choreography bites, burns, and tells stories. Musical direction elevates every note. This isn’t local theatre — it’s a full-throttle, professional-calibre triumph that lives and breathes.
5) Constellations — The Loft Theatre
Payne’s meditation on love, loss, and parallel universes finds a vivid home under Sue Moore. Leonie Slater’s Marianne is sharp, witty, and devastating; Slater is a professional calibre talent. Ted McGowan’s Roland is tender and grounded. Minimal staging allows every repetition, every variation, to land with emotional precision. Flaws in Roland’s backstory are forgiven — this is theatre that lingers long after the curtain falls.
6) Brighton Beach Memoirs - Rugby Theatre
Brighton Beach Memoirs at Rugby Theatre is a heartfelt, hilarious, and beautifully acted portrait of a 1937 Brooklyn family navigating adolescence, family tensions, and economic hardship. Daniel Faulkner leads a stellar cast under Darren Pratt’s precise direction, with a period-perfect set and costumes bringing the era vividly to life. Warm, poignant, and utterly memorable, it’s one of the season’s finest productions.
Honourable Mentions
Things I Know to Be True — The Loft Theatre
Andrew Bovell’s family drama, under Lynda Lewis, is messy, lyrical, and deeply human. Rod Wilkinson’s Bob Price is tender and heartbreaking; Julie Godfrey’s Fran exudes stoic warmth; Alice Arthur’s Rosie captivates, and Blake Hutchings makes an arresting debut as Ben. The ensemble’s quiet truths — glances, silences, overlapping dialogue — carry the weight of suburban life in flux. A smart, affecting production that cements the Loft Theatre’s reputation.
Spring Awakening — The Loft Theatre
Chris Gilbey-Smith’s revival strips away Broadway bombast to reveal a sensitive, emotionally textured work. Nathan Dowling’s Melchior is innocent and poignant; Annabel Pilcher’s Wendla moves from naïve curiosity to tragic inevitability; Michael Barker chills as Herr Gabor, while Luca Cantena and Henry Clarke add depth. Tight choreography, disciplined ensemble, and subtle staging allow the story to breathe. A mature, stirring revival well worth a second visit.
The 39 Steps — Priory Theatre
Patrick Barlow’s adaptation is pure metatheatrical joy: four actors, a hundred characters, and relentless comedy. Ben Wellicome’s Hannay is deadpan perfection; Nicky Main juggles multiple roles with wit; Becky Young and Rob Jones, as the Clowns, detonate every gag. John Evans’ direction is gleefully chaotic, Steve Boden’s set a marvel of illusion. Fast, absurd, and utterly joyous — theatre at full throttle.
Closing Thoughts
This year, local theatre proved it can dazzle, surprise, and even outshine its metropolitan cousins. From Chekhov’s subtlety to Coward’s wit, from quantum love to adolescent rebellion, Warwickshire and Coventry stages offered nights that were as intelligent as they were thrilling. If there’s one takeaway, it’s this: talent isn’t just in the West End. It’s here, alive, combustible, and utterly unforgettable. Here's to the new season...
Mark Pitt
1) Uncle Vanya — The Loft Theatre
David Fletcher’s Vanya was a rare beast: complete, poetic, and heartbreakingly funny. Too often Chekhov drowns in melancholy; here, the humour surfaced alongside the sorrow, each note landing perfectly. The ensemble breathed together, not a weak link in sight. Subtle design framed the action like a master’s canvas. A Vanya this seamless appears once every few seasons, if that.
2) Present Laughter — The Talisman Theatre, Kenilworth
Coward’s world of ego and absurdity gleamed under Vanessa Comer’s direction. Phil Reynolds as Garry Essendine was charming, exasperating, and palpably terrified of irrelevance. Around him, the ensemble shone — McGrath’s motherly tenderness, Turner’s manic energy, Linnett’s icy calculation. Sharp, elegant staging and a fluid rhythm made Coward feel alive, merciless, and utterly irresistible.
3) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time --
The Criterion Theatre, Coventry
Charlie Maline doesn’t just play Christopher — he carries the production. Minimal staging, clever ensemble, and Ingall’s precise direction immerse us in Christopher’s mind. McGrath, Grove, and Bevan provide subtle, affecting support, but it’s Maline’s fearless, nuanced performance that makes this night unforgettable.
4) Everybody’s Talking About Jamie — Rugby Theatre
Rugby Theatre has no right to be this good. Louis Dutton is magnetic as Jamie, the ensemble dances and sings like a West End troupe, and Kevin Bright’s direction is fearless. Jo Walker’s choreography bites, burns, and tells stories. Musical direction elevates every note. This isn’t local theatre — it’s a full-throttle, professional-calibre triumph that lives and breathes.
5) Constellations — The Loft Theatre
Payne’s meditation on love, loss, and parallel universes finds a vivid home under Sue Moore. Leonie Slater’s Marianne is sharp, witty, and devastating; Slater is a professional calibre talent. Ted McGowan’s Roland is tender and grounded. Minimal staging allows every repetition, every variation, to land with emotional precision. Flaws in Roland’s backstory are forgiven — this is theatre that lingers long after the curtain falls.
6) Brighton Beach Memoirs - Rugby Theatre
Brighton Beach Memoirs at Rugby Theatre is a heartfelt, hilarious, and beautifully acted portrait of a 1937 Brooklyn family navigating adolescence, family tensions, and economic hardship. Daniel Faulkner leads a stellar cast under Darren Pratt’s precise direction, with a period-perfect set and costumes bringing the era vividly to life. Warm, poignant, and utterly memorable, it’s one of the season’s finest productions.
Honourable Mentions
Things I Know to Be True — The Loft Theatre
Andrew Bovell’s family drama, under Lynda Lewis, is messy, lyrical, and deeply human. Rod Wilkinson’s Bob Price is tender and heartbreaking; Julie Godfrey’s Fran exudes stoic warmth; Alice Arthur’s Rosie captivates, and Blake Hutchings makes an arresting debut as Ben. The ensemble’s quiet truths — glances, silences, overlapping dialogue — carry the weight of suburban life in flux. A smart, affecting production that cements the Loft Theatre’s reputation.
Spring Awakening — The Loft Theatre
Chris Gilbey-Smith’s revival strips away Broadway bombast to reveal a sensitive, emotionally textured work. Nathan Dowling’s Melchior is innocent and poignant; Annabel Pilcher’s Wendla moves from naïve curiosity to tragic inevitability; Michael Barker chills as Herr Gabor, while Luca Cantena and Henry Clarke add depth. Tight choreography, disciplined ensemble, and subtle staging allow the story to breathe. A mature, stirring revival well worth a second visit.
The 39 Steps — Priory Theatre
Patrick Barlow’s adaptation is pure metatheatrical joy: four actors, a hundred characters, and relentless comedy. Ben Wellicome’s Hannay is deadpan perfection; Nicky Main juggles multiple roles with wit; Becky Young and Rob Jones, as the Clowns, detonate every gag. John Evans’ direction is gleefully chaotic, Steve Boden’s set a marvel of illusion. Fast, absurd, and utterly joyous — theatre at full throttle.
Closing Thoughts
This year, local theatre proved it can dazzle, surprise, and even outshine its metropolitan cousins. From Chekhov’s subtlety to Coward’s wit, from quantum love to adolescent rebellion, Warwickshire and Coventry stages offered nights that were as intelligent as they were thrilling. If there’s one takeaway, it’s this: talent isn’t just in the West End. It’s here, alive, combustible, and utterly unforgettable. Here's to the new season...
Mark Pitt
"Shakespeare Spun Silly: Talisman’s Triumvirate Juices the Bard into a Riotous Froth"
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) — Talisman Theatre, Kenilworth
Through Saturday.
Through Saturday.
Tonight, I staggered into the Talisman Theatre, where three actors—brave, foolhardy, or possibly just caffeinated to the point of mania—attempt to wrestle the entire oeuvre of William Shakespeare through the cultural equivalent of a malfunctioning juicer. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged, a West End darling from yesteryear, once capered gaily while I was stranded in Atlanta’s grimmest hinterlands, where the locals reckon Shakespeare’s either a microbrew or a second-string quarterback. Thus, I missed it: 884,000 words of blood, lust, and iambic swagger, now pulped into something less smoothie than a suspect energy shot—fizzing, faintly alarming, best downed with a wince, a cackle, and a longing for a cigarette’s ashen solace.
Penned by Americans, it’s predictably stuffed with gags about corporate sponsorship and a script as lopsided as a drunk uncle at a wedding—Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet hog the spotlight, while the rest get a cursory thrashing. There’s slapstick galore—vomit and bodily functions, naturally, because Americans find flatulence funnier than finesse—and a gleeful Titus Andronicus reimagined as a gory cooking show, plus a rap of the Histories and a comedy mash-up that treats the Bard’s lighter works like so much boiled cabbage under a potato-masher. It’s panto with a Ph.D, the fourth wall less a barrier than a couple of crumbling breeze blocks, with audience members roped in to play along, particularly during the Hamlet romp, where the crowd’s carved up like a Christmas turkey to spar with the cast.
Enter our triumvirate: Connor Bailey, that sly alchemist who slips into productions like a secret ingredient and turns them golden; Ben Wellicome, fresh from twirling through The 39 Steps down the hill with the audacity of a Union Jack on a motorway bridge; and John Harrison, a stranger to me but no novice to the boards, rounding out this unholy trinity of theatrical tearaways. This is a show that demands Red Bull in the veins and a certain reckless glee, a sort of dramaturgical acid trip that leaves you dizzy and faintly suspicious you’ve been had. Its success is threefold: the actors, all razor-sharp comedians; their palpable joy, which seeps into the near-capacity crowd like a contagion; and a direction by James Harris and Anna Weavers, so taut it could snap a tendon, played out on a stage as bare as a Puritan’s prayer book to make room for the cascading lunacy. The script’s a bit of a dog’s dinner, but the timing—oh, the timing—is a Swiss watch in a clown suit.
Trying to pick a standout is like choosing a favorite limb—they’re all essential, and they’re all terrific. Bailey dances through the chaos with a versatility that’s frankly showing off. Wellicome, gangly as a collapsed giraffe, channels a Stephen Merchant-esque deadpan before tumbling into childlike pratfalls that are equal parts endearing and unhinged. Harrison, though, is the surprise—a comedian with a sideline in verse that, in Act 2, hits like a sudden clear note in a drunken singalong, yanking me forward in my seat with something raw, real, and improbably grounded amid the glorious absurdity. It’s a night that leaves you grinning, slightly queasy, and wondering if Shakespeare himself wouldn’t have approved—before demanding a rewrite and real ale at the Talisman.
Bottom line: It's a total blast. Ridiculously entertaining. I lapped it up like a parched spaniel aside the Avon.
Mark Pitt
Penned by Americans, it’s predictably stuffed with gags about corporate sponsorship and a script as lopsided as a drunk uncle at a wedding—Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet hog the spotlight, while the rest get a cursory thrashing. There’s slapstick galore—vomit and bodily functions, naturally, because Americans find flatulence funnier than finesse—and a gleeful Titus Andronicus reimagined as a gory cooking show, plus a rap of the Histories and a comedy mash-up that treats the Bard’s lighter works like so much boiled cabbage under a potato-masher. It’s panto with a Ph.D, the fourth wall less a barrier than a couple of crumbling breeze blocks, with audience members roped in to play along, particularly during the Hamlet romp, where the crowd’s carved up like a Christmas turkey to spar with the cast.
Enter our triumvirate: Connor Bailey, that sly alchemist who slips into productions like a secret ingredient and turns them golden; Ben Wellicome, fresh from twirling through The 39 Steps down the hill with the audacity of a Union Jack on a motorway bridge; and John Harrison, a stranger to me but no novice to the boards, rounding out this unholy trinity of theatrical tearaways. This is a show that demands Red Bull in the veins and a certain reckless glee, a sort of dramaturgical acid trip that leaves you dizzy and faintly suspicious you’ve been had. Its success is threefold: the actors, all razor-sharp comedians; their palpable joy, which seeps into the near-capacity crowd like a contagion; and a direction by James Harris and Anna Weavers, so taut it could snap a tendon, played out on a stage as bare as a Puritan’s prayer book to make room for the cascading lunacy. The script’s a bit of a dog’s dinner, but the timing—oh, the timing—is a Swiss watch in a clown suit.
Trying to pick a standout is like choosing a favorite limb—they’re all essential, and they’re all terrific. Bailey dances through the chaos with a versatility that’s frankly showing off. Wellicome, gangly as a collapsed giraffe, channels a Stephen Merchant-esque deadpan before tumbling into childlike pratfalls that are equal parts endearing and unhinged. Harrison, though, is the surprise—a comedian with a sideline in verse that, in Act 2, hits like a sudden clear note in a drunken singalong, yanking me forward in my seat with something raw, real, and improbably grounded amid the glorious absurdity. It’s a night that leaves you grinning, slightly queasy, and wondering if Shakespeare himself wouldn’t have approved—before demanding a rewrite and real ale at the Talisman.
Bottom line: It's a total blast. Ridiculously entertaining. I lapped it up like a parched spaniel aside the Avon.
Mark Pitt
Priory Withdraws Original Offer to Host Choppa.com 2025 Awards.
STATEMENT, AUGUST 2025.
We are disappointed that the Priory Theatre, a nominee for the 2025 Choppa.com Awards, has withdrawn Artistic Director Nicky Main’s generous initial offer to host the event on a “box office take” basis, choosing instead to offer the venue as “rented.” One might speculate whether our less-than-flattering review of their latest production sparked this change of heart among the Priory’s board, who, unlike Nicky Main, seem keen to “rearrange the stage” at their prerogative. While we regret this shift, Choppa.com acknowledges that maintaining our independence, free from any perceived “favour” or indebtedness, aligns with our commitment to impartial celebration of the 2024/2025 Warwickshire Theatre season’s finest work. Consequently, the in-person awards ceremony will not proceed. Instead, awards will be delivered directly to the winning theatre companies by year’s end, ensuring the season’s outstanding achievements are honored—without any strings attached.
A full list of nominees and final voting will begin in September. Mark Pitt
A full list of nominees and final voting will begin in September. Mark Pitt
Evita, Palladium, London
"Brilliance"
You won’t get a ticket now. Don’t bother. It’s sold out. And if you weren’t there tonight, you didn’t just miss a performance — you missed a bloody revolution. Jamie Lloyd’s Evita hasn’t been revived; it’s been detonated. The old show is a smoking crater somewhere under St Martin’s Lane, and the tourists are still taking selfies in front of it.
If creativity was once running at 5G, this is 6G: faster, sharper, capable of melting the enamel off your teeth. It isn’t staged; it’s soldered — each number welded with an industrial beauty that sears the retina and leaves scorch marks on the soul. The show doesn’t end so much as stop to reload.
The only disappointment was knowing that with each number, there was less of it left — the exquisite torture of sipping a whisky so good you’d sell a kidney for another, knowing it’s the last drop in the bottle. I’ve heard this score before, patted it politely, hummed it home. Tonight, Lloyd tore it apart, set it alight, and rebuilt it into something so unapologetically audacious it made earlier revivals look like school plays staged by geography teachers.
Lloyd doesn’t tip his hat to Sir Andrew; he sets it on fire, boots it into the orchestra pit, and dances in the embers. If you think you’ve seen Evita, you’ve seen a waxwork.
Elaine Paige became a star because of the original, David Essex looked pretty, and on Broadway, LuPone and Patinkin turned passive-aggressive loathing into stage chemistry. But this cast is a comet. Bella Brown’s Eva is magnetic, fractured, and femme fatale to the last molecule. Diego Rodriguez’s Che loses the pantomime beret and gains the cool omniscience of a Greek chorus — a voice that comes not from one man, but the whole watching world. James Olivas Perón is a shadow in a tailored suit — a political arachnid for whom Eva is bait, but the mistress is the meal.
The audience stood, naturally — West End audiences always stand; these days they’d ovate a well-lit fire exit. But this time the applause was for the arsonist, not the embers.
I said I wouldn’t mention the set, lighting, and staging — all of them sick-good. The choreography? An acid trip in eight counts. The direction? This isn’t directed; it’s launched. If Elon Musk produced theatre, it would look like this.
Yes, a few tickets remain at over £200. I booked in January at a sensible price, before the press caught up. And to the critics who complained the music overpowers Tim Rice’s lyrics: Evita is loud. It’s meant to be loud. It’s a revolution, a conflation of politics and celebrity that offends, seduces, and corrupts — the very thing the people of the time demanded. She wasn’t alone. JFK and Marilyn. Profumo and Keeler. Even Harry and Megs bucked the system that made them. That danger, that sleight of hand on the political stage, is where this production glitters like a knife in low light.
This Evita will never be seen again in this form. Seminal. Sensational. Brilliant.
Mark Pitt
If creativity was once running at 5G, this is 6G: faster, sharper, capable of melting the enamel off your teeth. It isn’t staged; it’s soldered — each number welded with an industrial beauty that sears the retina and leaves scorch marks on the soul. The show doesn’t end so much as stop to reload.
The only disappointment was knowing that with each number, there was less of it left — the exquisite torture of sipping a whisky so good you’d sell a kidney for another, knowing it’s the last drop in the bottle. I’ve heard this score before, patted it politely, hummed it home. Tonight, Lloyd tore it apart, set it alight, and rebuilt it into something so unapologetically audacious it made earlier revivals look like school plays staged by geography teachers.
Lloyd doesn’t tip his hat to Sir Andrew; he sets it on fire, boots it into the orchestra pit, and dances in the embers. If you think you’ve seen Evita, you’ve seen a waxwork.
Elaine Paige became a star because of the original, David Essex looked pretty, and on Broadway, LuPone and Patinkin turned passive-aggressive loathing into stage chemistry. But this cast is a comet. Bella Brown’s Eva is magnetic, fractured, and femme fatale to the last molecule. Diego Rodriguez’s Che loses the pantomime beret and gains the cool omniscience of a Greek chorus — a voice that comes not from one man, but the whole watching world. James Olivas Perón is a shadow in a tailored suit — a political arachnid for whom Eva is bait, but the mistress is the meal.
The audience stood, naturally — West End audiences always stand; these days they’d ovate a well-lit fire exit. But this time the applause was for the arsonist, not the embers.
I said I wouldn’t mention the set, lighting, and staging — all of them sick-good. The choreography? An acid trip in eight counts. The direction? This isn’t directed; it’s launched. If Elon Musk produced theatre, it would look like this.
Yes, a few tickets remain at over £200. I booked in January at a sensible price, before the press caught up. And to the critics who complained the music overpowers Tim Rice’s lyrics: Evita is loud. It’s meant to be loud. It’s a revolution, a conflation of politics and celebrity that offends, seduces, and corrupts — the very thing the people of the time demanded. She wasn’t alone. JFK and Marilyn. Profumo and Keeler. Even Harry and Megs bucked the system that made them. That danger, that sleight of hand on the political stage, is where this production glitters like a knife in low light.
This Evita will never be seen again in this form. Seminal. Sensational. Brilliant.
Mark Pitt
Fawlty Towers at the Apollo Theatre, London
A Resurrection with Reservations
How do you even begin to recreate something as unimprovably British as Fawlty Towers? Not merely a sitcom, but a shrieking relic of national identity — as recognisably ours as red phone boxes, the Shipping Forecast, and the fading optimism of a Torquay summer. A mere twelve episodes, broadcast half a century ago, and yet it remains engraved in the national synapses — a work of comic genius so flawlessly calibrated that trying to revive it feels less like theatre and more like necromancy.
And yet here it is — Fawlty Towers, on the London stage, revived, reframed, and resuscitated not by some breathless production company chasing nostalgia, but by John Cleese himself. The original basilisk-eyed Basil, the towering auteur of teeth-gritted British embarrassment. If anyone has the mad licence to exhume this particular treasure, it’s Cleese. But it remains a feat of operatic audacity — not a hard act to follow, but an impossible one.
The good news, then, is that it mostly works. About 90%, to be precise — which, under the circumstances, is not just respectable, but miraculous. Because Fawlty Towers wasn’t just a comedy. It was timing. Every line, every pratfall, every shrieked “Manuel!” was choreographed like a piece of classical music played by lunatics. There was rhythm, yes — but also camber: a Cleesian tilt to the jokes, arcing forward, doubling back, landing punchlines planted two scenes earlier. And somehow, on the boards, much of that syncopation survives. The cadence is intact, if occasionally scuffed.
Danny Bayne steps into the fearsome corduroy of Basil, and he’s... remarkably good. Physically, he’s got it: all jutting angles and elbows, a body built for indignation. His movement is authentic, his fury well-stoked. And yet — the voice. The crack, the crescendo, the operatic absurdity of Basil Fawlty’s meltdowns are singular to Cleese, and Bayne, sensibly, doesn’t try to replicate them. Instead, he plays the role in a different key — not wrong, just not Cleese. But it’s a performance of great skill and sincerity. He earns the room.
Mia Austin’s Sybil is also sharply drawn — coiffed, clipped, quietly furious. She captures the exasperated matriarch with flair, though there’s a note of softness where Scales once deployed steel. This Sybil could wound with a glance — the original could kill. But again, the choice is considered, not careless. A wonderfully realised portrait, even if it doesn't quite match the acid genius of the source.
The one outright misfire — or perhaps miscasting — is Paul Nicholas as The Major. Ballard Berkeley’s original was a walking paradox: simultaneously irrelevant and integral, delivering foggy non-sequiturs and bursts of wartime nonsense like shrapnel from a cracked mind. Nicholas’s version is sharper, more coherent, a cleaner silhouette — but that’s precisely the problem. He’s a Major who might plausibly remember the war. The scatterbrained charm is gone, replaced by something more military than mad. He’s not part of the ensemble’s music — he’s in another score altogether. And for all his experience, Nicholas was never a character actor. He brings precision when the role demands dementia.
And then, there’s Joanne Clifton. The revelation. As Polly — originally the soft-centred conscience of the chaos, played with gentle brilliance by Connie Booth — Clifton doesn’t merely step up, she slips in like she was always there. Her performance is instinctive, poised, beautifully understated. She doesn’t mimic — she inhabits. Her scenes with Bayne have an ease, a rhythm that evokes the original with uncanny fidelity. Her mid-Atlantic accent is flawless, her timing exquisite. If there’s one performance that truly qualifies as a "counterfeit" in the highest, most flattering sense — forged not just in image but in essence — it’s hers. It’s glorious.
Director Caroline Jay Ranger deserves credit for her restraint. This could easily have been a waxwork revue, a ghoulish puppet show of old lines and mugged nostalgia. Instead, she allows the material to breathe, even when it stumbles. She understands that Fawlty Towers was never just about shouting and slamming doors — it was about character, about class, about a Britain unsure of itself and lashing out in all directions.
In the end, this isn’t a reboot. It’s not an adaptation, nor a reinvention. It’s something closer to a seance — a bold, affectionate, and occasionally brilliant attempt to bring back the dead, if only for a while. And if you know the original as intimately as I do — every tic, every twitch, every sublime pause — you’ll spot the differences. But you’ll also smile at the echoes.
This isn’t nostalgia.
It’s a sacrament.
Playing Apollo, London followed by a UK national tour.
Mark Pitt
The Loft’s Faustus is smart, seductive, and eerily modern...
Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe.
Directed and Adapted by David Fletcher for the Loft Theatre.
Runs through Saturday.
There are plays that linger, not because they’re timeless, but because they’re too vain to leave the stage. Doctor Faustus is one of them—a theological peacock with a taste for Latin, brimstone, and the worst decision-making in dramatic history. You’d think we’d have outgrown it. That Faustus, that wheezing old conjurer, would be left to die quietly in a dusty Penguin Classic on a shelf no one dusts.
But no. He’s still here--still flogging his soul like an overkeen intern trying to impress Satan’s HR department. Still asking for more, still getting less. Still insisting that knowledge, power, and a party trick or two are worth eternal damnation.
Except it’s never really been about hellfire. It’s about terms and conditions. About the craving to know more than you’re supposed to, to break out of your slot in the cosmic spreadsheet. Faustus is man versus mortality, yes—but also man versus management. A Renaissance parable that now reads like the first season of Black Mirror, only with worse shoes.
In Marlowe’s time, heresy came with hot pokers and a brisk execution. Today it arrives in the form of polite automated emails and unread privacy policies. Faustus isn’t mad. He’s just the first poor bastard to click “accept all cookies” on the human condition.
And what does he get? Not omniscience. Not enlightenment. He gets second-rate conjuring and a brief visitation from Helen of Troy, who turns up like a Greek pop-up ad and vanishes before you can ask a question. It’s not a deal with the Devil—it’s a freemium subscription to damnation.
Which brings us to The Loft’s production—clear, confident, and quietly devastating. Directed by David Fletcher, who now deserves to be canonised by Equity for consistent brilliance, this Faustus is restrained but razor-sharp. There’s no theatrical hocus-pocus, no gratuitous horns or flaming pits. Fletcher plays it straight—and it lands harder for it.
David Bennett gives us a Faustus who isn’t grandiose or declamatory, but recognisably human—curious, mildly arrogant, and increasingly aware he’s made a very expensive mistake. His descent is slow and believable. Less a fall, more a slide.
Opposite him, Peter Daly-Dixon’s Mephistopheles is a masterclass in quiet seduction. No smoke, no velvet voice—just stillness and steel. He doesn’t ensnare Faustus so much as gently onboard him. The Devil here doesn’t lure, he facilitates.
Together, under Fletcher’s pin-sharp direction, they build something taut and tragic. And then comes the ending—a minimalist masterstroke. A minute-long projected montage fast-forwards through the entire production. A flashback, a warning, a final tolling of the soul’s receipt. No pyrotechnics—just consequence. Brilliant.
The supporting cast is equally strong. Christopher Bird’s Lucifer is silkily weary, like a CEO who’s had to do one too many press briefings. Sophie Jasmin-Bird, so good in Love Song, is underused here but still manages to leave an impression. Her brief turn as Helen of Troy is intentionally fleeting. She’s not a person, she’s an idea. A screensaver. A promise of beauty that never speaks, never stays. And that’s the point. You’re not meant to know her. You’re meant to want her.
And really, that’s what Faustus has always been about. The wanting. Not having. The aching conviction that more must exist, and the absolute certainty that you’ll ruin yourself trying to reach it.
Technically, this is a leap forward for the Loft. Lighting and projection design are stunning, suggestive without being gaudy, used with intelligence and restraint. One assumes new equipment, or perhaps new technical minds. Whatever it is, it works—and it signals a company stepping into its next phase with confidence.
But the triumph here is not in the tech, nor even in the standout performances. It’s in Fletcher’s understanding of the material. He doesn’t modernise Faustus. He doesn’t need to. Because Faustus is already modern. His tragedy is ours. His bargain is familiar. He wanted forbidden knowledge; we’ll settle for faster Wi-Fi and blue ticks. He sold his soul; we just gave ours away for convenience.
Finally, let's mention the mesmeric, ethereal, and enigmatic brilliance of Johnathan Fletcher’s underscoring—a score that not only complemented but at times subtly controlled and paced the emotions of both audience and cast. While film often employs music to shape experience, theatre rarely dares to do so with such depth. Yet here, Fletcher’s composition doesn’t merely accompany—it augments the action, suggests, steers, and ultimately shares each moment with our senses in a deeply symbiotic way. It is sublime—another powerful reason not to miss this production.
So yes—Faustus is a fool. But so are we. And that’s why this play persists. Why does it still sting? Because we no longer laugh at the idea of selling our souls. We just argue over the exchange rate.
Bottom line: Concise, clear and uber-intelligent. David Fletcher's "Faustus" is a masterclass in adaptation and production.
Mark Pitt
Big Big Sky by Tom Wells
The New Vic, Newcastle under Lyme
Big Big Sky by Tom Wells
The New Victoria Theatre, Newcastle under Lyme.
Directed by Bryn Holding.
Somewhere between a sigh and a seagull cry lies Kilnsea — and a quietly extraordinary little play.
There’s a place called Kilnsea on the Yorkshire coast, where England seems to taper off into a shrug. It’s all wind, birds, and the slow dissolution of cliff into sea — less a town than a suggestion. Big Big Sky, set in this vanishing, edge-of-the-map nowhere, takes place in a café that probably smells of bacon and kindness. It is not, I should say, a café for oat milk evangelists or sourdough fetishists. This is a place where a “flat white” gets you a look, and tea is tea — not a joss stick in water.
Into this café wafts a play as gentle as sea fog: a soft-spoken meditation on grief, love, and the quietly unshowy business of carrying on after something vital has come undone. It’s all so warm and cardiganny you half expect it to come with a shortbread biscuit and a Radio Four monologue. There are no big reveals. No third-act reversals. No final-reel catharsis. Just life. And birds.
Angie (Tanya-Loretta Dee), who runs the café, carries the kind of grief the British specialise in: neatly folded and never mentioned. She moves with the calm of someone who has made kindness a daily habit. Dennis (Simeon Truby), a full-time birdwatcher of the "film, not digital" persuasion, is mourning his wife, though he processes this mainly by hoarding leftover beans and pastries with the glee of a man treating cholesterol as a competitive sport.
His daughter Lauren (Roxanne Morgan) has one of those slightly worrying theatrical ambitions: she wants to be a country singer. In Kilnsea. She’s all vocal talent and social cringe, like someone who can sing beautifully but would rather be hit by a wave than do it in front of her dad. And then there’s Ed (Sam Baker-Jones), a vegan with a Brummie accent, the affable charm of an open notebook, and the look of a man who owns a canvas rucksack and doesn't mind being rained on — inside or out.
There’s not much plot. This is not a narrative so much as a passing of seasons. The story hums along quietly, like a fridge. Relationships shift. Pain softens. Someone makes a joke. There’s comedy here, but the gentle kind — not funny ha ha, but funny because we’ve all been there, or funny because what else is there? It’s about the bits of life we usually skip in the edit: drying up, shared glances, the kettle boiling just as someone is about to cry.
And it works because the cast is faultless. Dee is sublime — she brings Angie a maternal melancholy that never veers into sentiment. Truby, in a performance that quietly showcases a career’s worth of depth — from West End runs to long-defunct rep theatres off B-roads — is gruff, dry, and quietly endearing. There’s a glorious moment when his ancient SLR malfunctions, erasing a week’s worth of bird snaps, and the result is a masterclass in comic despair. Later, he delivers scenes of genuine emotional resonance, gently and without fuss. The director, whom I met the next day, called him "a legend." This is probably going far too far for my liking — but not by much. Truby is superb.
Morgan’s Lauren is all sweet discontent and unspoken yearning, with a voice that could melt permafrost. Her scenes with Dee are crackling with everything not said — the tension of women who’ve opted for strength at the cost of softness. And Baker-Jones is a subtle, grounded delight as Ed — charming, open, and entirely convincing as the sort of man who could win both Lauren’s affections and the audience’s with a tofu stir-fry and a bashful smile. He makes his presence felt — literally. To say more would ruin a perfectly good pregnancy.
What Big Big Sky manages — and it’s no small thing — is to capture a place, and more importantly, a feeling. Beneath the play’s quiet charm is a gently murmuring lament: a suggestion that something precious has gone missing in Britain. Not vanished — just misplaced. Community, perhaps. Or grace. Or simply the willingness to sit still and notice a bird. But it’s not gone entirely. It’s hiding — in places like Kilnsea, in cafés like Angie’s, and in plays like this.
Bryn Holding’s direction is airy and precise. He nudges at what arcs there are, then gets out of the way, letting the actors breathe. The show has that rare rhythm — half-poetry, half-pause — where the silences are as alive as the lines. It feels nostalgic, not in a twee way, but in the way old Ladybird books or enamel signage feels nostalgic. You want to buy the script on a tea towel. Or have the logo cast in brass.
The set is lovely — sumptuously detailed, with projected waves lapping softly around the action, and gulls circling above on a reef-like coil. It’s the icing on the Victoria sponge.
So no, it’s not flashy. It’s not even especially dramatic. But it is careful, and truthful, and quietly beautiful. Big Big Sky doesn’t shout. It listens.
And in theatre, as in life, that’s a rare and lovely thing.
Bottom Line: “★★★★ – A tender, tea-scented triumph”
Mark Pitt
The New Victoria Theatre, Newcastle under Lyme.
Directed by Bryn Holding.
Somewhere between a sigh and a seagull cry lies Kilnsea — and a quietly extraordinary little play.
There’s a place called Kilnsea on the Yorkshire coast, where England seems to taper off into a shrug. It’s all wind, birds, and the slow dissolution of cliff into sea — less a town than a suggestion. Big Big Sky, set in this vanishing, edge-of-the-map nowhere, takes place in a café that probably smells of bacon and kindness. It is not, I should say, a café for oat milk evangelists or sourdough fetishists. This is a place where a “flat white” gets you a look, and tea is tea — not a joss stick in water.
Into this café wafts a play as gentle as sea fog: a soft-spoken meditation on grief, love, and the quietly unshowy business of carrying on after something vital has come undone. It’s all so warm and cardiganny you half expect it to come with a shortbread biscuit and a Radio Four monologue. There are no big reveals. No third-act reversals. No final-reel catharsis. Just life. And birds.
Angie (Tanya-Loretta Dee), who runs the café, carries the kind of grief the British specialise in: neatly folded and never mentioned. She moves with the calm of someone who has made kindness a daily habit. Dennis (Simeon Truby), a full-time birdwatcher of the "film, not digital" persuasion, is mourning his wife, though he processes this mainly by hoarding leftover beans and pastries with the glee of a man treating cholesterol as a competitive sport.
His daughter Lauren (Roxanne Morgan) has one of those slightly worrying theatrical ambitions: she wants to be a country singer. In Kilnsea. She’s all vocal talent and social cringe, like someone who can sing beautifully but would rather be hit by a wave than do it in front of her dad. And then there’s Ed (Sam Baker-Jones), a vegan with a Brummie accent, the affable charm of an open notebook, and the look of a man who owns a canvas rucksack and doesn't mind being rained on — inside or out.
There’s not much plot. This is not a narrative so much as a passing of seasons. The story hums along quietly, like a fridge. Relationships shift. Pain softens. Someone makes a joke. There’s comedy here, but the gentle kind — not funny ha ha, but funny because we’ve all been there, or funny because what else is there? It’s about the bits of life we usually skip in the edit: drying up, shared glances, the kettle boiling just as someone is about to cry.
And it works because the cast is faultless. Dee is sublime — she brings Angie a maternal melancholy that never veers into sentiment. Truby, in a performance that quietly showcases a career’s worth of depth — from West End runs to long-defunct rep theatres off B-roads — is gruff, dry, and quietly endearing. There’s a glorious moment when his ancient SLR malfunctions, erasing a week’s worth of bird snaps, and the result is a masterclass in comic despair. Later, he delivers scenes of genuine emotional resonance, gently and without fuss. The director, whom I met the next day, called him "a legend." This is probably going far too far for my liking — but not by much. Truby is superb.
Morgan’s Lauren is all sweet discontent and unspoken yearning, with a voice that could melt permafrost. Her scenes with Dee are crackling with everything not said — the tension of women who’ve opted for strength at the cost of softness. And Baker-Jones is a subtle, grounded delight as Ed — charming, open, and entirely convincing as the sort of man who could win both Lauren’s affections and the audience’s with a tofu stir-fry and a bashful smile. He makes his presence felt — literally. To say more would ruin a perfectly good pregnancy.
What Big Big Sky manages — and it’s no small thing — is to capture a place, and more importantly, a feeling. Beneath the play’s quiet charm is a gently murmuring lament: a suggestion that something precious has gone missing in Britain. Not vanished — just misplaced. Community, perhaps. Or grace. Or simply the willingness to sit still and notice a bird. But it’s not gone entirely. It’s hiding — in places like Kilnsea, in cafés like Angie’s, and in plays like this.
Bryn Holding’s direction is airy and precise. He nudges at what arcs there are, then gets out of the way, letting the actors breathe. The show has that rare rhythm — half-poetry, half-pause — where the silences are as alive as the lines. It feels nostalgic, not in a twee way, but in the way old Ladybird books or enamel signage feels nostalgic. You want to buy the script on a tea towel. Or have the logo cast in brass.
The set is lovely — sumptuously detailed, with projected waves lapping softly around the action, and gulls circling above on a reef-like coil. It’s the icing on the Victoria sponge.
So no, it’s not flashy. It’s not even especially dramatic. But it is careful, and truthful, and quietly beautiful. Big Big Sky doesn’t shout. It listens.
And in theatre, as in life, that’s a rare and lovely thing.
Bottom Line: “★★★★ – A tender, tea-scented triumph”
Mark Pitt
4:48 Psychosis at the RSC's Other Place
No Exit, No Epiphany: 4.48 Psychosis Returns,
Right, then. Sarah Kane. The sainted, the damned, depending on which theatre critic you're talking to – usually the same one, just on alternate Tuesdays. 4.48 Psychosis, her final curtain call, is back. Twenty-five years on, and it still feels less like a play and more like a forensic report from the edge of a cliff. An epitaph, yes, but one spat out in shards, punctuated by a raw, guttural rage that occasionally, oddly, just… stops. Mutes itself. As if even the anger is exhausted.
This quarter-century revival, then, isn't some jolly theatrical knees-up. It's a sombre nod, a quiet marking of the troubled, brilliant passing of a writer who, undoubtedly, resides in the national canon – albeit in the broom cupboard at the back. Never commercial, thank Christ. Never 'popular' in that nauseating, lowest-common-denominator way. You see it, don't you? The instant repellence for anyone looking for a comforting narrative arc or a reassuring message about the triumph of the human spirit. Good.
Because what Kane delivered with 4.48 Psychosis is less a play and more an endoscopic probe into the final, screaming collapse of a mind. Her mind. You feel the fear like a chill, the abject uselessness of the meat-puppet body and the frayed, sparking wire of the brain. The sheer, grinding torture of merely existing. The tragic, bitter joke of it all is how the world, through her work, did listen. It leaned in, nodded sagely. And then, bless its cotton socks, offered up a pharmacopoeia of 'cures', a cacophony of psychological white noise, entirely missing the point. Misunderstanding the utterly, irredeemably misunderstood.
And that was it, wasn't it? To live, to write, to have this very agony replayed for paying punters on a London stage – it simply wasn't enough. Not nearly. Somewhere, deep within that mind, a totalitarian entity held sway. A self-inflicted carcinogenicity of thought that consumed her. Every moment, every breath, became an unbearable weight, a beleaguered struggle. A dark reality. Or, perhaps, an unreality so perfectly constructed, so hermetically sealed, that it became the ultimate, inescapable prison. Trapped. Utterly, terribly trapped. And in the end, there was no key. Just the silence.
Now, this particular outing, a co-production between the High Priests of Stratford – the RSC, bless their cotton tights – and the Royal Court, comes with a rather curious twist. The original cast – Daniel Evans, Jo McInnes, Madeleine Potter – are back. And James MacDonald, the man who first tried to make sense of this glorious mess, is directing again. Interestingly, and it is, they're all a generation older. A generation of life, of experience, of the accumulating weight of years which, you imagine, lends a different kind of heft to roles that, twenty-five years ago, they wrestled with as young actors. There are no actual characters here, mind you. No plot, not in any sense that would make a sane person recognise it. Just a series of monologues, then exchanges, that feel utterly, despairingly universal. Universal in the way the cries and whispers, the shouted truths and muffled screams, echo through a thousand anonymous offices, consulting rooms, and rain-slicked streets within these city walls.
Structurally, you could probably pick up similar fractured narratives from the average psych-ward, or indeed, the average room of the average psychiatrist. Because that, ultimately, is all they have to go on, isn't it? The average patient. And in this regard, the play becomes a desperate, eloquent plea. A plea for actual listening. For actual research. Proper research. Not some half-baked study with a pat-on-the-head prize and a corporate sponsor's logo tacked on the end. But research that might, just might, admit to understanding. But then, this is where Kane really drives it home, isn't it? To that black hole where we know so spectacularly little about the mental condition. Indeed, we don't know what we don't know. We can slap a label on it, draw our little diagnostic boxes, offer our Prozac and Xanax like communion wafers, dish out reports and referrals. But the terrifying truth? We're still fumbling in the dark. We haven't got a bloody clue.
So, are the actors any good? "Good" doesn't quite cover it. They're definitive. They don't just act it, they live it. They are as honest as the condition itself. They don't perform, they are. And the direction? Again, definitive. Understood. Complete. Seminal, if you want to get pompous. The lighting? Masterful. Black and white, a pixelated London – a noise, a place where life happens, but for some, it's not actually lived. Colour? That's reserved for the outside world, for the glimpses of the streets beyond the Georgian windows of those offices. Inside? Plain, stark black and white. Boring costumes. Generic. Without form or fashion. Just functional enough to clothe and cover the meat-puppet. And that, I suppose, is that.
You really cannot conflate this play with any other, and you cannot possibly think that any people, other than this team, could produce it. It's hardly enjoyable, but you will see something you will never forget.
Mark Pitt
This quarter-century revival, then, isn't some jolly theatrical knees-up. It's a sombre nod, a quiet marking of the troubled, brilliant passing of a writer who, undoubtedly, resides in the national canon – albeit in the broom cupboard at the back. Never commercial, thank Christ. Never 'popular' in that nauseating, lowest-common-denominator way. You see it, don't you? The instant repellence for anyone looking for a comforting narrative arc or a reassuring message about the triumph of the human spirit. Good.
Because what Kane delivered with 4.48 Psychosis is less a play and more an endoscopic probe into the final, screaming collapse of a mind. Her mind. You feel the fear like a chill, the abject uselessness of the meat-puppet body and the frayed, sparking wire of the brain. The sheer, grinding torture of merely existing. The tragic, bitter joke of it all is how the world, through her work, did listen. It leaned in, nodded sagely. And then, bless its cotton socks, offered up a pharmacopoeia of 'cures', a cacophony of psychological white noise, entirely missing the point. Misunderstanding the utterly, irredeemably misunderstood.
And that was it, wasn't it? To live, to write, to have this very agony replayed for paying punters on a London stage – it simply wasn't enough. Not nearly. Somewhere, deep within that mind, a totalitarian entity held sway. A self-inflicted carcinogenicity of thought that consumed her. Every moment, every breath, became an unbearable weight, a beleaguered struggle. A dark reality. Or, perhaps, an unreality so perfectly constructed, so hermetically sealed, that it became the ultimate, inescapable prison. Trapped. Utterly, terribly trapped. And in the end, there was no key. Just the silence.
Now, this particular outing, a co-production between the High Priests of Stratford – the RSC, bless their cotton tights – and the Royal Court, comes with a rather curious twist. The original cast – Daniel Evans, Jo McInnes, Madeleine Potter – are back. And James MacDonald, the man who first tried to make sense of this glorious mess, is directing again. Interestingly, and it is, they're all a generation older. A generation of life, of experience, of the accumulating weight of years which, you imagine, lends a different kind of heft to roles that, twenty-five years ago, they wrestled with as young actors. There are no actual characters here, mind you. No plot, not in any sense that would make a sane person recognise it. Just a series of monologues, then exchanges, that feel utterly, despairingly universal. Universal in the way the cries and whispers, the shouted truths and muffled screams, echo through a thousand anonymous offices, consulting rooms, and rain-slicked streets within these city walls.
Structurally, you could probably pick up similar fractured narratives from the average psych-ward, or indeed, the average room of the average psychiatrist. Because that, ultimately, is all they have to go on, isn't it? The average patient. And in this regard, the play becomes a desperate, eloquent plea. A plea for actual listening. For actual research. Proper research. Not some half-baked study with a pat-on-the-head prize and a corporate sponsor's logo tacked on the end. But research that might, just might, admit to understanding. But then, this is where Kane really drives it home, isn't it? To that black hole where we know so spectacularly little about the mental condition. Indeed, we don't know what we don't know. We can slap a label on it, draw our little diagnostic boxes, offer our Prozac and Xanax like communion wafers, dish out reports and referrals. But the terrifying truth? We're still fumbling in the dark. We haven't got a bloody clue.
So, are the actors any good? "Good" doesn't quite cover it. They're definitive. They don't just act it, they live it. They are as honest as the condition itself. They don't perform, they are. And the direction? Again, definitive. Understood. Complete. Seminal, if you want to get pompous. The lighting? Masterful. Black and white, a pixelated London – a noise, a place where life happens, but for some, it's not actually lived. Colour? That's reserved for the outside world, for the glimpses of the streets beyond the Georgian windows of those offices. Inside? Plain, stark black and white. Boring costumes. Generic. Without form or fashion. Just functional enough to clothe and cover the meat-puppet. And that, I suppose, is that.
You really cannot conflate this play with any other, and you cannot possibly think that any people, other than this team, could produce it. It's hardly enjoyable, but you will see something you will never forget.
Mark Pitt
Hay Fever at The Priory - A Blissful Disaster
Review: Hay Fever at The Priory Theatre –
No Coward, All Bluster.
There is a particular flavour of English amateur theatre that exists in the same cultural taxonomy as pub carpets, village fetes, and homemade chutney labelled in passive-aggressive calligraphy. It is the type that believes the mere act of staging a play is, in itself, noble — as though effort were a substitute for execution. And tonight, at The Priory Theatre, they staged Hay Fever. Or rather, they tied it to a chair, read it its last rites, and pushed it down the stairs.
Let’s be clear: Hay Fever is not an easy play. Noël Coward wrote it as a sort of waspish love letter to himself, a champagne-soaked ballet of bad manners and good tailoring. It requires the cast to do two things simultaneously — take absolutely nothing seriously and yet perform with the rigorous precision of a Swiss watch in a silk dressing gown. The Priory’s production did neither. It was Coward with the cork still in.
The director, Bev Akin Davis — has approached this material like someone trying to iron a soufflé. There is no rhythm, no verve, no discernible sense of comic timing. Instead, we are left with the theatrical equivalent of lukewarm custard: yellow, wobbling, and mostly just sad.
Cheryl Ryan, as Judith Bliss, attempts a performance that lands somewhere between half-remembered sitcom and someone doing "Shakespeare voice" after too much rosé. There are flickers of something underneath — a hint of June Whitfield on a bad rehearsal day — but the direction has left her stranded, emoting bravely into the void.
David Milburn, playing David Bliss, offers a performance so inert it may qualify as carbon-neutral. He delivers lines like a man reading aloud the terms and conditions of a toaster warranty. You don’t want to boo; you want to call someone and ask if he’s okay.
Chris Allen-Mason, as Simon, appears to believe that acting is something that happens exclusively above the eyebrows. He delivers every line as though auditioning for a toothpaste advert directed by David Lynch. Mesi Johnson, as Sorel, at least listens — which already places her in the top percentile of this cast. She might be rather good, given a different show, a different partner, and perhaps a stiff drink.
And then there are Paul Sully and Daniel McAteer — both of whom have talent, stage presence, and that lonely, haunted look shared by good actors caught in bad productions. They deserve sympathy. Possibly medals. At the very least, a line of coke and a train ticket to somewhere with professional lighting.
The set was fine. The lighting worked. Nobody forgot their trousers. But that's the damning thing, isn't it? That we’ve reached a point where not actively embarrassing oneself on stage is cause for applause. Theatre should provoke, seduce, delight, or at least distract. This production merely filled time. Time I will never get back.
I left at the interval. I don’t feel guilty about that. Life is too short to endure bad Coward — it’s like drinking flat champagne or listening to a eunuch sing La Bohème. If Coward saw this, he’d rise from his grave just to return to it faster.
In short, Hay Fever at The Priory isn’t theatre. It’s cosplay for people who think enunciation is the same as acting. A production so catastrophically misjudged, it doesn’t merely fail — it forgets to even try.
Avoid. Or better yet, stage an intervention.
Mark Pitt
Further Notes on This Production
Or: The Thespian Equivalent of Watching Paint Recite Pinter
Noël Coward’s Hay Fever doesn’t so much have a plot as it has a faint, lingering aroma of one — like perfume in an old scarf, or gin on a Tuesday. And that’s entirely the point. As Charles Essex clumsily pointed out in Warwickshire World — bless him — Coward is no Agatha Christie. Christie gives you a murder, a motive, and a moustache. Coward gives you people who have long since murdered any sense of proportion, and wouldn’t know a motive if it monologued at them over a martini.
Coward’s world is a gorgeous, cynical tap-dance around substance. It’s a drawing-room ouroboros, style eating itself in a haze of cigarette smoke and sardonic aphorisms. Hay Fever is not a play, it’s a performance of the idea of performance. It’s as self-consciously aware as an Instagram influencer on a yoga retreat — all poise and no pulse. THERE IS NO PLOT! It's manners, it's fly-on-the-wall, it's a piss-take!
Which brings me — tragically, inevitably — to this particular production. It was, to be generous, like watching a group of understudies rehearsing in a hall next to a lawnmower race. Act One dragged its feet with such torpor it made Beckett look like Benny Hill. I left — and not because I was offended, or impatient, but because life is short and I had eggs in the fridge demanding more attention.
Judith Bliss, who should be a glorious, operatic fusion of Medea and a bottle of Verve Clicquot, was instead performed as though she were waiting for a bus. The character is meant to be pure theatre — but here, she was pure am-dram: no presence, no pacing, no pulse. Her children, who should be giddy with affectation and sibling sycophancy, floated in and out like they’d accidentally wandered in from a poorly attended poetry slam.
And then there was David Bliss. Oh dear. David, the writer, the observer, the weary needle in this over-upholstered chaise longue of a family. Coward wrote himself into David — you can almost hear his cut-glass sighs between the lines. But the man onstage — and I use the word onstage loosely, as he barely occupied it — was entirely miscast. A shrug with a script. The dramatic equivalent of white noise.
Then, in strutted Charles Allen-Mason as Simon. And my God — if the direction had underplayed everyone else, here was the karmic payback. A manic, bug-eyed performance so irredeemably chaotic it felt less like acting and more like possession. He wasn’t just chewing scenery; he was devouring it whole and washing it down with a can of Red Bull. It was vaudeville meets pantomime meets existential breakdown. Yes, Simon is a product of theatrical madness — but this was just madness.
And therein lay the problem: no cohesion. No listening. Every performer seemingly in their own tragic little play, on their own private island of misinterpretation. Except — a small mercy — Daniel McAteer, whose performance had the rare distinction of being both watchable and believable. A port in this storm of misfiring gestures and unearned accents.
Now, let’s be fair. Bev Avis Dakin — the director — may have been working with slim pickings. Community theatre is often an exercise in making magic with what turns up. But even then, Coward requires a lightness of touch, a wink, a raised brow, not a full-body mime. This production lacked that delicate understanding. It opted for demonstration over suggestion, thunder over wit.
Great Coward is like a dry martini — crisp, exact, and entirely effortless. This was more like a warm gin and tonic served in a plastic cup. Direction should trust the text. Let it breathe. Let the barbs land like velvet daggers, not fly in all directions like darts in the hands of drunkards.
Contrast that with the Talisman’s Present Laughter, where Phil Reynolds sashayed through Garry Essendine like a panther in silk pyjamas. That production understood Coward — the tension between the foppish and the real, between preening ego and quiet desperation. It even had Connor Michael bringing ballast and truth, the perfect foil to the theatrical hurricane. Now that was Coward.
So yes, this production failed. But at least it failed in a way that’s worth talking about. Charles Essex described the acting as “excellent,” which is perhaps true in the way that “rehearsed” and “competent” are sometimes mistaken for “brilliant.” I’d ask him to define what he means by “excellent.” Because if this was excellence, then the Present Laughter company at the Talisman must be positively divine.
No Coward, All Bluster.
There is a particular flavour of English amateur theatre that exists in the same cultural taxonomy as pub carpets, village fetes, and homemade chutney labelled in passive-aggressive calligraphy. It is the type that believes the mere act of staging a play is, in itself, noble — as though effort were a substitute for execution. And tonight, at The Priory Theatre, they staged Hay Fever. Or rather, they tied it to a chair, read it its last rites, and pushed it down the stairs.
Let’s be clear: Hay Fever is not an easy play. Noël Coward wrote it as a sort of waspish love letter to himself, a champagne-soaked ballet of bad manners and good tailoring. It requires the cast to do two things simultaneously — take absolutely nothing seriously and yet perform with the rigorous precision of a Swiss watch in a silk dressing gown. The Priory’s production did neither. It was Coward with the cork still in.
The director, Bev Akin Davis — has approached this material like someone trying to iron a soufflé. There is no rhythm, no verve, no discernible sense of comic timing. Instead, we are left with the theatrical equivalent of lukewarm custard: yellow, wobbling, and mostly just sad.
Cheryl Ryan, as Judith Bliss, attempts a performance that lands somewhere between half-remembered sitcom and someone doing "Shakespeare voice" after too much rosé. There are flickers of something underneath — a hint of June Whitfield on a bad rehearsal day — but the direction has left her stranded, emoting bravely into the void.
David Milburn, playing David Bliss, offers a performance so inert it may qualify as carbon-neutral. He delivers lines like a man reading aloud the terms and conditions of a toaster warranty. You don’t want to boo; you want to call someone and ask if he’s okay.
Chris Allen-Mason, as Simon, appears to believe that acting is something that happens exclusively above the eyebrows. He delivers every line as though auditioning for a toothpaste advert directed by David Lynch. Mesi Johnson, as Sorel, at least listens — which already places her in the top percentile of this cast. She might be rather good, given a different show, a different partner, and perhaps a stiff drink.
And then there are Paul Sully and Daniel McAteer — both of whom have talent, stage presence, and that lonely, haunted look shared by good actors caught in bad productions. They deserve sympathy. Possibly medals. At the very least, a line of coke and a train ticket to somewhere with professional lighting.
The set was fine. The lighting worked. Nobody forgot their trousers. But that's the damning thing, isn't it? That we’ve reached a point where not actively embarrassing oneself on stage is cause for applause. Theatre should provoke, seduce, delight, or at least distract. This production merely filled time. Time I will never get back.
I left at the interval. I don’t feel guilty about that. Life is too short to endure bad Coward — it’s like drinking flat champagne or listening to a eunuch sing La Bohème. If Coward saw this, he’d rise from his grave just to return to it faster.
In short, Hay Fever at The Priory isn’t theatre. It’s cosplay for people who think enunciation is the same as acting. A production so catastrophically misjudged, it doesn’t merely fail — it forgets to even try.
Avoid. Or better yet, stage an intervention.
Mark Pitt
Further Notes on This Production
Or: The Thespian Equivalent of Watching Paint Recite Pinter
Noël Coward’s Hay Fever doesn’t so much have a plot as it has a faint, lingering aroma of one — like perfume in an old scarf, or gin on a Tuesday. And that’s entirely the point. As Charles Essex clumsily pointed out in Warwickshire World — bless him — Coward is no Agatha Christie. Christie gives you a murder, a motive, and a moustache. Coward gives you people who have long since murdered any sense of proportion, and wouldn’t know a motive if it monologued at them over a martini.
Coward’s world is a gorgeous, cynical tap-dance around substance. It’s a drawing-room ouroboros, style eating itself in a haze of cigarette smoke and sardonic aphorisms. Hay Fever is not a play, it’s a performance of the idea of performance. It’s as self-consciously aware as an Instagram influencer on a yoga retreat — all poise and no pulse. THERE IS NO PLOT! It's manners, it's fly-on-the-wall, it's a piss-take!
Which brings me — tragically, inevitably — to this particular production. It was, to be generous, like watching a group of understudies rehearsing in a hall next to a lawnmower race. Act One dragged its feet with such torpor it made Beckett look like Benny Hill. I left — and not because I was offended, or impatient, but because life is short and I had eggs in the fridge demanding more attention.
Judith Bliss, who should be a glorious, operatic fusion of Medea and a bottle of Verve Clicquot, was instead performed as though she were waiting for a bus. The character is meant to be pure theatre — but here, she was pure am-dram: no presence, no pacing, no pulse. Her children, who should be giddy with affectation and sibling sycophancy, floated in and out like they’d accidentally wandered in from a poorly attended poetry slam.
And then there was David Bliss. Oh dear. David, the writer, the observer, the weary needle in this over-upholstered chaise longue of a family. Coward wrote himself into David — you can almost hear his cut-glass sighs between the lines. But the man onstage — and I use the word onstage loosely, as he barely occupied it — was entirely miscast. A shrug with a script. The dramatic equivalent of white noise.
Then, in strutted Charles Allen-Mason as Simon. And my God — if the direction had underplayed everyone else, here was the karmic payback. A manic, bug-eyed performance so irredeemably chaotic it felt less like acting and more like possession. He wasn’t just chewing scenery; he was devouring it whole and washing it down with a can of Red Bull. It was vaudeville meets pantomime meets existential breakdown. Yes, Simon is a product of theatrical madness — but this was just madness.
And therein lay the problem: no cohesion. No listening. Every performer seemingly in their own tragic little play, on their own private island of misinterpretation. Except — a small mercy — Daniel McAteer, whose performance had the rare distinction of being both watchable and believable. A port in this storm of misfiring gestures and unearned accents.
Now, let’s be fair. Bev Avis Dakin — the director — may have been working with slim pickings. Community theatre is often an exercise in making magic with what turns up. But even then, Coward requires a lightness of touch, a wink, a raised brow, not a full-body mime. This production lacked that delicate understanding. It opted for demonstration over suggestion, thunder over wit.
Great Coward is like a dry martini — crisp, exact, and entirely effortless. This was more like a warm gin and tonic served in a plastic cup. Direction should trust the text. Let it breathe. Let the barbs land like velvet daggers, not fly in all directions like darts in the hands of drunkards.
Contrast that with the Talisman’s Present Laughter, where Phil Reynolds sashayed through Garry Essendine like a panther in silk pyjamas. That production understood Coward — the tension between the foppish and the real, between preening ego and quiet desperation. It even had Connor Michael bringing ballast and truth, the perfect foil to the theatrical hurricane. Now that was Coward.
So yes, this production failed. But at least it failed in a way that’s worth talking about. Charles Essex described the acting as “excellent,” which is perhaps true in the way that “rehearsed” and “competent” are sometimes mistaken for “brilliant.” I’d ask him to define what he means by “excellent.” Because if this was excellence, then the Present Laughter company at the Talisman must be positively divine.
"Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: A Soaring Scrapheap of British Charm"
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Flying Car
Warwick Arts Centre, by way of Vulgaria, via the A46.
There are few sights as uniquely, eccentrically British as a flying car in Coventry. But here we are, mid-matinee, and a large, lacquered tin teacake with headlights is ascending to the gods of the Warwick Arts Centre to the sound of the entire audience wheezing "Up from the Ashes" like a choir of nostalgic asthmatics.
Three Spires Guildhall Company have hurled the kitchen sink at Chitty Chitty Bang Bang — and not just the sink, but the Aga, the cutlery drawer, the second-best Meissen and probably the elderly aunt who lives in the pantry. It’s all here: fly cloths, fly rigs, fly-by-night microphones, and more sequins than a Liberace garage sale. You could see this thing from space. NASA probably has a trajectory on it.
Let’s talk about the show. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is what happens when Ian Fleming has a nervous breakdown in a toy shop and Roald Dahl is handed the typewriter with a brief to “make it more Hitler-y.” It’s a musical soufflé risen on post-war British eccentricity and MGM wish-fulfilment. Potts, the inventor, is essentially Heath Robinson in a waistcoat with a libretto. He lives with two angelic children and a father who appears to be dressed as a clairvoyant from Rhyl. Together, they build a flying car, foil an offensively accented dictatorship, and learn the valuable lesson that musicals require absolutely no internal logic.
In the film, it worked. Just. We were children. It was Christmas. We were full of sugar and sedated by Lionel Jeffries’ eyebrows. It was a simpler time when grown men were called Caractacus and nobody questioned why the dog was called Edison.
But now, on stage, in 2025? It’s a museum piece. A quaint, feather-dustered relic of matinee make-believe. It’s panto with a PhD. The score is full of tunes that would be catchy if only they had somewhere to go. It's like Oliver! if Fagin had been replaced with a trifle. There’s no grit. No peril. Just pluck and bunting and something uncomfortably close to ethnic stereotyping in lederhosen.
Yet. Yet. Despite the material — which is, let’s be clear, twee enough to give Beatrix Potter a nosebleed — this production… soars.
It soars not because of the script or the score or the sugar-high plot. It soars because it commits. It goes at it with a kind of full-throated, community-theatre-as-spiritual-mission fervour. You don’t question it because they never once question themselves. The sets are sumptuous, the costumes unfathomably crisp, and the flying car actually flies — which is more than can be said of several West End shows I’ve seen lately.
Ian Meikle-Walton plays Caractacus Potts with the gentle charm of a man who once auditioned for Call the Midwife and got a callback. Emily Collins as Truly Scrumptious (a name that still makes me feel like I need a wet wipe) is poised, polished and sings like someone whose vowels have never seen a Midlands postcode. Nigel Brook’s Grandpa doesn’t just lean on Jeffries’ ghost — he flirts with it, dances a little waltz, and somehow makes it his own.
Steve Bingham is a restrained Baron Bomburst — which is a bit like saying “a modest Liberace” — but it works. Controlled, comic, calibrated. And then there’s Craig Shelton, the theatrical equivalent of turning on a lamp in a dull room. Whether he’s the Toymaker or Coggins, he brings that rare thing in amateur theatre: an utter absence of amateurism. It’s forensic. It’s instinctive. It’s infuriatingly good.
The ensemble is crisp, well-drilled, and — crucially — doesn’t clump like a bag of wet couscous, which is what usually happens when amateurs attempt choreography. “Ol’ Bamboo” is a thwacking, Pearly Kings-and-Queens knees-up that lands with cockney precision, all knees and canes and cheerful passive-aggression. Brooke Blair — a dancer in the ensemble — is unreasonably watchable. I don’t know what unfair pact she’s made with the gods of stagecraft, but I want a copy of the contract.
There are hiccups, of course. The microphone on poor Jacob Sanders (Jeremy) was dead for half the show. A missed lighting cue left the flying car bathed in darkness at the climax — more Stealth Bomber Chitty than the soaring finale we needed. But this is live theatre. It breathes. It burps. Sometimes it trips over its own props. That’s the deal.
And you know what? I left the theatre smiling. Not in the grin-and-bear-it way you do after a third-rate Les Mis in which the cast has paid to perform. I smiled because this was entertaining. The company took something dated, toothless and structurally absurd — and made it joyous. Jamie Sheerman’s direction is like a warm blanket on a cold afternoon: comforting, unpretentious, and with just enough sparkle to distract you from the mothballs.
This Chitty is not challenging, nor cutting-edge, nor clever-clever. It’s none of the things critics like to salivate over. But it is — and I mean this sincerely — a great time. A thoroughly British, beautifully staged, slightly bonkers afternoon that reminds you why theatre is still the greatest con-trick we’ve got.
It doesn’t always fly. But oh, when it does — it’s magic.
Mark Pitt
Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical: Craig Shelton
Warwick Arts Centre, by way of Vulgaria, via the A46.
There are few sights as uniquely, eccentrically British as a flying car in Coventry. But here we are, mid-matinee, and a large, lacquered tin teacake with headlights is ascending to the gods of the Warwick Arts Centre to the sound of the entire audience wheezing "Up from the Ashes" like a choir of nostalgic asthmatics.
Three Spires Guildhall Company have hurled the kitchen sink at Chitty Chitty Bang Bang — and not just the sink, but the Aga, the cutlery drawer, the second-best Meissen and probably the elderly aunt who lives in the pantry. It’s all here: fly cloths, fly rigs, fly-by-night microphones, and more sequins than a Liberace garage sale. You could see this thing from space. NASA probably has a trajectory on it.
Let’s talk about the show. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is what happens when Ian Fleming has a nervous breakdown in a toy shop and Roald Dahl is handed the typewriter with a brief to “make it more Hitler-y.” It’s a musical soufflé risen on post-war British eccentricity and MGM wish-fulfilment. Potts, the inventor, is essentially Heath Robinson in a waistcoat with a libretto. He lives with two angelic children and a father who appears to be dressed as a clairvoyant from Rhyl. Together, they build a flying car, foil an offensively accented dictatorship, and learn the valuable lesson that musicals require absolutely no internal logic.
In the film, it worked. Just. We were children. It was Christmas. We were full of sugar and sedated by Lionel Jeffries’ eyebrows. It was a simpler time when grown men were called Caractacus and nobody questioned why the dog was called Edison.
But now, on stage, in 2025? It’s a museum piece. A quaint, feather-dustered relic of matinee make-believe. It’s panto with a PhD. The score is full of tunes that would be catchy if only they had somewhere to go. It's like Oliver! if Fagin had been replaced with a trifle. There’s no grit. No peril. Just pluck and bunting and something uncomfortably close to ethnic stereotyping in lederhosen.
Yet. Yet. Despite the material — which is, let’s be clear, twee enough to give Beatrix Potter a nosebleed — this production… soars.
It soars not because of the script or the score or the sugar-high plot. It soars because it commits. It goes at it with a kind of full-throated, community-theatre-as-spiritual-mission fervour. You don’t question it because they never once question themselves. The sets are sumptuous, the costumes unfathomably crisp, and the flying car actually flies — which is more than can be said of several West End shows I’ve seen lately.
Ian Meikle-Walton plays Caractacus Potts with the gentle charm of a man who once auditioned for Call the Midwife and got a callback. Emily Collins as Truly Scrumptious (a name that still makes me feel like I need a wet wipe) is poised, polished and sings like someone whose vowels have never seen a Midlands postcode. Nigel Brook’s Grandpa doesn’t just lean on Jeffries’ ghost — he flirts with it, dances a little waltz, and somehow makes it his own.
Steve Bingham is a restrained Baron Bomburst — which is a bit like saying “a modest Liberace” — but it works. Controlled, comic, calibrated. And then there’s Craig Shelton, the theatrical equivalent of turning on a lamp in a dull room. Whether he’s the Toymaker or Coggins, he brings that rare thing in amateur theatre: an utter absence of amateurism. It’s forensic. It’s instinctive. It’s infuriatingly good.
The ensemble is crisp, well-drilled, and — crucially — doesn’t clump like a bag of wet couscous, which is what usually happens when amateurs attempt choreography. “Ol’ Bamboo” is a thwacking, Pearly Kings-and-Queens knees-up that lands with cockney precision, all knees and canes and cheerful passive-aggression. Brooke Blair — a dancer in the ensemble — is unreasonably watchable. I don’t know what unfair pact she’s made with the gods of stagecraft, but I want a copy of the contract.
There are hiccups, of course. The microphone on poor Jacob Sanders (Jeremy) was dead for half the show. A missed lighting cue left the flying car bathed in darkness at the climax — more Stealth Bomber Chitty than the soaring finale we needed. But this is live theatre. It breathes. It burps. Sometimes it trips over its own props. That’s the deal.
And you know what? I left the theatre smiling. Not in the grin-and-bear-it way you do after a third-rate Les Mis in which the cast has paid to perform. I smiled because this was entertaining. The company took something dated, toothless and structurally absurd — and made it joyous. Jamie Sheerman’s direction is like a warm blanket on a cold afternoon: comforting, unpretentious, and with just enough sparkle to distract you from the mothballs.
This Chitty is not challenging, nor cutting-edge, nor clever-clever. It’s none of the things critics like to salivate over. But it is — and I mean this sincerely — a great time. A thoroughly British, beautifully staged, slightly bonkers afternoon that reminds you why theatre is still the greatest con-trick we’ve got.
It doesn’t always fly. But oh, when it does — it’s magic.
Mark Pitt
Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical: Craig Shelton
The Mirror Crack'd at The Talisman
"Where Mystery Dies and Miss Marple Limps"
Village murder mysteries have a certain, shall we say, quaint decorum. Bodies expire politely—no fuss, no blood, not even an indecorous twitch. Murder, in these parts, is practically a tea party with a side of arsenic.
Enter The Mirror Crack’d, resurrected with loving but amateurish imprecision by the Talisman—the sturdy bastion of regional greasepaint—set in St Mary Mead, circa 1950-something. That liminal era when Britain still fancied itself an empire and Hollywood dispatched starlets like weary missionaries, wrapped in mink and neuroses.
Cue the expected Gothic moment - the reveal, the body, the horror. I half anticipated a cloaked villain, Vincent Price moustache twirling, drinking a beaker of virgin’s plasma while cackling his way into the scenery like a ghost from a Hammer horror. Instead, the spotlight cuts to stage right, revealing Judy Wellicome’s Miss Marple—less tweed-knitting spinster, more unholy fusion of Margaret Rutherford and your Aunt Jean, who once swore she saw a ghost in Lyme Regis.
Marple’s sidekick, nephew Chief Inspector Craddock (Matt Baxter), wears a seventies polyester suit so loud it practically crackles. He looks like he’s just shuffled off Abigail’s Party to find a murder in the foyer and has been politely asked to step in.
The plot—if you can call it that—rolls along with the stately momentum of a tea trolley with a wonky wheel. Red herrings flop like soggy Battenberg. Marple acquires a limp (likely so she can solve this one from her chaise longue). A lighting cue signals a flashback with the subtlety of a bin lorry reversing, and we’re back at the party: people drink, someone acts, lines are forgotten, paused, counted, remembered.
One moment, you’re firmly planted in a Miss Marple murder mystery—vicars, sherry, poison. Then stage left: Giuseppe Renzo. Italian. Possibly a producer. Possibly a red herring. Possibly a man who wandered in from a nearby production of A View from the Bridge and stayed for the buffet. God only knows.
Not long after, barely audible over the rustle of crinoline and murder, emerges Cyril Leigh (Richard Peachy). One might miss him entirely if not for his persistent habit of being there—like mildew on the back wall of the plot. He carries the aura of someone who’s read the script thoroughly and is determined to bask in his light, even if the scene doesn’t require it. It goes on...
Now. Let’s be clear:
One — This is not a good play. So bad, in fact, I left—again. Not in protest, but defeat.
Two — There are simply too many characters and not enough substance. Our suspects jostled for attention, many leaving such faint impressions I wondered if they were holograms.
Three — Director Peter Nowens, with all the subtlety of a tax audit, offers us two suspect expositions in Act One. First, a Police Five-style line-up; second, a ring of suspects standing like an inept firing squad. Rather than a climactic denouement—Agatha tradition—we get a helpful memory aid. A map or handout might have been kinder.
Four — The cast was not confident. Lines were missed, cues were late, and whatever flow existed was punctured by pauses so long I could have nipped to the bar and returned before anyone spoke.
Five — Technically, this was The Play That Goes Wrong—but without the wit or self-awareness. Lighting cues landed like unpaid bills. Actors stumbled into pools of light, apparently surprised to be seen. Sound effects announced themselves with all the subtlety of a walrus choking on a small fridge.
I won’t blame the cast. I’ve seen the excellent Alice Robertson dazzle in Curtains at the Priory. Julian Rosa lends his talents here too—presumably as community service or because he lost a bet. They suffer through this abortive nonsense with more dignity than the material deserves.
As for the Talisman—what happened? This used to be a theatre of energy, quality, and care. No longer. The last three productions have been limp, unfocused, and hollow. The fault lies not with casting but direction, which appears to mistake presence for purpose. But seriously—if you’re asking people to give you their time and money, at least give them something finished. This is not good enough.
Mark Pitt
Enter The Mirror Crack’d, resurrected with loving but amateurish imprecision by the Talisman—the sturdy bastion of regional greasepaint—set in St Mary Mead, circa 1950-something. That liminal era when Britain still fancied itself an empire and Hollywood dispatched starlets like weary missionaries, wrapped in mink and neuroses.
Cue the expected Gothic moment - the reveal, the body, the horror. I half anticipated a cloaked villain, Vincent Price moustache twirling, drinking a beaker of virgin’s plasma while cackling his way into the scenery like a ghost from a Hammer horror. Instead, the spotlight cuts to stage right, revealing Judy Wellicome’s Miss Marple—less tweed-knitting spinster, more unholy fusion of Margaret Rutherford and your Aunt Jean, who once swore she saw a ghost in Lyme Regis.
Marple’s sidekick, nephew Chief Inspector Craddock (Matt Baxter), wears a seventies polyester suit so loud it practically crackles. He looks like he’s just shuffled off Abigail’s Party to find a murder in the foyer and has been politely asked to step in.
The plot—if you can call it that—rolls along with the stately momentum of a tea trolley with a wonky wheel. Red herrings flop like soggy Battenberg. Marple acquires a limp (likely so she can solve this one from her chaise longue). A lighting cue signals a flashback with the subtlety of a bin lorry reversing, and we’re back at the party: people drink, someone acts, lines are forgotten, paused, counted, remembered.
One moment, you’re firmly planted in a Miss Marple murder mystery—vicars, sherry, poison. Then stage left: Giuseppe Renzo. Italian. Possibly a producer. Possibly a red herring. Possibly a man who wandered in from a nearby production of A View from the Bridge and stayed for the buffet. God only knows.
Not long after, barely audible over the rustle of crinoline and murder, emerges Cyril Leigh (Richard Peachy). One might miss him entirely if not for his persistent habit of being there—like mildew on the back wall of the plot. He carries the aura of someone who’s read the script thoroughly and is determined to bask in his light, even if the scene doesn’t require it. It goes on...
Now. Let’s be clear:
One — This is not a good play. So bad, in fact, I left—again. Not in protest, but defeat.
Two — There are simply too many characters and not enough substance. Our suspects jostled for attention, many leaving such faint impressions I wondered if they were holograms.
Three — Director Peter Nowens, with all the subtlety of a tax audit, offers us two suspect expositions in Act One. First, a Police Five-style line-up; second, a ring of suspects standing like an inept firing squad. Rather than a climactic denouement—Agatha tradition—we get a helpful memory aid. A map or handout might have been kinder.
Four — The cast was not confident. Lines were missed, cues were late, and whatever flow existed was punctured by pauses so long I could have nipped to the bar and returned before anyone spoke.
Five — Technically, this was The Play That Goes Wrong—but without the wit or self-awareness. Lighting cues landed like unpaid bills. Actors stumbled into pools of light, apparently surprised to be seen. Sound effects announced themselves with all the subtlety of a walrus choking on a small fridge.
I won’t blame the cast. I’ve seen the excellent Alice Robertson dazzle in Curtains at the Priory. Julian Rosa lends his talents here too—presumably as community service or because he lost a bet. They suffer through this abortive nonsense with more dignity than the material deserves.
As for the Talisman—what happened? This used to be a theatre of energy, quality, and care. No longer. The last three productions have been limp, unfocused, and hollow. The fault lies not with casting but direction, which appears to mistake presence for purpose. But seriously—if you’re asking people to give you their time and money, at least give them something finished. This is not good enough.
Mark Pitt
"Rugby Theatre Puts the West End on Notice"
Review:
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie – Rugby Theatre
Rugby Theatre has absolutely no right to be this good.
We’re in Warwickshire, not the West End. The audacity.
Staging Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is a serious challenge for any company. The choreography alone should terrify most non-professional troupes. Half the cast are schoolkids. The score? It’s not Joseph, or Les Mis, where everyone knows One Day More before they’re out of primary school. This is nuanced, modern musical theatre — and it’s tough.
So, what’s in the water in Rugby?
Because this show? This show kicks ass.
This is not your average “operatic society” production — you know the ones: the juvenile lead is 50, the choreography is devised by someone inevitably called Betty and built around one-step-left, one-step-right routines. They’d probably charge the cast for the privilege of being in it — and make them sell raffle tickets.
But Jamie demands something different. It needs young performers with real stage presence. Kids who get it. And this cast? They get it. In spades.
These teenagers don’t just act — they own the stage. They dance like they’ve just stepped off the stage at West End Live. The energy, the commitment, the raw, unfiltered talent — it’s all here. You can’t manufacture that. You either have it or you don’t.
And behind it all is a director with serious vision. Someone who understands pace, character arcs, and the unique rhythms of musical theatre. Someone who knows how to guide a cast without ironing out the spark that makes a show come alive.
This isn’t “good for a local production.” God no. This is good, full stop. Standing ovation good. Inspired, even.
Louis Dutton is a revelation. He is Jamie — totally natural, totally magnetic. From the moment he steps on stage, we’re with him. We root for him. He never grandstands, never lets the role outshine the ensemble. His scenes with his mother (played with heart and grace by the excellent Kim Arnold) are especially affecting: grounded, funny, and deeply human. It’s a role that could easily tip into pantomime camp — but not here. Not with this actor. With some vocal training, he could play Jamie professionally. He’s that good.
Suriyah Mawee gives a beautifully understated performance as Pritti, the clever, kind best friend. Dexter Robinson delivers again, this time as Dean — the insecure bully who’s all bark and no relevance. Natalie Burrows is perfectly pitchy as Miss Hedge, a schoolmistress so tightly wound it’s like she’s got a stapler lodged somewhere unpleasant. And Danielle Burrow as Ray? All sass and shandy — but behind the jibes, there’s warmth. She protects Jamie like Auntie May protected the Kray twins.
Meanwhile, Hugo, our influencer, our drag queen, is effortlessly good. Jon Andrews' performance is rooted in humanity. Never allowing caricature, the actor's instinct is spot on - tender, caring and good. His surrogate influence on Jamie is naturally shown. Although the part is funny, Andrews never demonstrates, impersonates. He just allows the character to come through - warts and all.
This is probably some of the very best direction I have seen. Ever. Kevin Bright's staging is immense, uber-intelligent and precise - he is a visionary and a talent and goodness only know why his name is not on a West End poster.
Whatever Rugby Theatre does next, and I believe it's Come From Away, book now. This company is one of Warwickshire's gems and I can only thank them with humility and reverence for a show that will remain with me. I just paid a mortgage payment to see Benjamin Button in London, and it was fine. However, this one, this Jamie was nothing short of palpable brilliance. I did not see it - I felt it, lived it, and loved it.
Let us pause for a moment to talk about Jo Walker’s choreography — because this was not your usual local show shuffle. This wasn’t a polite box-step or a chorus line that moves like a synchronised fire drill. No, this was choreography that bit, burned, and breathed. It moved.
In truth, it reached — and I say this without hedging — professional standards. It was captivating, precise, and, crucially, emotionally articulate. These were not just steps for the sake of filling music. They told stories. They had intent. They had danger. And in a cast made up largely of school-age performers, that’s not just impressive — it’s alchemical.
These young dancers — some barely out of school uniform — were a credit not just to the production, but to their generation. We’re often too quick to write off “the youth” with the usual tutting litany: too distracted, too entitled, too screen-addled. Well, not these ones. These kids gave everything. And in return, they earned — absolutely earned — every ounce of applause.
I have not seen that level of physical commitment, that emotional investment in movement, from young performers locally — or, frankly, from many professionals who’ve stopped bothering to break a sweat. Jo Walker didn’t just choreograph a musical. She conjured electricity from teenagers and lit up the stage with it.
May they all shine. Because on this evidence, their lights are already burning bright.
Musical direction by Jon Watson-Tate is tight, punchy, and at times, sublimely beautiful. Leading a professional band with precision and artistry, Mr. Watson-Tate's guidance elevated the entire experience into something both organic and occasionally ethereal. This is, without doubt, the calibre of a top-tier London pit. Extraordinary.
Mark Pitt
Bottom Line - Stunning. Rugby Theatre's "Jamie" sets new standards in local production. A masterpiece.
Nominees (Award Eligible) :
Best Actor in a Musical: Louis Dutton
Best Actress in a Musical: Kim Arnold
Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical: Jon Andrews
Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Musical: Suriyah Mawee
Best Direction of a Musical: Kevin Bright
Outstanding Choreography: Jo Walker
Outstanding Musical Direction: Jon Watson Tate
Outstanding Lighting Design: Rachel Rowe and Richard Grain
Outstanding Production of a Musical: Rugby Theatre
Mark Pitt
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie – Rugby Theatre
Rugby Theatre has absolutely no right to be this good.
We’re in Warwickshire, not the West End. The audacity.
Staging Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is a serious challenge for any company. The choreography alone should terrify most non-professional troupes. Half the cast are schoolkids. The score? It’s not Joseph, or Les Mis, where everyone knows One Day More before they’re out of primary school. This is nuanced, modern musical theatre — and it’s tough.
So, what’s in the water in Rugby?
Because this show? This show kicks ass.
This is not your average “operatic society” production — you know the ones: the juvenile lead is 50, the choreography is devised by someone inevitably called Betty and built around one-step-left, one-step-right routines. They’d probably charge the cast for the privilege of being in it — and make them sell raffle tickets.
But Jamie demands something different. It needs young performers with real stage presence. Kids who get it. And this cast? They get it. In spades.
These teenagers don’t just act — they own the stage. They dance like they’ve just stepped off the stage at West End Live. The energy, the commitment, the raw, unfiltered talent — it’s all here. You can’t manufacture that. You either have it or you don’t.
And behind it all is a director with serious vision. Someone who understands pace, character arcs, and the unique rhythms of musical theatre. Someone who knows how to guide a cast without ironing out the spark that makes a show come alive.
This isn’t “good for a local production.” God no. This is good, full stop. Standing ovation good. Inspired, even.
Louis Dutton is a revelation. He is Jamie — totally natural, totally magnetic. From the moment he steps on stage, we’re with him. We root for him. He never grandstands, never lets the role outshine the ensemble. His scenes with his mother (played with heart and grace by the excellent Kim Arnold) are especially affecting: grounded, funny, and deeply human. It’s a role that could easily tip into pantomime camp — but not here. Not with this actor. With some vocal training, he could play Jamie professionally. He’s that good.
Suriyah Mawee gives a beautifully understated performance as Pritti, the clever, kind best friend. Dexter Robinson delivers again, this time as Dean — the insecure bully who’s all bark and no relevance. Natalie Burrows is perfectly pitchy as Miss Hedge, a schoolmistress so tightly wound it’s like she’s got a stapler lodged somewhere unpleasant. And Danielle Burrow as Ray? All sass and shandy — but behind the jibes, there’s warmth. She protects Jamie like Auntie May protected the Kray twins.
Meanwhile, Hugo, our influencer, our drag queen, is effortlessly good. Jon Andrews' performance is rooted in humanity. Never allowing caricature, the actor's instinct is spot on - tender, caring and good. His surrogate influence on Jamie is naturally shown. Although the part is funny, Andrews never demonstrates, impersonates. He just allows the character to come through - warts and all.
This is probably some of the very best direction I have seen. Ever. Kevin Bright's staging is immense, uber-intelligent and precise - he is a visionary and a talent and goodness only know why his name is not on a West End poster.
Whatever Rugby Theatre does next, and I believe it's Come From Away, book now. This company is one of Warwickshire's gems and I can only thank them with humility and reverence for a show that will remain with me. I just paid a mortgage payment to see Benjamin Button in London, and it was fine. However, this one, this Jamie was nothing short of palpable brilliance. I did not see it - I felt it, lived it, and loved it.
Let us pause for a moment to talk about Jo Walker’s choreography — because this was not your usual local show shuffle. This wasn’t a polite box-step or a chorus line that moves like a synchronised fire drill. No, this was choreography that bit, burned, and breathed. It moved.
In truth, it reached — and I say this without hedging — professional standards. It was captivating, precise, and, crucially, emotionally articulate. These were not just steps for the sake of filling music. They told stories. They had intent. They had danger. And in a cast made up largely of school-age performers, that’s not just impressive — it’s alchemical.
These young dancers — some barely out of school uniform — were a credit not just to the production, but to their generation. We’re often too quick to write off “the youth” with the usual tutting litany: too distracted, too entitled, too screen-addled. Well, not these ones. These kids gave everything. And in return, they earned — absolutely earned — every ounce of applause.
I have not seen that level of physical commitment, that emotional investment in movement, from young performers locally — or, frankly, from many professionals who’ve stopped bothering to break a sweat. Jo Walker didn’t just choreograph a musical. She conjured electricity from teenagers and lit up the stage with it.
May they all shine. Because on this evidence, their lights are already burning bright.
Musical direction by Jon Watson-Tate is tight, punchy, and at times, sublimely beautiful. Leading a professional band with precision and artistry, Mr. Watson-Tate's guidance elevated the entire experience into something both organic and occasionally ethereal. This is, without doubt, the calibre of a top-tier London pit. Extraordinary.
Mark Pitt
Bottom Line - Stunning. Rugby Theatre's "Jamie" sets new standards in local production. A masterpiece.
Nominees (Award Eligible) :
Best Actor in a Musical: Louis Dutton
Best Actress in a Musical: Kim Arnold
Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical: Jon Andrews
Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Musical: Suriyah Mawee
Best Direction of a Musical: Kevin Bright
Outstanding Choreography: Jo Walker
Outstanding Musical Direction: Jon Watson Tate
Outstanding Lighting Design: Rachel Rowe and Richard Grain
Outstanding Production of a Musical: Rugby Theatre
Mark Pitt
"From Sponge Buckets to Soul: Godber’s Pub Team Triumphs at the Loft"
John Godber is that rare thing—a playwright who actually listens.
Not to critics, not to the echo chamber of theatre luvvies quoting Brecht over overpriced cocktails, but to people. Ordinary, salt-of-the-chip-shop people. He eavesdrops on the British working class not with condescension or pity, but with wry affection and an unerring ear for the poetry of everyday banter. Whether he’s prowling the sticky-floored nightclubs of Shakers and Bouncers, conjuring the fragile hope of a lottery win in Lucky Sods, or skewering the tragicomedy of the staff room in Teechers, Godber holds up a mirror—not always flattering, but always familiar. His genius lies not in grand metaphors or existential angst, but in turning the mundane into the meaningful, all through the glorious, grotty vernacular of Britain.
Yes, he’s Ayckbourn for the class below that one. Where Ayckbourn gives us the angst of the comfortably middle—boats, conservatories, and banal uncles—Godber deals in grit, graft, and the glorious defiance of the underdog. He writes for the clubs, the community halls, the half-time oranges and sponge-bucket brigade. He’s the playwright who can make a scene in a pub toilet feel like Shakespeare in the stalls.
And then there’s Up ‘n’ Under—a raucous, sweat-stained hymn to the hopeless. The tale of a pub rugby team so spectacularly unfit, so spiritually allergic to exertion, they make Sunday league look like the All Blacks. Set in a Northern town where masculinity is measured in pints and penalty points, they’re handed one last, ludicrous shot at glory. Enter their coach: female, fiercely competent, and gloriously indifferent to their fragile egos. What follows is physical, farcical, and oddly touching—the story of unlikely heroes staggering toward something vaguely resembling triumph. It's not his best play--Lucky Sods, for example, affords more layers, deeper characters, and richer sub-plots—but for a 1980s comedy of the touring circuit, it’s still a bloody good night out.
In the assured hands of director Lorna Middleton (whose knowledge of the writer is prodigious), the Loft production is firmly rooted in the genuine, truthful, and ebullient shenanigans of the team. Mark Roberts shines again as Arthur—essentially the driver of the play. Passionate and sometimes delusional, the role requires a significant presence, and Roberts has it in dollops (to use the vernacular). This is Roberts' third outing this year, and the stalwart extends an already impressive range here. He anchors the play.
Meanwhile, the ever-reliable Rosie Pankhurst turns in another stellar performance as the tough, no-nonsense trainer Hazel, fitting into the male-dominated dressing room with hand-in-glove authority and authenticity.
Connor Michael, again, proves his status as one of Warwickshire's best actors. Here, as the timid and unfit Phil—often the butt of jokes due to his weak stomach and lack of athletic prowess—he’s utterly endearing. Michael’s skill is in simple authenticity: whenever he’s on stage, he lifts scenes, brings pace, communion, and sincerity. He’s an actors' actor—one through whom any company benefits.
That’s not to steal thunder from the rest of the company, all of whom are excellent. Middleton's alacratic pacing, physical choreography, and command of the banter make for an evening of abundant fun, generous laughter, and some cleverly inventive physical set-pieces. Especially effective is the climactic “game”, where strong costume choices and projection bring the match vividly to life.
The set is minimal—a dressing room, a pitch, well-used projections, and some sharp lighting. Add in an ‘80s soundtrack, and nostalgia kicks in like a boot to the ribs, taking me back to my own rugby-playing days and school discos, where I once begged Jane Parsons for a dance. I failed at both.
The show closes tomorrow and has played to very good houses—which it deserved. We're lucky sods to have such quality in Warwickshire. Now, Loft Theatre—how about letting Miss Middleton direct Lucky Sods next? In her hands, it’ll be a winner.
Mark Pitt
Bottom Line: A punchy, physical, and laugh-packed night out—anchored by a brilliant cast and Middleton’s sharp direction.
Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Play: Mark Roberts
Not to critics, not to the echo chamber of theatre luvvies quoting Brecht over overpriced cocktails, but to people. Ordinary, salt-of-the-chip-shop people. He eavesdrops on the British working class not with condescension or pity, but with wry affection and an unerring ear for the poetry of everyday banter. Whether he’s prowling the sticky-floored nightclubs of Shakers and Bouncers, conjuring the fragile hope of a lottery win in Lucky Sods, or skewering the tragicomedy of the staff room in Teechers, Godber holds up a mirror—not always flattering, but always familiar. His genius lies not in grand metaphors or existential angst, but in turning the mundane into the meaningful, all through the glorious, grotty vernacular of Britain.
Yes, he’s Ayckbourn for the class below that one. Where Ayckbourn gives us the angst of the comfortably middle—boats, conservatories, and banal uncles—Godber deals in grit, graft, and the glorious defiance of the underdog. He writes for the clubs, the community halls, the half-time oranges and sponge-bucket brigade. He’s the playwright who can make a scene in a pub toilet feel like Shakespeare in the stalls.
And then there’s Up ‘n’ Under—a raucous, sweat-stained hymn to the hopeless. The tale of a pub rugby team so spectacularly unfit, so spiritually allergic to exertion, they make Sunday league look like the All Blacks. Set in a Northern town where masculinity is measured in pints and penalty points, they’re handed one last, ludicrous shot at glory. Enter their coach: female, fiercely competent, and gloriously indifferent to their fragile egos. What follows is physical, farcical, and oddly touching—the story of unlikely heroes staggering toward something vaguely resembling triumph. It's not his best play--Lucky Sods, for example, affords more layers, deeper characters, and richer sub-plots—but for a 1980s comedy of the touring circuit, it’s still a bloody good night out.
In the assured hands of director Lorna Middleton (whose knowledge of the writer is prodigious), the Loft production is firmly rooted in the genuine, truthful, and ebullient shenanigans of the team. Mark Roberts shines again as Arthur—essentially the driver of the play. Passionate and sometimes delusional, the role requires a significant presence, and Roberts has it in dollops (to use the vernacular). This is Roberts' third outing this year, and the stalwart extends an already impressive range here. He anchors the play.
Meanwhile, the ever-reliable Rosie Pankhurst turns in another stellar performance as the tough, no-nonsense trainer Hazel, fitting into the male-dominated dressing room with hand-in-glove authority and authenticity.
Connor Michael, again, proves his status as one of Warwickshire's best actors. Here, as the timid and unfit Phil—often the butt of jokes due to his weak stomach and lack of athletic prowess—he’s utterly endearing. Michael’s skill is in simple authenticity: whenever he’s on stage, he lifts scenes, brings pace, communion, and sincerity. He’s an actors' actor—one through whom any company benefits.
That’s not to steal thunder from the rest of the company, all of whom are excellent. Middleton's alacratic pacing, physical choreography, and command of the banter make for an evening of abundant fun, generous laughter, and some cleverly inventive physical set-pieces. Especially effective is the climactic “game”, where strong costume choices and projection bring the match vividly to life.
The set is minimal—a dressing room, a pitch, well-used projections, and some sharp lighting. Add in an ‘80s soundtrack, and nostalgia kicks in like a boot to the ribs, taking me back to my own rugby-playing days and school discos, where I once begged Jane Parsons for a dance. I failed at both.
The show closes tomorrow and has played to very good houses—which it deserved. We're lucky sods to have such quality in Warwickshire. Now, Loft Theatre—how about letting Miss Middleton direct Lucky Sods next? In her hands, it’ll be a winner.
Mark Pitt
Bottom Line: A punchy, physical, and laugh-packed night out—anchored by a brilliant cast and Middleton’s sharp direction.
Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Play: Mark Roberts
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ambassadors Theatre London.
The Curious Case of the Stomping Musical: Benjamin Button Grows Up (Again)
To be born elderly and die young — now there’s a premise. F. Scott Fitzgerald didn’t write The Curious Case of Benjamin Button imagining it would one day be accompanied by the rhythmic stomp of actor-musicians in clogs. He likely didn’t envisage a Cornish barmaid, a folk-rock score, or the scent of theatrical ambition rising like steam from clotted cream. Then again, Fitzgerald drank. He might’ve thought it all rather quaint.
But of course, the tale is irresistible — the sort of conceit that makes Hollywood salivate. Brad Pitt floated through it with the sort of golden-eyed solemnity that made ageing backwards look like a spa weekend in the Berkshires. The 2008 film was a glossy, Oscar-thirsty affair. The musical, now spun into the West End’s Ambassadors Theatre after its 2019 birth at Southwark Playhouse, is something else entirely. It’s hungrier, scrappier, and altogether more interesting — a sea-shanty serenade to mortality, rendered in fiddle strings and foot-stomps.
This is not a musical as you know it — no chandeliers, no phantoms, no felines in sequins yowling about memory. The score is Cornish, folk-infused, defiantly regional — the musical equivalent of a pint pulled reluctantly but lovingly by a man with calloused hands. It pulses with joy, aches with loss, and, like the best regional butter, is just coarse enough to get caught in your beard.
Speaking of faces and fluids — I sat in Row A, which in immersive theatre terms means “within hailing distance of someone’s uvula.” I was showered in actor-spit. Not misted, not flecked — showered. But this felt apt. If you’re going to see a story about a man who ages backwards while England loses its cultural funding forwards, you might as well do it with DNA on your lapel. It’s theatre as it should be: wet, wild, and slightly unhygienic.
Benedict Salter, as our titular Button, is all twitchy warmth and wounded wonder. It’s a marathon of a role — part ancient mariner, part lost child, part Cornish hobbit with a cosmic secret. He bends his years with such graceful elasticity that you find yourself forgetting which direction time is moving. It’s a performance of quiet majesty, the sort that doesn’t shout for your attention — it simply earns it.
Elowen, Benjamin’s great and only love, is played luminously by Clare Foster, who turns a potentially sentimental role into something utterly lived-in. Her barmaid is full of flint and fire, a woman with hips that say “maybe” and eyes that whisper “not yet.” She reminded me of Janie Dee in Follies, if Dee had grown up on cider and sea spray. Foster doesn’t perform the role so much as embody it — at one point crying so close to me I considered reaching into my coat for a Kleenex. Or a whisky.
The production, adapted and directed with invigorating fervour by Jethro Compton, is infused with theatrical muscle. It moves like a myth. The choreography, by Chi-San Howard, is elemental — not prettified or symmetrical, but gnarled and oceanic, like bodies shaped by wind. And the company? A dozen actor-musician-movers, all clanging and fiddling and flinging their way across the stage like a travelling band of emotionally articulate pirates.
Casting director Ginny Schiller deserves whatever glittering baubles they hand out for assembling ensembles these days. This isn’t stunt casting. These are proper triple threats: they can act, sing, and play instruments better than most of us can load a dishwasher. Some are veterans of the original Southwark run, others newly minted. None of them put a foot wrong — though many feet were enthusiastically stamped.
It’s worth noting that this is the second time this year a fringe-born musical has kicked down the West End’s heavily guarded doors. The other is Operation Mincemeat — another show with no business being a hit, which makes it all the more satisfying that it is. There’s a lesson in this, though it’s likely to be ignored by those in power: real creative fire doesn’t spark under chandeliers, it ignites in converted broom cupboards south of the river, usually with bad coffee and worse heating.
Perhaps Rachel Reeves should sit in Row A. Let her feel the spit. Let her witness what cultural backbone looks like — and how it sounds when it stomps. This is Britain’s creative future: loud, local, and entirely unfunded.
In the end, my American friend (Pittsburgh born, stubbornly optimistic) turned to me and said, “Perfect, just perfect.” It’s the only American sentiment I’ve agreed with since January.
Mark Pitt
But of course, the tale is irresistible — the sort of conceit that makes Hollywood salivate. Brad Pitt floated through it with the sort of golden-eyed solemnity that made ageing backwards look like a spa weekend in the Berkshires. The 2008 film was a glossy, Oscar-thirsty affair. The musical, now spun into the West End’s Ambassadors Theatre after its 2019 birth at Southwark Playhouse, is something else entirely. It’s hungrier, scrappier, and altogether more interesting — a sea-shanty serenade to mortality, rendered in fiddle strings and foot-stomps.
This is not a musical as you know it — no chandeliers, no phantoms, no felines in sequins yowling about memory. The score is Cornish, folk-infused, defiantly regional — the musical equivalent of a pint pulled reluctantly but lovingly by a man with calloused hands. It pulses with joy, aches with loss, and, like the best regional butter, is just coarse enough to get caught in your beard.
Speaking of faces and fluids — I sat in Row A, which in immersive theatre terms means “within hailing distance of someone’s uvula.” I was showered in actor-spit. Not misted, not flecked — showered. But this felt apt. If you’re going to see a story about a man who ages backwards while England loses its cultural funding forwards, you might as well do it with DNA on your lapel. It’s theatre as it should be: wet, wild, and slightly unhygienic.
Benedict Salter, as our titular Button, is all twitchy warmth and wounded wonder. It’s a marathon of a role — part ancient mariner, part lost child, part Cornish hobbit with a cosmic secret. He bends his years with such graceful elasticity that you find yourself forgetting which direction time is moving. It’s a performance of quiet majesty, the sort that doesn’t shout for your attention — it simply earns it.
Elowen, Benjamin’s great and only love, is played luminously by Clare Foster, who turns a potentially sentimental role into something utterly lived-in. Her barmaid is full of flint and fire, a woman with hips that say “maybe” and eyes that whisper “not yet.” She reminded me of Janie Dee in Follies, if Dee had grown up on cider and sea spray. Foster doesn’t perform the role so much as embody it — at one point crying so close to me I considered reaching into my coat for a Kleenex. Or a whisky.
The production, adapted and directed with invigorating fervour by Jethro Compton, is infused with theatrical muscle. It moves like a myth. The choreography, by Chi-San Howard, is elemental — not prettified or symmetrical, but gnarled and oceanic, like bodies shaped by wind. And the company? A dozen actor-musician-movers, all clanging and fiddling and flinging their way across the stage like a travelling band of emotionally articulate pirates.
Casting director Ginny Schiller deserves whatever glittering baubles they hand out for assembling ensembles these days. This isn’t stunt casting. These are proper triple threats: they can act, sing, and play instruments better than most of us can load a dishwasher. Some are veterans of the original Southwark run, others newly minted. None of them put a foot wrong — though many feet were enthusiastically stamped.
It’s worth noting that this is the second time this year a fringe-born musical has kicked down the West End’s heavily guarded doors. The other is Operation Mincemeat — another show with no business being a hit, which makes it all the more satisfying that it is. There’s a lesson in this, though it’s likely to be ignored by those in power: real creative fire doesn’t spark under chandeliers, it ignites in converted broom cupboards south of the river, usually with bad coffee and worse heating.
Perhaps Rachel Reeves should sit in Row A. Let her feel the spit. Let her witness what cultural backbone looks like — and how it sounds when it stomps. This is Britain’s creative future: loud, local, and entirely unfunded.
In the end, my American friend (Pittsburgh born, stubbornly optimistic) turned to me and said, “Perfect, just perfect.” It’s the only American sentiment I’ve agreed with since January.
Mark Pitt
"Hail to the Thief, Hail to the Prince: Radiohead Scores a Revolutionary Hamlet" Royal Shakespeare Company
I don’t think it’s ever been clearer—the corruption, that is. The anger. The soul’s slow undoing. The confusion, the paranoia, the sense that everything real has slipped behind a gauze of performance and surveillance. This Hamlet, though cut, is pointed—furious, fraught, and superbly lateral. It’s set to the soundscape of Hail to the Thief, perhaps Radiohead’s most seething and prophetic album: a soundtrack of governments collapsing in on themselves, of men lost in the machinery they helped build. It's a production so indelible, so immediate and testing that it can probably be set as the benchmark for others. Yes, it's a bleak and brilliant reworking, but the fusion elevates the text, moves it on, redefines it. It is essentially genius.
If Shakespeare’s Denmark is a prison, this one is more like a holding cell in a ruined democracy. It has the bleak, ecstatic vision of John Caird’s 1989 RSC A Midsummer Night’s Dream—but stripped of its puckish wonder. That production was punk; this is post-punk, hard rock, paranoid electronica—a company swelling with dissonance, shot through with threat and the macabre.
The scenography is stark: a brutalist frame of intrusion and control. Literal amplifiers point inward, forming a perimeter of sound that is deafening, overbearing, inescapably oppressive. This is not ambience—it is assault. Surround sound doesn’t envelop so much as interrogate.
The band plays from behind gauze-like rear screens, half-obscured—ghostly, surveilling. The upper set resembles a hybrid of sound studio and military command deck: boom boxes, wires, glowing panels—imposing, impersonal, unrelenting. It's Orwellian not in what it hides, but in what it refuses to. Here, the soundscape is camouflage, a decoy, disguising the rot beneath with volume, distortion, and control.
This is a stage that watches you back. The sound doesn’t underscore the drama—it overwhelms it, colonises it, rewrites it. It’s not that the music sets the tone; the music is the regime.
We enter to the sound of “2 + 2 = 5”, and immediately we’re submerged in a world built on lies parading as truth. From the flys, coats hang—unworn, empty—like lynched bodies or discarded skins. They dangle in still air, a grotesque memorial to those who no longer act, who no longer resist. These aren’t costumes; they’re husks. Denmark is stripped, laid bare, and what’s left is naked power, decayed ritual, and the stench of surveillance.
By the time we hear “We Suck Young Blood”, the regime’s rot is personal. The court is vampiric, leeching youth and hope from its people. Gertrude (the sublime Claudia Harrison) floats through this landscape like a ghost—groomed for compliance, soft with denial—while Ami Tredrea’s Ophelia is broken not by madness, but by the system’s indifference. Her unraveling plays out to “Sail to the Moon”—not as a lullaby, but as a slow-motion drowning: delicate, inevitable, and ignored.
Samuel Blenkin’s Hamlet is definitive. I say this after seeing Jude Law wear the cloak on Broadway, Alex Jennings at this theatre. Both were excellent. This one redefines it. His Hamlet is a version on Oxy—youthfully maleficent, and yet Blenkin brings a new intelligence to the role, a new knowing. Yes, it's a puckish portrayal, but Blenkin’s ability to speak the verse with such natural clarity, understanding and—dare I say it—risk? Quirky, idiosyncratic, revelatory. I doubt I will see better. I doubt I will be as moved. Doubtlessly, it is hedonistic watching him.
Claudius is a man of performance—his politics choreographed, his piety hollow. He could be mouthing “Sit down. Stand up.” while cameras roll and the bodies pile up backstage. His Denmark is Gilead: nothing warm, nothing humane, everything surveilled and stage-managed. Even grief is performative here.
Paul Hilton is incandescently brilliant—intent, vital, intelligent, and yes, charming. He oversees Denmark with charismatic calculation, his power both magnetic and noxious. It’s a performance of cocaine infusion—not literally, of course, but the performance suggests it: quiet mania, unrelenting charm, and a supercilious saccharine edge. It’s not just a pleasure to watch him—it’s a disturbing thrill.
By the time “Myxomatosis” pounds through the throne room, the action has collapsed into nightmare logic. Hamlet doesn’t speak truth to power; he screams into a vacuum. He’s not avenging anything. He’s resisting being swallowed by the script—by legacy, by surveillance, by a state that records everything and understands nothing.
This Hamlet doesn’t offer catharsis. There’s no purging, no salvation. Just a stage littered with corpses and ringing with silence—then, at last, the hush before “A Wolf at the Door” fades in. And you realise: it was always coming. We just stopped listening.
In Steven Hoggett and Christine Jones’ direction, there is incision, lateral brilliance, and incendiary creativity. It’s not just fluid—it’s manic, aggressive, fused with ferocity, and moreover, it’s utterly fearless. What they’ve done here is take the story, take the album, and morph it into something that will likely influence future work. Yes—seminal. I reviewed the superb Romeo and Juliet in a similar genre, but this is something else. This can’t be reviewed with star ratings or polysyllabic platitudes. This one—you just have to see. Experience this gut-punch to the soul, this shattering redefinition. It will not just sit with me—it will live in me, as the pinnacle. The best. The experienced.
Mark Pitt
Caveat: Paul Hilton trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama at the same time as the author. Paul was nominated for the Tony Award for his performance in "The Inheritance" on Broadway, among other nominations including the Olivier Award.
If Shakespeare’s Denmark is a prison, this one is more like a holding cell in a ruined democracy. It has the bleak, ecstatic vision of John Caird’s 1989 RSC A Midsummer Night’s Dream—but stripped of its puckish wonder. That production was punk; this is post-punk, hard rock, paranoid electronica—a company swelling with dissonance, shot through with threat and the macabre.
The scenography is stark: a brutalist frame of intrusion and control. Literal amplifiers point inward, forming a perimeter of sound that is deafening, overbearing, inescapably oppressive. This is not ambience—it is assault. Surround sound doesn’t envelop so much as interrogate.
The band plays from behind gauze-like rear screens, half-obscured—ghostly, surveilling. The upper set resembles a hybrid of sound studio and military command deck: boom boxes, wires, glowing panels—imposing, impersonal, unrelenting. It's Orwellian not in what it hides, but in what it refuses to. Here, the soundscape is camouflage, a decoy, disguising the rot beneath with volume, distortion, and control.
This is a stage that watches you back. The sound doesn’t underscore the drama—it overwhelms it, colonises it, rewrites it. It’s not that the music sets the tone; the music is the regime.
We enter to the sound of “2 + 2 = 5”, and immediately we’re submerged in a world built on lies parading as truth. From the flys, coats hang—unworn, empty—like lynched bodies or discarded skins. They dangle in still air, a grotesque memorial to those who no longer act, who no longer resist. These aren’t costumes; they’re husks. Denmark is stripped, laid bare, and what’s left is naked power, decayed ritual, and the stench of surveillance.
By the time we hear “We Suck Young Blood”, the regime’s rot is personal. The court is vampiric, leeching youth and hope from its people. Gertrude (the sublime Claudia Harrison) floats through this landscape like a ghost—groomed for compliance, soft with denial—while Ami Tredrea’s Ophelia is broken not by madness, but by the system’s indifference. Her unraveling plays out to “Sail to the Moon”—not as a lullaby, but as a slow-motion drowning: delicate, inevitable, and ignored.
Samuel Blenkin’s Hamlet is definitive. I say this after seeing Jude Law wear the cloak on Broadway, Alex Jennings at this theatre. Both were excellent. This one redefines it. His Hamlet is a version on Oxy—youthfully maleficent, and yet Blenkin brings a new intelligence to the role, a new knowing. Yes, it's a puckish portrayal, but Blenkin’s ability to speak the verse with such natural clarity, understanding and—dare I say it—risk? Quirky, idiosyncratic, revelatory. I doubt I will see better. I doubt I will be as moved. Doubtlessly, it is hedonistic watching him.
Claudius is a man of performance—his politics choreographed, his piety hollow. He could be mouthing “Sit down. Stand up.” while cameras roll and the bodies pile up backstage. His Denmark is Gilead: nothing warm, nothing humane, everything surveilled and stage-managed. Even grief is performative here.
Paul Hilton is incandescently brilliant—intent, vital, intelligent, and yes, charming. He oversees Denmark with charismatic calculation, his power both magnetic and noxious. It’s a performance of cocaine infusion—not literally, of course, but the performance suggests it: quiet mania, unrelenting charm, and a supercilious saccharine edge. It’s not just a pleasure to watch him—it’s a disturbing thrill.
By the time “Myxomatosis” pounds through the throne room, the action has collapsed into nightmare logic. Hamlet doesn’t speak truth to power; he screams into a vacuum. He’s not avenging anything. He’s resisting being swallowed by the script—by legacy, by surveillance, by a state that records everything and understands nothing.
This Hamlet doesn’t offer catharsis. There’s no purging, no salvation. Just a stage littered with corpses and ringing with silence—then, at last, the hush before “A Wolf at the Door” fades in. And you realise: it was always coming. We just stopped listening.
In Steven Hoggett and Christine Jones’ direction, there is incision, lateral brilliance, and incendiary creativity. It’s not just fluid—it’s manic, aggressive, fused with ferocity, and moreover, it’s utterly fearless. What they’ve done here is take the story, take the album, and morph it into something that will likely influence future work. Yes—seminal. I reviewed the superb Romeo and Juliet in a similar genre, but this is something else. This can’t be reviewed with star ratings or polysyllabic platitudes. This one—you just have to see. Experience this gut-punch to the soul, this shattering redefinition. It will not just sit with me—it will live in me, as the pinnacle. The best. The experienced.
Mark Pitt
Caveat: Paul Hilton trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama at the same time as the author. Paul was nominated for the Tony Award for his performance in "The Inheritance" on Broadway, among other nominations including the Olivier Award.
Give us a Clue Liza!
Confused, Cumbersome and Convoluted. Is this a Play or a Sleep-Aid?
The Croft – A Highland Fling with Every Plot Known to Man
Review by Mark Pitt for www.Choppa.com
The Belgrade Theatre, Coventry. Touring.
Let us be clear: if you take a crofter’s cottage, three timelines, a same-sex romance with a mother-issue subplot, a haunting, and a woman flinging red powder around like she's about to summon the ghost of Ethel Merman, you do not have a play. You have a séance hosted by a focus group.
The Croft, which presumably sprang from the earnest, quivering pens of people who once read The Woman in Black and thought, “What if we made it three times longer and five times more confusing?”, is theatre not as story, but as story-accumulation. A scrapbook of dramatic tropes glued together with emotional PVA and left to dry in the draughty Highlands.
Set in the Scottish Highlands — that great northern wilderness where every cottage comes with a ghost and a family trauma — the play doesn't so much explore legend as take it hostage, tie it up in a subplot, and leave it in a loch.
We meet Laura, a grieving daughter with a haunted look and an even more haunted relationship. Her partner Suzanne — older, wiser, and visibly regretting the Airbnb booking — joins her for a weekend in a croft seemingly decorated by IKEA’s Occult Division. Their relationship is tender, tentative, and trotted out not for exploration but for narrative ballast — emotional garnish rather than entrée.
Then, back we go — to 2005, when Laura’s mother Ruth is having a midlife crisis dressed up as a countryside affair. She’s married to a vicar with the charisma of a damp bookmark and is dallying with the local ghillie — a word that should have come with a trigger warning. Their scenes feel like they wandered in from a soft-focus ITV drama about quilted jackets and repressed sexuality.
But wait, there’s more. Because subtlety, as ever, is for cowards, we’re hurled further back to the 1880s, where Liza Goddard (commendably committed and surely owed combat pay) plays Enid, a crofter suspected of witchcraft who throws red powder around like Gordon Ramsay trying to exorcise a soufflé. She shelters a pregnant outcast, chants ominously, and haunts the rest of the show like a moral conscience in a bad accent.
And Ronald. Poor, directionless Ronald. He’s Scottish wallpaper. Less a character, more an ambient setting.
The direction is “atmospheric” in the way a flickering toilet bulb is atmospheric: it tells you something’s wrong but not why you’re meant to care. The sound design is a collage of eeriness that feels pulled from a public domain folder titled Haunted Shed FX. One piece of music sounded so bowel-rattling it may have doubled as the cue for the interval.
There is, somewhere deep beneath the tartan and trauma, the kernel of a good idea. But it’s swaddled in clichés and narrative convolution until it suffocates. This is less a play than a séance interrupted by a therapy session, haunted by the ghost of better scripts.
Let’s not mention the supporting actors’ names — the poor bastards have enough to fight for. They’ll need another job after this nonsense closes. They’re great. And bless ’em, they needed the money.
The set? Och, lovely. Very atmospheric.
As for the audience: my mate — South for the Sunderland game, a professional with proper credits — needed two pints afterwards just to regain control of his nervous system. My stepdad, in the middle of an otherwise respectful stalls, asked (in that unmistakable Welsh brogue):
"What the fuck was that about?"
An usher told us they had to see it twice, without double-pay.
Indeed.
Give us a clue, Liza. Really. Give us a clue.
Review by Mark Pitt for www.Choppa.com
The Belgrade Theatre, Coventry. Touring.
Let us be clear: if you take a crofter’s cottage, three timelines, a same-sex romance with a mother-issue subplot, a haunting, and a woman flinging red powder around like she's about to summon the ghost of Ethel Merman, you do not have a play. You have a séance hosted by a focus group.
The Croft, which presumably sprang from the earnest, quivering pens of people who once read The Woman in Black and thought, “What if we made it three times longer and five times more confusing?”, is theatre not as story, but as story-accumulation. A scrapbook of dramatic tropes glued together with emotional PVA and left to dry in the draughty Highlands.
Set in the Scottish Highlands — that great northern wilderness where every cottage comes with a ghost and a family trauma — the play doesn't so much explore legend as take it hostage, tie it up in a subplot, and leave it in a loch.
We meet Laura, a grieving daughter with a haunted look and an even more haunted relationship. Her partner Suzanne — older, wiser, and visibly regretting the Airbnb booking — joins her for a weekend in a croft seemingly decorated by IKEA’s Occult Division. Their relationship is tender, tentative, and trotted out not for exploration but for narrative ballast — emotional garnish rather than entrée.
Then, back we go — to 2005, when Laura’s mother Ruth is having a midlife crisis dressed up as a countryside affair. She’s married to a vicar with the charisma of a damp bookmark and is dallying with the local ghillie — a word that should have come with a trigger warning. Their scenes feel like they wandered in from a soft-focus ITV drama about quilted jackets and repressed sexuality.
But wait, there’s more. Because subtlety, as ever, is for cowards, we’re hurled further back to the 1880s, where Liza Goddard (commendably committed and surely owed combat pay) plays Enid, a crofter suspected of witchcraft who throws red powder around like Gordon Ramsay trying to exorcise a soufflé. She shelters a pregnant outcast, chants ominously, and haunts the rest of the show like a moral conscience in a bad accent.
And Ronald. Poor, directionless Ronald. He’s Scottish wallpaper. Less a character, more an ambient setting.
The direction is “atmospheric” in the way a flickering toilet bulb is atmospheric: it tells you something’s wrong but not why you’re meant to care. The sound design is a collage of eeriness that feels pulled from a public domain folder titled Haunted Shed FX. One piece of music sounded so bowel-rattling it may have doubled as the cue for the interval.
There is, somewhere deep beneath the tartan and trauma, the kernel of a good idea. But it’s swaddled in clichés and narrative convolution until it suffocates. This is less a play than a séance interrupted by a therapy session, haunted by the ghost of better scripts.
Let’s not mention the supporting actors’ names — the poor bastards have enough to fight for. They’ll need another job after this nonsense closes. They’re great. And bless ’em, they needed the money.
The set? Och, lovely. Very atmospheric.
As for the audience: my mate — South for the Sunderland game, a professional with proper credits — needed two pints afterwards just to regain control of his nervous system. My stepdad, in the middle of an otherwise respectful stalls, asked (in that unmistakable Welsh brogue):
"What the fuck was that about?"
An usher told us they had to see it twice, without double-pay.
Indeed.
Give us a clue, Liza. Really. Give us a clue.
Theatre Criticism or Community Applause?
When every local production receives glowing praise, one begins to wonder: what exactly is the point of theatre criticism anymore?
After witnessing a year’s worth of local theatre and reading the accompanying reviews, I can only describe much of the commentary as glib, superficial, and—frankly—untrue. Without naming names (though it’s tempting), there is a clear air of uncritical promotion at work. And while promotion has its place, where does that leave the audience? How are they to distinguish between excellence and mediocrity when everything is hailed as a “must-see”?
More troubling still—how are creatives to grow when even inadequate performances are met with praise? This isn’t kindness. It’s condescension. And it’s wrong.
Charging £15 or more per ticket should mean certain standards are expected: visible production value, competent acting, clear direction. When critics applaud every show, regardless of its merit, their reviews become not only valueless—but actively misleading. They flatten the field. They blur the line between craft and hobby.
One particularly baffling review recently applauded an actor for being "word-perfect" in their first lead role—as if reciting lines in the right order were some exceptional feat. That’s not high praise. That’s the bare minimum. It’s akin to commending a mechanic for picking the right spanner before changing a tyre.
And when theatres are accepting the public's money—often tax-free—there is a duty to uphold some degree of artistic integrity. I expect a few fluffed lines and gentle prompting in a village hall over jam and scones. But not in Warwickshire’s established theatres, where the marketing is slick and the media coverage professional. The productions should rise to meet those standards. Too often, they don’t.
And yet, the reviews keep clapping.
If local critics are receiving free tickets, public attention, and the privilege of shaping reputations, then they must accept the responsibility that comes with it. That includes honesty—even when it stings. Otherwise, we may as well award medals for participation and paper the walls with hollow praise.
Let’s be clear: dishonest flattery serves no one. It misleads audiences. It stunts artists. It turns theatre into a community bake sale with spotlights. The truth may be uncomfortable—but it is essential.
After four decades in and around the theatre, I’ve seen a slow shift from critical insight to GCSE-level ramblings—full of adjectives, light on substance. And let’s be frank: if I were examining some of these reviews for GCSE assessment, a few simply wouldn’t pass. It’s as basic as that.
So when a critic applauds an actor for being word-perfect, perhaps it’s time they reviewed a Primary School nativity. The bar has not just been lowered—it’s fallen off the stage completely and is now gathering dust backstage with last year’s plastic ivy.
On this site, and in this voice, you will never find such simpering nonsense. What you will find is honest opinion—rooted in empirical knowledge, experience, and theatre-worn wisdom. And if that irks? Good. It should. Audiences deserve better. So do creatives.
Criticism is not cruelty. But nor is false praise a kindness. It is, at best, a disservice—and at worst, a quiet betrayal of the very art it claims to support.
If non-professional theatre wishes to be taken seriously alongside trained professionals, it must also welcome the same scrutiny. Yes, a review is one person’s opinion. But if a show is not worthy of the ticket price—if it is, in truth, amateur performance dressed in borrowed prestige—then that show belongs in the village hall, with the scones, the tea, and a polite “well done” tacked to the community noticeboard.
Not in the arts pages. Not on a pedestal. And not under the illusion of greatness.
Raise the curtain, yes—but raise the standard too.
Mark Pitt
Next Up:
Dealer's Choice, Donmar Warehouse
Dealer’s Choice by Patrick Marber:
Dealer’s Choice is a darkly comic play set in a London restaurant where the staff—led by the controlling owner Stephen—unwind with a weekly poker game in the basement after closing. As the night unfolds, tensions rise, secrets surface, and the stakes become more than just money. Stephen's strained relationship with his compulsive gambler son Carl, the arrival of a mysterious and dangerous outsider named Ash, and each man’s personal desperation collide over the poker table. The game becomes a metaphor for risk, control, and masculinity, revealing the characters’ vulnerabilities and their need to bluff their way through life as much as the cards.
Dealer’s Choice is a darkly comic play set in a London restaurant where the staff—led by the controlling owner Stephen—unwind with a weekly poker game in the basement after closing. As the night unfolds, tensions rise, secrets surface, and the stakes become more than just money. Stephen's strained relationship with his compulsive gambler son Carl, the arrival of a mysterious and dangerous outsider named Ash, and each man’s personal desperation collide over the poker table. The game becomes a metaphor for risk, control, and masculinity, revealing the characters’ vulnerabilities and their need to bluff their way through life as much as the cards.
A Note on the Talisman Theatre’s Frankenstein
It would be inappropriate for me to review the Talisman Theatre’s latest production of Frankenstein.
While the performance — or at least the portion I saw — was marked by clear commitment and effort, it did not, in my view, reach the standard required for meaningful or fair critical discussion.
Following my previous review of this theatre, which prompted an unusually personal response, it has become evident that my writing was taken more to heart than intended. In light of that, and out of respect for those who generously give their time to amateur theatre, I have chosen not to critique this production.
This is not said with malice or disdain, but rather with a desire to avoid unnecessary hurt. Sometimes silence, when rooted in care, is the most respectful option.
Mark Pitt
While the performance — or at least the portion I saw — was marked by clear commitment and effort, it did not, in my view, reach the standard required for meaningful or fair critical discussion.
Following my previous review of this theatre, which prompted an unusually personal response, it has become evident that my writing was taken more to heart than intended. In light of that, and out of respect for those who generously give their time to amateur theatre, I have chosen not to critique this production.
This is not said with malice or disdain, but rather with a desire to avoid unnecessary hurt. Sometimes silence, when rooted in care, is the most respectful option.
Mark Pitt
John Godber returns to the Loft Theatre
Following the Loft Theatre’s hugely successful 2025 season, the curtain rises again with John Godber’s riotous comedy Up 'n' Under, directed by Lorna Middleton. This fast-paced, feel-good play tells the story of a down-and-out amateur rugby league team from Hull who, against all odds--and under the guidance of an unorthodox new coach--take on a high-stakes challenge that tests their grit, humour, and heart. Packed with physical comedy, northern charm, and underdog determination, Up 'n' Under promises an uplifting night of theatre that kicks off the Summer season with energy and laughs.
We interview Actor Connor Michael and Director Lorna Middleton HERE >>>>
We interview Actor Connor Michael and Director Lorna Middleton HERE >>>>
“Four Actors, 100 Characters, Infinite Laughs: The 39 Steps Steals the Show”
The 39 Steps at the Priory Theatre
Directed by John Evans
Runs about two hours, including interval.
You’d be forgiven for walking into the Priory Theatre expecting John Buchan’s stiff-upper-lip Boys’ Own romp of a tale — all tweed, trains, and Teutonic threats. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. What you’d be less prepared for is the metatheatrical catnip of Patrick Barlow’s adaptation — a four-actor fever dream performed at the speed of an MI5 cover-up and with more costume changes than a Kardashian’s Instagram.
This is not so much The 39 Steps as it is The 39 Thousand Rehearsal Hours, and every minute shows. The plot — which is to say, the string by which the play dangles like a circus act — follows Richard Hannay, a man with cheekbones you could hang a war medal off, wrongly accused of murder and thrust into a cross-country caper involving spies, seduction, and some very dramatic lighting.
Ben Wellicome plays Hannay with the sort of clipped precision and immaculate hair that suggests he was carved out of mahogany by a valet. He is a stooge and a straight man, a matinee idol played with knowing irony, as if he’s perpetually aware of being halfway between Noël Coward and a GQ spread. His deadpan is immaculate — the more ridiculous the scenario, the more seriously he takes it, like a Tory MP in a sex scandal.
Then there’s Nicky Main, multitasking her way through three roles — spy, Scotswoman, and reluctant hostage — with a wry detachment and absolute command of the stage. She wears Pamela’s perpetual exasperation like a Chanel suit. Her comedic touch is featherlight — she never winks, never mugs, and the result is all the funnier for it.
But the real miracle — the twin engine room of this rickety, roaring theatrical train — is the pair billed simply as the Clowns: Becky Young and Rob Jones. Between them, they play the cast of Braveheart, the Police Force, British Rail, and quite possibly the catering team. Jones, with a brogue so thick it should come with subtitles, is a physical comedy savant. Young, unfairly underused elsewhere in the Loft's "Glorious," here detonates every gag like a comic demolition expert. Their timing is split-second, their energy Herculean, and their commitment as total as a cult member’s.
John Evans directs with the gleeful sadism of a man who’s realised you can get away with anything so long as you do it fast enough and with accents. His direction is tight, clever, and packed with sight gags, slapstick, and theatrical sleight-of-hand. I think he might have binge-watched the Airplane movies.
Steve Boden’s set is a marvel of economy and illusion — a train becomes a moor becomes a hotel becomes a theatre — and if that sentence makes no sense, then good: neither does the plot. But it doesn’t need to. This isn’t realism, it’s theatre with its trousers round its ankles, and what blissful, breathless fun it is.
A word of warning: bring your lungs. You’ll need them to laugh, and more than once I nearly needed mine back.
Bottom line: Swaggering like a matinée idol gatecrashing a Monty Python sketch, The 39 Steps hurtles through espionage, accents, and absurdity with breathless brilliance.
Mark Pitt
Nominations:
Outstanding Cast: The 39 Steps Company
Outstanding Direction of a Play: John Evans
Outstanding Design: Steve Boden
Outstanding Sound Design: Dwayne Dawson and Robert Warner
Directed by John Evans
Runs about two hours, including interval.
You’d be forgiven for walking into the Priory Theatre expecting John Buchan’s stiff-upper-lip Boys’ Own romp of a tale — all tweed, trains, and Teutonic threats. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. What you’d be less prepared for is the metatheatrical catnip of Patrick Barlow’s adaptation — a four-actor fever dream performed at the speed of an MI5 cover-up and with more costume changes than a Kardashian’s Instagram.
This is not so much The 39 Steps as it is The 39 Thousand Rehearsal Hours, and every minute shows. The plot — which is to say, the string by which the play dangles like a circus act — follows Richard Hannay, a man with cheekbones you could hang a war medal off, wrongly accused of murder and thrust into a cross-country caper involving spies, seduction, and some very dramatic lighting.
Ben Wellicome plays Hannay with the sort of clipped precision and immaculate hair that suggests he was carved out of mahogany by a valet. He is a stooge and a straight man, a matinee idol played with knowing irony, as if he’s perpetually aware of being halfway between Noël Coward and a GQ spread. His deadpan is immaculate — the more ridiculous the scenario, the more seriously he takes it, like a Tory MP in a sex scandal.
Then there’s Nicky Main, multitasking her way through three roles — spy, Scotswoman, and reluctant hostage — with a wry detachment and absolute command of the stage. She wears Pamela’s perpetual exasperation like a Chanel suit. Her comedic touch is featherlight — she never winks, never mugs, and the result is all the funnier for it.
But the real miracle — the twin engine room of this rickety, roaring theatrical train — is the pair billed simply as the Clowns: Becky Young and Rob Jones. Between them, they play the cast of Braveheart, the Police Force, British Rail, and quite possibly the catering team. Jones, with a brogue so thick it should come with subtitles, is a physical comedy savant. Young, unfairly underused elsewhere in the Loft's "Glorious," here detonates every gag like a comic demolition expert. Their timing is split-second, their energy Herculean, and their commitment as total as a cult member’s.
John Evans directs with the gleeful sadism of a man who’s realised you can get away with anything so long as you do it fast enough and with accents. His direction is tight, clever, and packed with sight gags, slapstick, and theatrical sleight-of-hand. I think he might have binge-watched the Airplane movies.
Steve Boden’s set is a marvel of economy and illusion — a train becomes a moor becomes a hotel becomes a theatre — and if that sentence makes no sense, then good: neither does the plot. But it doesn’t need to. This isn’t realism, it’s theatre with its trousers round its ankles, and what blissful, breathless fun it is.
A word of warning: bring your lungs. You’ll need them to laugh, and more than once I nearly needed mine back.
Bottom line: Swaggering like a matinée idol gatecrashing a Monty Python sketch, The 39 Steps hurtles through espionage, accents, and absurdity with breathless brilliance.
Mark Pitt
Nominations:
Outstanding Cast: The 39 Steps Company
Outstanding Direction of a Play: John Evans
Outstanding Design: Steve Boden
Outstanding Sound Design: Dwayne Dawson and Robert Warner
Broken Curtains – When Theatre Fails Its Youngest Stars
Broken Curtains – When Theatre Fails Its Youngest Stars
By Mark Pitt, with additional reporting
The stage door swings both ways. It lets wide-eyed children enter a world of magic, and sometimes ushers them out carrying secrets they don't yet understand. Two stories - mine as a 15-year-old actor in 1985 Birmingham, and the RSC's Daniel Evans' as a drama student at Ysgol Gyfun Rhydfelen - reveal how British theatre's brightest lights have long cast the darkest shadows.
Act One: Birmingham, 1985
The Hippodrome smelled of dust and dreams when I played a minor role in Macbeth. For a working-class boy from the Midlands, rubbing shoulders with professionals like Colin McCormack felt like winning the lottery. Until the day Vince Gardner, the actor playing the Cream-Faced Loon, asked me to lie on a towel in our shared dressing room.
His hands, slick with oil, moved up my thighs until I said stop. At 15, I lacked the vocabulary to understand what had happened. Was this normal backstage behavior? A rite of passage? I buried the memory beneath layers of professional pride - I'd been chosen, hadn't I?
Act Two: South Wales, 1980s
Meanwhile, in Pontypridd, a young Daniel Evans was falling under the spell of John Owen, Rhydfelen's charismatic drama teacher. The 2004 Clywch report would later expose Owen as a serial abuser who groomed students through a toxic mix of favoritism and fear. Pupils described being pressured into sexually explicit performances, private rehearsals, and overnight stays at Owen's home.
Evans, now artistic director of the RSC, has never spoken publicly about his time under Owen's tutelage. His silence echoes through British theatre's corridors - a silence I recognize from my own experience. When your artistic awakening coincides with professional violation, gratitude and shame become inextricably entwined.
The Unwritten Script
Our stories differ in scale but share disturbing parallels:
Curtain Call
Today's theatre has stronger safeguards, but ghosts remain. My single encounter with Gardner pales beside Owen's systematic abuse, yet both reveal how easily artistic passion can be exploited. As Evans programs Shakespeare for new generations, and I write these words decades later, we're both still negotiating with our pasts.
The show, as they say, must go on. But it's time the industry acknowledged the price some of us paid for our places in the spotlight.
Act Three: Atlanta, 2000s: Theatre in the Square, Marietta
In a Southern U.S. theatre’s green room—a space meant for quiet preparation—I became prey. The actor who assaulted me was a colleague, someone I trusted enough to share a stage with in Pygmalion. His outburst was violent, sexual, and met with nervous laughter from others. No one intervened. No one reported it. Like my experience at 15, I buried it, this time under the guise of professionalism: The show must go on.
But the fear didn’t fade. Years later, when I heard about his HIV diagnosis, the what-ifs clawed their way to the surface. What if he hadn’t been stopped? What if, in another moment, I hadn’t been able to escape? The virus itself wasn’t the horror—it was the realization of how close I’d come to being another kind of victim, in an industry that still whispers about abuse rather than confronting it.
The Reckoning
My story is not unique. Daniel Evans, now artistic director of the RSC, passed through the toxic regime of John Owen at Ysgol Gyfun Rhydfelen, where abuse was systemic. He has never spoken publicly about it, and I understand why: the theatre world rewards survival, not scrutiny.
But survival isn’t enough. From school plays to the West End, the same dynamics persist:
Theatre cannot thrive if it continues to sacrifice its young—and not-so-young—to the cult of “the show above all.” We need:
Mark Pitt is a writer and former child actor. Daniel Evans did not authorise this article. Mr. Evans' friend, Lisa Victoria, a TV actress, was also the author's girlfriend.
Support resources:
By Mark Pitt, with additional reporting
The stage door swings both ways. It lets wide-eyed children enter a world of magic, and sometimes ushers them out carrying secrets they don't yet understand. Two stories - mine as a 15-year-old actor in 1985 Birmingham, and the RSC's Daniel Evans' as a drama student at Ysgol Gyfun Rhydfelen - reveal how British theatre's brightest lights have long cast the darkest shadows.
Act One: Birmingham, 1985
The Hippodrome smelled of dust and dreams when I played a minor role in Macbeth. For a working-class boy from the Midlands, rubbing shoulders with professionals like Colin McCormack felt like winning the lottery. Until the day Vince Gardner, the actor playing the Cream-Faced Loon, asked me to lie on a towel in our shared dressing room.
His hands, slick with oil, moved up my thighs until I said stop. At 15, I lacked the vocabulary to understand what had happened. Was this normal backstage behavior? A rite of passage? I buried the memory beneath layers of professional pride - I'd been chosen, hadn't I?
Act Two: South Wales, 1980s
Meanwhile, in Pontypridd, a young Daniel Evans was falling under the spell of John Owen, Rhydfelen's charismatic drama teacher. The 2004 Clywch report would later expose Owen as a serial abuser who groomed students through a toxic mix of favoritism and fear. Pupils described being pressured into sexually explicit performances, private rehearsals, and overnight stays at Owen's home.
Evans, now artistic director of the RSC, has never spoken publicly about his time under Owen's tutelage. His silence echoes through British theatre's corridors - a silence I recognize from my own experience. When your artistic awakening coincides with professional violation, gratitude and shame become inextricably entwined.
The Unwritten Script
Our stories differ in scale but share disturbing parallels:
- The power imbalance between mentor and protégé
- The culture that equated discomfort with dedication
- The institutional failures that enabled abuse
- The decades-long silence of those affected
- Theatre historian Dr. Emily Jones notes: "Until the 2000s, British theatre operated on a 'see no evil' policy. Children were expected to be tough enough for the professional world, but given no tools to navigate its dangers
Curtain Call
Today's theatre has stronger safeguards, but ghosts remain. My single encounter with Gardner pales beside Owen's systematic abuse, yet both reveal how easily artistic passion can be exploited. As Evans programs Shakespeare for new generations, and I write these words decades later, we're both still negotiating with our pasts.
The show, as they say, must go on. But it's time the industry acknowledged the price some of us paid for our places in the spotlight.
Act Three: Atlanta, 2000s: Theatre in the Square, Marietta
In a Southern U.S. theatre’s green room—a space meant for quiet preparation—I became prey. The actor who assaulted me was a colleague, someone I trusted enough to share a stage with in Pygmalion. His outburst was violent, sexual, and met with nervous laughter from others. No one intervened. No one reported it. Like my experience at 15, I buried it, this time under the guise of professionalism: The show must go on.
But the fear didn’t fade. Years later, when I heard about his HIV diagnosis, the what-ifs clawed their way to the surface. What if he hadn’t been stopped? What if, in another moment, I hadn’t been able to escape? The virus itself wasn’t the horror—it was the realization of how close I’d come to being another kind of victim, in an industry that still whispers about abuse rather than confronting it.
The Reckoning
My story is not unique. Daniel Evans, now artistic director of the RSC, passed through the toxic regime of John Owen at Ysgol Gyfun Rhydfelen, where abuse was systemic. He has never spoken publicly about it, and I understand why: the theatre world rewards survival, not scrutiny.
But survival isn’t enough. From school plays to the West End, the same dynamics persist:
- Power Disguised as Passion – Whether it’s a teacher like Owen or a castmate like my attacker, aggression is often romanticized as “artistic intensity.”
- Silence as Complicity – In Atlanta, colleagues laughed off an assault. In Wales, school officials ignored allegations for decades.
- The Delayed Aftermath – Trauma doesn’t adhere to a rehearsal schedule. It surfaces years later, in the quiet moments between roles.
Theatre cannot thrive if it continues to sacrifice its young—and not-so-young—to the cult of “the show above all.” We need:
- Mandatory Safeguarding Training – For every production, at every level, with clear reporting protocols.
- Zero Tolerance for “Jokes” – Sexualized aggression must no longer be dismissed as backstage banter.
- Support for Survivors – Anonymous reporting, counseling, and industry-wide accountability.
Mark Pitt is a writer and former child actor. Daniel Evans did not authorise this article. Mr. Evans' friend, Lisa Victoria, a TV actress, was also the author's girlfriend.
Support resources:
- NSPCC: 0808 800 5000
- Theatre Helpline: 0800 915 4617
- Survivors UK (for male survivors): 020 3598 3898
The Evenings We Took it on the Chin
I remember Peter McGarry’s reviews in the Coventry Evening Telegraph — sharp, honest, well-written, even if too short.
John Slim’s pieces in the Birmingham Evening Post — back when critics actually bothered to come out of Brum for Warwickshire theatre.
Those were good days.
You took your lumps and got on with it.
It was part of the game.
We sat in the Talisman Theatre bar on Friday nights — Ted Whitehead rolling his eyes the moment you mentioned some actor or production, Chris Ward wide-eyed and bracing for impact. Phil Reynolds, the grammar police, ready to pounce on any slip-up, sending you into silent shame for the rest of the night, replaying the crime against the accusative dative.
And Bryan Ferriman — pipe clenched in teeth, book in hand, just glancing over his glasses. That look said it all: No words needed.
Back then, life was grounded. Tougher. Less precious.
We didn’t need safe spaces or emotional support peacocks.
Now?
Feather-light sensitivities everywhere. And no — I don’t want any part of it.
Gen X — my generation — is to blame.
We coddled kids.
Told them it wasn’t about winning, just "taking part."
We pinned medals onto chests that hadn’t earned a damn thing.
I want no part of that either.
The honesty I grew up with — from teachers, parents, and theatre folk — bred resilience.
Did some comments sting? Of course.
Did some hit harder than they should? Maybe.
Result? Tougher skin. Sharper mind. Prepared for the real world.
Not everything needs to be sweetened, sugar-coated, or dumbed down.
Not everything deserves a round of applause.
If we keep pandering to this new cult of faux sensitivity, we don't just soften life — we rot it.
So if speaking plainly offends someone — good.
If refusing to hand out gold stars for mediocrity makes me unpopular — even better.
And for God’s sake — watch your grammar while you’re at it.
Phil Reynolds is still out there somewhere, notebook in hand, ready to slap your wrist over a wayward accusative dative.
I just got back from a college reunion.
A friend of mine, fresh off five years in the London and touring productions of Wicked, told a story that sums it all up.
“The American producers came over to see the show,” he said. “Afterwards, they called a meeting — and fired half the cast on the spot.”
No hand-holding.
No careful ‘feedback loops’ or ‘personal growth opportunities.’
Just: You’re not cutting it. Out you go.
They weren’t in the mood for kid gloves that night — and thank God for it.
Because that’s the real world.
You hit the mark, or you don’t.
And if you don’t, you move over and let someone else have a go.
That used to be how we built resilience.
Now, too many think they're entitled to a standing ovation just for showing up. Not in my book. If audiences pay to see a show, at least frame it so that they get some value for money.
Mark Pitt
John Slim’s pieces in the Birmingham Evening Post — back when critics actually bothered to come out of Brum for Warwickshire theatre.
Those were good days.
You took your lumps and got on with it.
It was part of the game.
We sat in the Talisman Theatre bar on Friday nights — Ted Whitehead rolling his eyes the moment you mentioned some actor or production, Chris Ward wide-eyed and bracing for impact. Phil Reynolds, the grammar police, ready to pounce on any slip-up, sending you into silent shame for the rest of the night, replaying the crime against the accusative dative.
And Bryan Ferriman — pipe clenched in teeth, book in hand, just glancing over his glasses. That look said it all: No words needed.
Back then, life was grounded. Tougher. Less precious.
We didn’t need safe spaces or emotional support peacocks.
Now?
Feather-light sensitivities everywhere. And no — I don’t want any part of it.
Gen X — my generation — is to blame.
We coddled kids.
Told them it wasn’t about winning, just "taking part."
We pinned medals onto chests that hadn’t earned a damn thing.
I want no part of that either.
The honesty I grew up with — from teachers, parents, and theatre folk — bred resilience.
Did some comments sting? Of course.
Did some hit harder than they should? Maybe.
Result? Tougher skin. Sharper mind. Prepared for the real world.
Not everything needs to be sweetened, sugar-coated, or dumbed down.
Not everything deserves a round of applause.
If we keep pandering to this new cult of faux sensitivity, we don't just soften life — we rot it.
So if speaking plainly offends someone — good.
If refusing to hand out gold stars for mediocrity makes me unpopular — even better.
And for God’s sake — watch your grammar while you’re at it.
Phil Reynolds is still out there somewhere, notebook in hand, ready to slap your wrist over a wayward accusative dative.
I just got back from a college reunion.
A friend of mine, fresh off five years in the London and touring productions of Wicked, told a story that sums it all up.
“The American producers came over to see the show,” he said. “Afterwards, they called a meeting — and fired half the cast on the spot.”
No hand-holding.
No careful ‘feedback loops’ or ‘personal growth opportunities.’
Just: You’re not cutting it. Out you go.
They weren’t in the mood for kid gloves that night — and thank God for it.
Because that’s the real world.
You hit the mark, or you don’t.
And if you don’t, you move over and let someone else have a go.
That used to be how we built resilience.
Now, too many think they're entitled to a standing ovation just for showing up. Not in my book. If audiences pay to see a show, at least frame it so that they get some value for money.
Mark Pitt
The Choppa.com Theatre Awards - Needed or Worthless? Mark Randall's Wager.
Subject: A Note from Choppa.com – On the Theatre Awards & the Question of Interest
Dear friends, artists, and theatre lovers,
You may have heard a local actor, Mr. Mark Randall **, has placed a bet on whether this year’s Choppa.com Theatre Awards will be cancelled due to “a lack of interest.” While he is perfectly entitled to ask the question, I’d like to offer a sincere response.
If the awards are not needed, then so be it.
My aim has never been commercial gain—this is not a business model. I created the Choppa.com Awards purely from love for theatre and a desire to elevate the best and most important work happening here in Warwickshire.
But I understand the underlying question: Who am I to do this? Who am I to judge? That is entirely fair. And if the non-professional theatre community feels there is no value in recognising a year of extraordinary local performance, the event will indeed be cancelled. The reason, quite honestly, will be “a lack of interest.” I will have lost nothing but a few hundred pounds—small change compared to the joy the awards might bring.
For clarity, the event is hosted at the Priory Theatre thanks to the enthusiasm of Nicki Main, and neither the Priory Theatre nor Choppa.com stand to make a profit.
As for Mr. Randall’s “bet,” I trust it was made in jest and not with any genuine hope that the event fails. Schadenfreude is not a healthy impulse in a community built on collaboration and shared celebration. If the idea of these awards feels threatening to some, I’d argue that says more about mindset than motivation.
What would be a shame is this: that the exceptional productions I’ve seen this year—productions that blur the line between amateur and professional—might pass uncelebrated. Many of these shows were nominated by me, yes, but even more were endorsed by public votes and heartfelt emails from audience members.
And in case you're wondering if this is all just local back-patting—IP addresses from those who’ve commented range from London, to Luton, to as far as Glasgow. These are not friends or colleagues. These are strangers, moved enough to speak up.
So, if the local creative scene believes we don’t need to mark these moments—then we won’t. But if you do believe in celebrating what we’ve achieved together, then I invite you to stand behind this idea. Not for me—but for each other.
Warm regards,
Mark Pitt
Founder, Choppa.com
Dear friends, artists, and theatre lovers,
You may have heard a local actor, Mr. Mark Randall **, has placed a bet on whether this year’s Choppa.com Theatre Awards will be cancelled due to “a lack of interest.” While he is perfectly entitled to ask the question, I’d like to offer a sincere response.
If the awards are not needed, then so be it.
My aim has never been commercial gain—this is not a business model. I created the Choppa.com Awards purely from love for theatre and a desire to elevate the best and most important work happening here in Warwickshire.
But I understand the underlying question: Who am I to do this? Who am I to judge? That is entirely fair. And if the non-professional theatre community feels there is no value in recognising a year of extraordinary local performance, the event will indeed be cancelled. The reason, quite honestly, will be “a lack of interest.” I will have lost nothing but a few hundred pounds—small change compared to the joy the awards might bring.
For clarity, the event is hosted at the Priory Theatre thanks to the enthusiasm of Nicki Main, and neither the Priory Theatre nor Choppa.com stand to make a profit.
As for Mr. Randall’s “bet,” I trust it was made in jest and not with any genuine hope that the event fails. Schadenfreude is not a healthy impulse in a community built on collaboration and shared celebration. If the idea of these awards feels threatening to some, I’d argue that says more about mindset than motivation.
What would be a shame is this: that the exceptional productions I’ve seen this year—productions that blur the line between amateur and professional—might pass uncelebrated. Many of these shows were nominated by me, yes, but even more were endorsed by public votes and heartfelt emails from audience members.
And in case you're wondering if this is all just local back-patting—IP addresses from those who’ve commented range from London, to Luton, to as far as Glasgow. These are not friends or colleagues. These are strangers, moved enough to speak up.
So, if the local creative scene believes we don’t need to mark these moments—then we won’t. But if you do believe in celebrating what we’ve achieved together, then I invite you to stand behind this idea. Not for me—but for each other.
Warm regards,
Mark Pitt
Founder, Choppa.com
** It is further claimed that Mr. Randall is the author of a book on local theatre. We have reached out to Mr. Randall to ascertain a link to purchase this work. We will keep readers informed.
Les Miserables: The Pyramid Scheme
The Operatic Farce of Am-Dram Greed
When Les Mis becomes More Money, Less Morals
The ridiculous charging of performers who are appearing in The Midlands Operatic production of Les Misérables continues to irk. Whereas I am sure the director and band are being paid, their fees are being subsidised by dreamers—those whose yearning to appear on a big stage is being exploited. Perhaps a complaint should be made to the Revenue? This company is profiteering and therefore cannot be categorised as a non-profit—can it? I also imagine and allege that those long-standing members of the society, whose roles were afforded by nepotism or association, are not paying to take part. So, if this is the case, not only is the company discriminating, but it seems to verge on the corrupt.
Tickets go up to £70 for the production's run at the Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham. £70 for an amateur production? Seriously? I could see the London production, with professionals, for that. Let us remember that this production is amateur, performed by non-professionals, in a rented theatre—the like of which has seen professional productions aplenty, while charging the same or less.
Moreover, by charging participants, one might assume the artistic team to be seasoned professionals—mentors imparting wisdom, perhaps even offering training. But no. Not here. Just a glorified club, cloaked in the borrowed robes of professional theatre, passing round the collection plate while calling it opportunity. There is no curriculum, no pedagogy, no structured development—only the faint whiff of exploitation masked by the thrill of treading the boards. It is pay-to-play, pure and simple, and yet it parades itself as a cultural beacon. If the spirit of amateur theatre was to foster access, joy, and inclusion, this model buries that spirit beneath a mountain of ticket stubs and direct debits.
If the Midlands Operatic Society think that this is, in any way, showing any element of the spirit of amateur theatre, it is deluded. They are destroying it. Does the Director charge for his services as AD of the Talisman Theatre in Kenilworth? I would hope not, but then who knows. Never in my lifetime did I think I would see amateurs paying to be part of a society—a community theatre, a club. Anathema.
Mark Pitt
Lipstick, Pigs and Performance.
Why local theatre deserves a critic, not a clapping seal.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: not all theatre is good. In fact, much of it isn’t. And while we’re at it, most local critics wouldn’t know dramaturgy from a ham sandwich. There, I’ve said it. The genteel delusion that every community production is a triumph of spirit and greasepaint over gravity and taste is not only ridiculous — it’s patronising. It’s also corrosive. And it’s got to stop.
Criticism is meant to be the hard edge of culture, the necessary flint that sharpens the blade. But somewhere along the village-green path from Chekhov to pantomime, we lost our nerve. Now we peddle puffery. Reviewers — often so close to the cast they’re practically on the Christmas card list — spew praise with the grim obligation of a best man’s speech: flattering, forgettable, and fundamentally dishonest.
I’ve seen productions described as “powerful” when the only thing powerful was the audience’s restraint from walking out. I’ve read glowing paragraphs about actors who couldn’t find a beat if you gave them a metronome and a map. And I’ve seen the most deserving performances go unmentioned, likely because the actor in question didn’t pull pints with the reviewer last Saturday.
There’s a creeping sentimentality that’s taken hold — the idea that to critique is to be cruel, that truth is somehow toxic to creativity. Rubbish. Kindness without honesty is cowardice. And local theatre, like any other art form, deserves better than cowardice dressed up as community spirit.
Let’s also not confuse “amateur” with “exempt.” Shakespeare was amateur. So was Mozart, before someone paid him. Amateur should mean bold, raw, reaching — not “bless them, they tried.” If someone charges money and calls it theatre, then it’s fair game. And if you’re reviewing it, you owe your audience more than a press release with adjectives.
I’m not suggesting we become butchers with red pens. But nor should we continue as timid florists, handing out bouquets to productions that wilt under scrutiny. We need less flattery and more spine. Less “bravo!” and more “try again.” Because deep down, even the most inexperienced audience member knows: when something’s good, it doesn’t need a thesaurus to prove it.
I’ve had reviews so scathing they could remove varnish — and I’ve deserved them. They were a gift. They said, “You can do better.” That’s the point of criticism. Not to applaud effort, but to uphold standards.
So let’s tell the truth. No more lipstick. No more pigs. Just theatre, as it is — in all its glory, and all its ghastliness.
Mark Pitt
Criticism is meant to be the hard edge of culture, the necessary flint that sharpens the blade. But somewhere along the village-green path from Chekhov to pantomime, we lost our nerve. Now we peddle puffery. Reviewers — often so close to the cast they’re practically on the Christmas card list — spew praise with the grim obligation of a best man’s speech: flattering, forgettable, and fundamentally dishonest.
I’ve seen productions described as “powerful” when the only thing powerful was the audience’s restraint from walking out. I’ve read glowing paragraphs about actors who couldn’t find a beat if you gave them a metronome and a map. And I’ve seen the most deserving performances go unmentioned, likely because the actor in question didn’t pull pints with the reviewer last Saturday.
There’s a creeping sentimentality that’s taken hold — the idea that to critique is to be cruel, that truth is somehow toxic to creativity. Rubbish. Kindness without honesty is cowardice. And local theatre, like any other art form, deserves better than cowardice dressed up as community spirit.
Let’s also not confuse “amateur” with “exempt.” Shakespeare was amateur. So was Mozart, before someone paid him. Amateur should mean bold, raw, reaching — not “bless them, they tried.” If someone charges money and calls it theatre, then it’s fair game. And if you’re reviewing it, you owe your audience more than a press release with adjectives.
I’m not suggesting we become butchers with red pens. But nor should we continue as timid florists, handing out bouquets to productions that wilt under scrutiny. We need less flattery and more spine. Less “bravo!” and more “try again.” Because deep down, even the most inexperienced audience member knows: when something’s good, it doesn’t need a thesaurus to prove it.
I’ve had reviews so scathing they could remove varnish — and I’ve deserved them. They were a gift. They said, “You can do better.” That’s the point of criticism. Not to applaud effort, but to uphold standards.
So let’s tell the truth. No more lipstick. No more pigs. Just theatre, as it is — in all its glory, and all its ghastliness.
Mark Pitt
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Early Voting Open🎭
Choppa.com Theatre Awards 2025 🎭 VOTING NOW OPEN! Cast your vote for your favourite theatre creatives of the year! Voting closes September 30th 2025. 🗳️ Early voting link: Click here to vote 📌 Please note:
Final nominees (top five per category) will be announced after voting closes. 🎟️ Each nominee will receive one complimentary ticket to the event. |
Outstanding Work: Award Nominations
October '24 - April '25
Spring Awakening at The Loft Theatre, Leamington Spa, has been nominated in eight categories for the Choppa.com Theatre Awards, currently scheduled for November 9th at the Priory Theatre, Kenilworth.
These awards—the first of their kind in Warwickshire—aim to celebrate the outstanding work of local theatre companies, including The Loft Theatre, Priory Theatre, Talisman Theatre, and Criterion Theatre.
In an evening of relaxed celebration (with a glass or two, naturally), nominees will receive one complimentary ticket. The Priory Theatre will release additional tickets well in advance.
At the heart of this event is a simple goal: to recognise the cultural powerhouse on our doorstep. The idea was born out of a desire to raise the profile of local theatres, encourage greater synergy between companies, and honour the vision of the countless creatives who enrich our artistic landscape.
These theatres not only contribute to the local economy, they bring the soul and spark of live performance to audiences across the region.
It’s time we applaud, support, and celebrate their work.
These awards—the first of their kind in Warwickshire—aim to celebrate the outstanding work of local theatre companies, including The Loft Theatre, Priory Theatre, Talisman Theatre, and Criterion Theatre.
In an evening of relaxed celebration (with a glass or two, naturally), nominees will receive one complimentary ticket. The Priory Theatre will release additional tickets well in advance.
At the heart of this event is a simple goal: to recognise the cultural powerhouse on our doorstep. The idea was born out of a desire to raise the profile of local theatres, encourage greater synergy between companies, and honour the vision of the countless creatives who enrich our artistic landscape.
These theatres not only contribute to the local economy, they bring the soul and spark of live performance to audiences across the region.
It’s time we applaud, support, and celebrate their work.
Credits: Ben Ionoff, Julian Rosa, Phil Reynolds, Leonie Slater, Ted McGowan, Dave Crossfield, Sue Moore, Louise Woodward, David Highland, Christine Evans, Loft, Priory, Criterion and Talisman Theatres.
Nominations for productions and creatives are now open! If you’d like to nominate an actor, director, or creative in a specific category, please fill out our contact form and submit your nomination. Final voting in all categories will close at the end of October 2025.
When submitting your nomination, please include the name of the production you attended and the theatre where it was staged. We cannot see every production, even though we try to! Your help is therefore appreciated.
When submitting your nomination, please include the name of the production you attended and the theatre where it was staged. We cannot see every production, even though we try to! Your help is therefore appreciated.
Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Play
Phil Reynolds for Present Laughter at the Talisman Theatre
Ted McGowan for Constellations at the Loft Theatre
Dave Crossfield for Uncle Vanya at the Loft Theatre
Charlie Maline for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time at the Criterion Theatre
Julian Rosa for Never the Sinner at the Talisman Theatre
Ben Ionoff for Never the Sinner at the Talisman Theatre
David Highland for The Southbury Child at the Criterion Theatre
Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Play
Leonie Slater* for Uncle Vanya at the Loft Theatre
Leonie Slater* for Constellations at the Loft Theatre
Ruth Herd for Mosquitoes at the Loft Theatre
Sue Moore for Mosquitoes at the Loft Theatre
Julie-Ann Randell for Medea at the Loft Theatre
Christine Evans for The Southbury Child at the Criterion Theatre
Lillian McGrath for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time at the Criterion Theatre
*Votes for performers who are nominated more than once will only be registered for one of their performances.
Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Play
Connor Michael for The Southbury Child at the Criterion Theatre
Connor Michael for Present Laughter at the Talisman Theatre
Ted McGowan for Mosquitoes at the Loft Theatre
Graham Buckingham-Underhill for Present Laughter at the Talisman Theatre
Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Play
Aoife O’Gorman for Present Laughter at the Talisman Theatre
Ann Bevan for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time at the Criterion Theatre
Caroline Spencer for The Southbury Child at the Criterion Theatre
Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Musical or Pantomime
Jon Andrews for The Addams Family at the Priory Theatre
Owen Prosser-Stock for Cinderella at the Priory Theatre
Dexter Robinson for The Addams Family at the Priory Theatre
Nathan Dowling for Spring Awakening at the Loft Theatre
Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Musical or Pantomime
Tilly Megan for The Addams Family at The Priory Theatre
Louise Woodward for Sleeping Beauty at The Priory Theatre
Annabel Pilcher for Spring Awakening at the Loft Theatre
Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Musical or Pantomime
Elaine Freeborn for Spring Awakening at The Loft Theatre
Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actor in a Musical or Pantomime
Michael Barker for Spring Awakening at The Loft Theatre
Luca Cantena for Spring Awakening at The Loft Theatre
Outstanding Direction of a Play
Sue Moore for Constellations at the Loft Theatre
David Fletcher for Uncle Vanya at the Loft Theatre
Craig Shelton for Medea at the Loft Theatre
Vanessa Comer for Present Laughter at the Talisman Theatre
Sam Harris for Never the Sinner at the Talisman Theatre
Outstanding Direction of a Musical or Pantomime
Nikki Main for The Addams Family at the Priory Theatre
Chris Gilbey-Smith for Spring Awakening at the Loft Theatre
Outstanding Choreography of a Musical or Pantomime
Becca Shaw for Spring Awakening at the Loft Theatre
Outstanding Lighting Design
Malcolm Hunt for Uncle Vanya at the Loft Theatre
Joel Hassall for Medea at the Loft Theatre
Outstanding Sound Design
Giles Allen-Bowden for Medea at the Loft Theatre
Outstanding Set Design
Amy Carroll for Uncle Vanya at the Loft Theatre
Amy Carroll for Media at the Loft Theatre
John Ellam for Present Laughter at the Talisman Theatre
Outstanding Costume Design
Present Laughter at The Talisman Theatre*
Uncle Vanya at the Loft Theatre*
Sandy Weaver for The Addams Family at the Priory Theatre
*(Names of designers TBA)
Outstanding Production
Constellations at The Loft Theatre
Never the Sinner at The Talisman Theatre
Uncle Vanya at The Loft Theatre
Medea at The Loft Theatre
Spring Awakening at The Loft Theatre
Present Laughter at The Talisman Theatre
___________
This is Their Youth...
Warwickshire's Young Actors Dominate the Past Season.
The past few months have ignited Warwickshire’s stages with a surge of young actors, their talent poised to shape local casting for years to come. Casting youthful performers isn’t easy—many head off to university, drama school, or even abroad, like Nona Davies, who dazzled in the Loft’s 2023 The Rise and Fall of Little Voice before moving to Italy to teach.
Yet Warwickshire’s top universities keep the talent flowing in, ensuring a deep and dynamic pool. What pulls young people to the stage? Once, it was the electric social scene. Friday nights at the Loft or Talisman buzzed like opening night—laughter and chatter spilling over as young actors mingled with veterans. Tuesdays packed the Priory bar with theatre buffs dissecting auditions, productions, and juicy gossip. I still hear Keith Higgins recounting packed houses at Coventry Theatre, Ted Whitehead spinning comedic gold, Al MacLeod Urie’s Scottish lilt painting vivid scenes, and Ernie Guthrie’s wild, hilarious tales leaving us in stitches. Those nights were a masterclass in camaraderie and craft, where you’d walk in for a pint and leave with a dozen stories. It wasn’t just about the shows—it was about the people, the laughter, the sense that you were part of something bigger.
Does today’s onstage work hold up to that past? Honestly, it outshines it. My own early efforts pale next to the skill I see now. Take Leonie Slater and Ted McGowan in the Loft’s Constellations—a tricky play weaving love and quantum theory. Their opening-night precision floored me (and I’ve seen some 400 shows). Slater’s daring vocal twists—mistiming lines on purpose, then hitting unexpected beats—oozed confidence, a flair she flashed again in Vanya. McGowan’s quiet listening anchored their chemistry, making 100 minutes feel like 10.
At the Talisman, Ben Ionoff’s chilling restraint in Never the Sinner paired flawlessly with Julian Rosa’s subtle depth. Then there’s Connor Bailey, whose effortless vibe in Present Laughter stole every scene—he’s so laid-back, you’d think he’d rather “email it in” with a beer in-hand and while watching the footie. I can’t wait for his gig in Up ‘n’ Under at the Loft this summer, even if he half-jokingly livestreams it. The talent keeps coming. Sophie Jasmin-Bird and James McCabe brought tender ease to Lovesong at the Loft, nailing the young Billy and Maggie. Over at the Priory, 16-year-old Tilly Megan’s cool nonchalance in The Addams Family nailed that American-teen “whateverism,” while Dexter Robinson’s Broadway polish lifted the show beyond its script.
Meanwhile, at the Criterion in Coventry, Swindon native Charlie Maline turned The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time into a resounding triumph, thanks to his exceptional performance. Stepping into the role at short notice after Daniel Peckett was forced to withdraw, Maline not only saved the production but elevated it to new heights. Though this was only his second time performing the role, his remarkable talent and commitment shone through, making the show the hit it became. Maline’s portrayal was a testament to his skill and professionalism, proving once again the power of a standout performance to transform a production.
Casting young actors comes with hurdles. It’s a balancing act—directors must weigh their energy and fresh perspective against their need for reliability and craft. Some are still finding their feet, others are ready to soar. The transient nature of young talent—many leave for bigger stages or non-theatre careers—means directors must constantly scout and nurture. Yet this churn keeps the scene on its toes, forcing innovation and risk-taking on new voices. Looking ahead, Warwickshire’s theatre scene seems brighter than ever.
With the RSC in Stratford as a towering influence and local universities pumping out graduates hungry for stage time, the area is a breeding ground for the next generation of British theatre. While the West End glitters, Warwickshire’s stages offer something rarer: intimacy, community, and the thrill of discovery. With festivals like the Leamington Fringe bringing experimental works and fresh talent to the fore, the future looks as vibrant as the past was storied. The social hum may have dimmed, but these young actors are blazing a new era for Warwickshire theatre—bold, skilled, and utterly captivating.
March 2025.
Yet Warwickshire’s top universities keep the talent flowing in, ensuring a deep and dynamic pool. What pulls young people to the stage? Once, it was the electric social scene. Friday nights at the Loft or Talisman buzzed like opening night—laughter and chatter spilling over as young actors mingled with veterans. Tuesdays packed the Priory bar with theatre buffs dissecting auditions, productions, and juicy gossip. I still hear Keith Higgins recounting packed houses at Coventry Theatre, Ted Whitehead spinning comedic gold, Al MacLeod Urie’s Scottish lilt painting vivid scenes, and Ernie Guthrie’s wild, hilarious tales leaving us in stitches. Those nights were a masterclass in camaraderie and craft, where you’d walk in for a pint and leave with a dozen stories. It wasn’t just about the shows—it was about the people, the laughter, the sense that you were part of something bigger.
Does today’s onstage work hold up to that past? Honestly, it outshines it. My own early efforts pale next to the skill I see now. Take Leonie Slater and Ted McGowan in the Loft’s Constellations—a tricky play weaving love and quantum theory. Their opening-night precision floored me (and I’ve seen some 400 shows). Slater’s daring vocal twists—mistiming lines on purpose, then hitting unexpected beats—oozed confidence, a flair she flashed again in Vanya. McGowan’s quiet listening anchored their chemistry, making 100 minutes feel like 10.
At the Talisman, Ben Ionoff’s chilling restraint in Never the Sinner paired flawlessly with Julian Rosa’s subtle depth. Then there’s Connor Bailey, whose effortless vibe in Present Laughter stole every scene—he’s so laid-back, you’d think he’d rather “email it in” with a beer in-hand and while watching the footie. I can’t wait for his gig in Up ‘n’ Under at the Loft this summer, even if he half-jokingly livestreams it. The talent keeps coming. Sophie Jasmin-Bird and James McCabe brought tender ease to Lovesong at the Loft, nailing the young Billy and Maggie. Over at the Priory, 16-year-old Tilly Megan’s cool nonchalance in The Addams Family nailed that American-teen “whateverism,” while Dexter Robinson’s Broadway polish lifted the show beyond its script.
Meanwhile, at the Criterion in Coventry, Swindon native Charlie Maline turned The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time into a resounding triumph, thanks to his exceptional performance. Stepping into the role at short notice after Daniel Peckett was forced to withdraw, Maline not only saved the production but elevated it to new heights. Though this was only his second time performing the role, his remarkable talent and commitment shone through, making the show the hit it became. Maline’s portrayal was a testament to his skill and professionalism, proving once again the power of a standout performance to transform a production.
Casting young actors comes with hurdles. It’s a balancing act—directors must weigh their energy and fresh perspective against their need for reliability and craft. Some are still finding their feet, others are ready to soar. The transient nature of young talent—many leave for bigger stages or non-theatre careers—means directors must constantly scout and nurture. Yet this churn keeps the scene on its toes, forcing innovation and risk-taking on new voices. Looking ahead, Warwickshire’s theatre scene seems brighter than ever.
With the RSC in Stratford as a towering influence and local universities pumping out graduates hungry for stage time, the area is a breeding ground for the next generation of British theatre. While the West End glitters, Warwickshire’s stages offer something rarer: intimacy, community, and the thrill of discovery. With festivals like the Leamington Fringe bringing experimental works and fresh talent to the fore, the future looks as vibrant as the past was storied. The social hum may have dimmed, but these young actors are blazing a new era for Warwickshire theatre—bold, skilled, and utterly captivating.
March 2025.
Coming up: Chris Gilbey-Smith on "Spring Awakening" at the Loft.
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We’re thrilled to announce our next interview! Later this month, we’ll be sitting down with director Chris Gilbey-Smith (left) as his highly anticipated production of Spring Awakening moves from the Loft’s rehearsal room to the main stage. With the show shortly entering its technical process, the creative team is seeing their vision come to life—lighting, sound, orchestra, and costumes all coming together to shape the final production.
Chris will be sharing insights on the show, the casting, the creative process, and the production itself. We’re especially excited to get to know him beyond his work on stage. Audiences may remember his performance in the excellent Mosquitoes, and before that, the equally superb Art—back when this site was just an idea! We can’t wait for this conversation with such a creative all-rounder. Stay tuned for our interview later this month, and don’t miss Spring Awakening, opening at the Loft Theatre in April. |
Award-Winning Theatre Profesional Tommy Robinson Interview
EPISODE 2 NOW AVAILABLE >>> HERE
Love, Loss, and the Multiverse:
Nick Payne's "Constellations" Shines at
the Loft Theatre, Leamington Spa
Opening Night Review: HERE
"More of a Drizzle than a Storm"
"Ladies Unleashed" is the third installment in Amanda Whittington's celebrated "Ladies Trilogy," following "Ladies' Day" and "Ladies Down Under."
By the grace of God, it will be her last.
Stuart Lawson's production for the Priory Theatre is SOLD OUT.
The theatre is now accepting requests for box-office returns. The show sold out before opening night, as is normal for the Kenilworth company.
Runs through 1st March.
READ THE REVIEW
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Shakespeare Meets Street Culture: The Electrifying Romeo and Juliet That Redefines Modern Theatre: READ >> |
The Tightrope Walk:
Navigating Intimacy in Theatre
Left: Nathan Dowling and Annabel
Pilcher work with Intimacy coordinator Dan Welsh during rehearsals for Spring Awakening at the Loft Theatre.
Intimacy. It's a word that can evoke a range of emotions in a theatrical context, from excitement and vulnerability to awkwardness and even fear. It's a crucial ingredient in storytelling, reflecting the complex tapestry of human relationships. Yet, staging intimacy presents a unique set of challenges, demanding careful consideration from actors, directors, and intimacy professionals alike.
One of the primary hurdles lies in the inherent artificiality of the stage. Actors are tasked with portraying deeply personal and often emotionally charged moments in front of an audience, sometimes with complete strangers. This requires a delicate balance of vulnerability and control, demanding a level of trust and communication that can be difficult to establish, especially within the tight timeframe of a rehearsal process. How do you create the illusion of genuine connection while simultaneously managing the technical aspects of performance?
The very definition of intimacy is subjective and culturally influenced. What one person considers a simple hug, another might perceive as an invasion of personal space. This subjectivity can create ambiguity and potential discomfort, particularly when dealing with scenes involving physical touch, simulated sex, or emotionally vulnerable moments. Clear communication and a shared understanding of boundaries are paramount, but achieving this can be complex, especially when power dynamics within the production are at play.
Historically, intimacy in theatre has often been handled haphazardly, with actors left to navigate potentially uncomfortable situations on their own. This lack of structured guidance can lead to emotional distress, boundary violations, and even lasting trauma. Thankfully, the rise of intimacy direction and coordination is changing this landscape. These trained professionals bring a crucial skillset to the table, providing a framework for safely and ethically staging intimate moments. They facilitate open communication, choreograph physical intimacy with precision and sensitivity, and ensure that everyone involved feels safe and respected.
However, the integration of intimacy professionals is not without its challenges. Their role is still relatively new, and some within the industry may be resistant to change or misunderstand the purpose of their work. There can also be budgetary constraints, limiting access to these vital services, particularly in smaller productions or educational settings.
Beyond the practical considerations, there's also the artistic challenge of integrating intimacy seamlessly into the narrative. Intimate moments should never feel gratuitous or exploitative; they must serve the story and characters in a meaningful way. This requires a collaborative approach, with actors, directors, and intimacy professionals working together to ensure that the intimacy is authentic, emotionally resonant, and contributes to the overall artistic vision.
Ultimately, navigating intimacy in theatre is a continuous learning process. It requires a commitment to open communication, mutual respect, and a willingness to embrace new approaches. By prioritizing the well-being of performers and fostering a collaborative environment, we can create theatre that is not only emotionally powerful but also ethically responsible. The tightrope walk of intimacy in theatre may be challenging, but the rewards – both artistically and humanly – are immeasurable. We commend the Loft's Artistic team for taking such a sensitive and caring approach.
SPRING AWAKENING INFO AND TICKETS HERE >>>>
NEW: Present Laughter at the Talisman Review >>>>
Award-winning Actor, Director and Teacher Tommy Robinson on Professional Acting, Drama School and London.
Award-winning Actor, Director and Teacher Tommy Robinson talks to Choppa.com's Mark Pitt. Ep.1.
Award-winning actor and director Tommy Robinson, recipient of multiple honors including The TES Teacher of the Year, began his career as a child performer with the BBC. After completing Drama School and university studies in Wales, he worked on various arts projects across the UK. Now based in London, he serves as Head of Faculty at The Chiswick School, leading a team that produces over 20 shows annually. In the first episode of this three-part series, Tommy discusses his early success, his training, and the world of London theatre. WATCH HERE
OLIVIER AWARD-WINNER NATHAN DOWLING APPEARS IN LOFT'S "SPRING AWAKENING"
It would be wise to book early for the Loft Theatre’s upcoming production of Spring Awakening. Why? Because, for the first time (as far as we know), the company has secured the talents of a Laurence Olivier Award-winning performer.
Possibly the casting coup of the decade, Nathan Dowling, who won "Best Supporting Actor in a Musical" for his role in the West End’s Jerry Springer: The Musical, will take on the lead role of Melchior—the role originally played by Jonathan Groff in the Broadway production.
The production is now in rehearsals in Leamington and will take to the Loft’s main stage in April. We also hope to bring you an exclusive interview with director Chris Gilbey-Smith sometime during the weeks leading up to the show. Opens in April at the Loft Theatre, Leamington Spa.
Pictured: Nathan Dowling. Article published February 9th 2025
Possibly the casting coup of the decade, Nathan Dowling, who won "Best Supporting Actor in a Musical" for his role in the West End’s Jerry Springer: The Musical, will take on the lead role of Melchior—the role originally played by Jonathan Groff in the Broadway production.
The production is now in rehearsals in Leamington and will take to the Loft’s main stage in April. We also hope to bring you an exclusive interview with director Chris Gilbey-Smith sometime during the weeks leading up to the show. Opens in April at the Loft Theatre, Leamington Spa.
Pictured: Nathan Dowling. Article published February 9th 2025
Come from Away, The Musical
A coup de théâtre in Kenilworth!
The Priory Theatre has announced what promises to be one of the highlights of the 2026 season. The Kenilworth company will produce "Come from Away" the musical. (Watch segment here)
Winner of Olivier and Tony Awards, Come From Away is the breathtaking musical that has captivated audiences worldwide. Set in the small town of Gander, Newfoundland, this remarkable true story unfolds in the aftermath of 9/11, when 7,000 stranded passengers found unexpected refuge, kindness, and lasting friendships.
With a soaring, folk-infused score and a fast-paced, heartfelt script, Come From Away is a celebration of humanity, resilience, and the extraordinary power of community.
“A moving, irresistible triumph!” – The Times (London)
“A feel-good factor that simply soars!” – Daily Telegraph
“A celebration of hope and generosity.” – The New York Times
“You leave the theatre full of hope!” – Time Out Article published February 9th 2025
Article published February 8th 2025
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NEXT UP...
The Talisman Theatre's production of Noel Coward's "Present Laughter" opens next week.
Vanessa Comer directs a cast led by Phil Reynolds. A sparkling comedy by Noël Coward that follows the charming yet self-absorbed actor Garry Essendine as he navigates the chaos of fame, flattery, and romantic entanglements. As he prepares for a theatrical tour, his London flat becomes a whirlwind of admirers, ex-lovers, and eccentric visitors, all vying for his attention. With Coward’s signature wit and sharp dialogue, this delightful play explores vanity, turning forty, and the absurdity of show business, delivering both laughter and insight into the theatrical world. CAST: Phil Reynolds, Alexandra Newman, Kathy Buckingham-Underhill, Connor Bailey, Aoife O’Gorman,Rosie Gowers,Adam Turner, Simon Truscott, Graham Buckingham-Underhill, Ruth Linnett, Ruth Jones. BOOK HERE. |
Pay to Play?
The Ethical Dilemma of Amateur Theatre?
Performers asked to Pay up to £500 to Appear in Amateur Musical.
"Do you hear the people PAY, paying the price to play again?"
Reports have surfaced that a regional amateur theatre company has allegedly charged prospective actors an audition fee for an upcoming production. The recent release of non-professional rights for Les Misérables has sparked a wave of productions across the country. Closer to home, a Midlands company is set to stage the show at Birmingham’s Alexandra Theatre this summer. But charging people to audition?
Amateur theatre is built on passion, goodwill, and voluntary commitment. Asking hopeful performers to pay for the chance to audition is not only ethically questionable but arguably indefensible. It is unacceptable to demand payment from actors who will then contribute their time and talent for free. Meanwhile, ticket sales for the production are expected to be substantial. According to ATG Tickets, top-price seats are listed at £77, with most tickets selling at around £50 (including fees).
But the controversy doesn’t end there. Reports suggest that participants were required to pay “participation fees” ranging from £250 to £500, depending on their affiliation with BMOS and its partner groups. Not only is this a PR disaster for the production, but it undermines the very ethos of amateur theatre. The company isn’t just profiting from ticket sales; they are also generating thousands of pounds from the very people performing in the show.
Amateur or For-Profit?
So, is the Birmingham and Midlands Operatic Society a charity—or a business? Naturally, the company will argue that staging a production of this scale involves significant costs, including venue hire, professional fees for the director and orchestra, and other expenses. However, our AI model, which estimates revenue by calculating average ticket price against total performances, suggests the production could gross approximately £350,000 over its run.
While it’s unlikely that an amateur company will sell out the 1,300-seat Alexandra Theatre for every performance, a strong turnout is expected. But with top ticket prices exceeding £70 (plus fees), the question remains: are audiences willing to pay West End prices for a non-professional production?
A Case of Ego Over Ethics?
Why is this production being staged in such a large and costly venue? Why are performers being charged hundreds of pounds just for the experience of taking part? This practice exploits both the art form and the performers’ aspirations. Many amateur actors dream of emulating professional productions, but this is not a professional show. Most of the cast will return to their day jobs the morning after a performance. Many will spend their own money on travel, rehearsals, and other commitments—on top of the participation fee.
Of course, some will willingly pay for their moment in the spotlight. But for an amateur theatre company to profit from its own performers, rather than simply covering costs, undermines the fundamental spirit of non-professional theatre.
Personally, I won’t be attending this production.
UPDATE: Several comments have been received. Auditionees have complained that two members of the audition panel were then cast in leading roles themselves. So, not such as "Open Audition" after all. Were certain roles precast? As one performer put it, this is a "P-s Take."
We contacted BMOS for comment.
Sources: BMOS Website. ATG tickets, The Alexandra Theatre
Article published February 5th 2025
Amateur theatre is built on passion, goodwill, and voluntary commitment. Asking hopeful performers to pay for the chance to audition is not only ethically questionable but arguably indefensible. It is unacceptable to demand payment from actors who will then contribute their time and talent for free. Meanwhile, ticket sales for the production are expected to be substantial. According to ATG Tickets, top-price seats are listed at £77, with most tickets selling at around £50 (including fees).
But the controversy doesn’t end there. Reports suggest that participants were required to pay “participation fees” ranging from £250 to £500, depending on their affiliation with BMOS and its partner groups. Not only is this a PR disaster for the production, but it undermines the very ethos of amateur theatre. The company isn’t just profiting from ticket sales; they are also generating thousands of pounds from the very people performing in the show.
Amateur or For-Profit?
So, is the Birmingham and Midlands Operatic Society a charity—or a business? Naturally, the company will argue that staging a production of this scale involves significant costs, including venue hire, professional fees for the director and orchestra, and other expenses. However, our AI model, which estimates revenue by calculating average ticket price against total performances, suggests the production could gross approximately £350,000 over its run.
While it’s unlikely that an amateur company will sell out the 1,300-seat Alexandra Theatre for every performance, a strong turnout is expected. But with top ticket prices exceeding £70 (plus fees), the question remains: are audiences willing to pay West End prices for a non-professional production?
A Case of Ego Over Ethics?
Why is this production being staged in such a large and costly venue? Why are performers being charged hundreds of pounds just for the experience of taking part? This practice exploits both the art form and the performers’ aspirations. Many amateur actors dream of emulating professional productions, but this is not a professional show. Most of the cast will return to their day jobs the morning after a performance. Many will spend their own money on travel, rehearsals, and other commitments—on top of the participation fee.
Of course, some will willingly pay for their moment in the spotlight. But for an amateur theatre company to profit from its own performers, rather than simply covering costs, undermines the fundamental spirit of non-professional theatre.
Personally, I won’t be attending this production.
UPDATE: Several comments have been received. Auditionees have complained that two members of the audition panel were then cast in leading roles themselves. So, not such as "Open Audition" after all. Were certain roles precast? As one performer put it, this is a "P-s Take."
We contacted BMOS for comment.
Sources: BMOS Website. ATG tickets, The Alexandra Theatre
Article published February 5th 2025
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Reviewed on Opening Night: READ HERE Priory Announces 39 Steps Cast
John Evans' production of this West End hit has been fully cast. Leading the ensemble are Nicky Main and Ben Wellicome (Loft's Sublime Sondheim), joined by Becky Young (Loft's Glorious) and Rob Jones. The show is set to open on 16th May. Early booking is advised.
Loft's "Up n Under" Cast AnnouncedThe Loft Theatre has announced its cast for the early Summer production of John Godber's "Up n Under." The show, which is being directed by Lorna Middleton (Lovesong), will feature Loft regulars Mark Roberts (Vanya, Medea) and Connor Bailey (The Talisman's Present Laughter.) Rosie Pankhurst (Vanya, Media, Spring Awakening) continues her busy season as Hazel Scott. WATCH this space as we interview actor Connor Bailey in the Spring.
Next up...
The Criterion Theatre Coventry has recast the leading role of Christopher in its forthcoming production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. Actor Daniel Peckett has been withdrawn from the show due to personal reasons. Charlie Maline will now play Christopher, in the product that opens February 1st.
STATUS - The production is now booking |
To Pre-Cast, or Not?
It's a question for every director, and everyone has an opinion on it. Do theatres pre-cast shows or not? Dive in, read and send in your opinion - anonymously or not. Read the article here. Also in February...
Phil Reynolds stars as Noel Coward's matinee idol Garry Essendine in the Talisman Theatre's new production. The show is directed by Vanessa Comer and opens on February 10th. Book here. CAST: Phil Reynolds, Alexandra Newman, Kathy Buckingham-Underhill, Connor Bailey, Aoife O’Gorman,Rosie Gowers,Adam Turner, Simon Truscott, Graham Buckingham-Underhill, Ruth Linnett, Ruth Jones |
Actor Dave Crossfield
Full Interview Here |
ABOUT THE PODCAST: Mark Pitt discusses his criteria for a successful theatrical production. He prioritizes a seamless, immersive experience that fully engages the audience in the story, regardless of the production's scale or the actors' training. Pitt emphasizes the importance of the narrative and emotional impact over technical perfection or acting style, arguing that a good production transcends the artificiality of the stage, leaving a lasting impression on the viewer. He uses examples of both excellent and poor productions to illustrate his points, ultimately advocating for a focus on the story's effectiveness and emotional resonance. Ultimately, his goal is to promote appreciation for local theatrical talent.
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