Beauty and the Beast (A horny romance)

Thursday 4th December 2025

Press night with Iain. 

Oh my days, absolutely marvelous: filthy, hilarious and sweetly endearing. There ain't nothing like this dame. What a star. 

How sad that it's behind me. Would I go again? Oh yes I would! 

Playing Burton

Tuesday 18 November 2025

Matthew Rhys was spell-binding. The Burton voice is near impossible but Matthew Rhys had it. That, plus the lighting, coupled with his cheek bones, at moments I thought I was watching the man himself up there, reading his own obituaries. 

Beautiful, engaging, respectful, caring writing painted a moving picture of flawed, troubled genius, who died too young. A story that plays out over and over, from generation to generation: Dylan Thomas, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Burton, Winehouse. Heart-breaking.

Cinderella

Thursday 6 November 2025

November too early for a panto? Oh no it isn't. Oh yes it is. 

Can't claim to have been feeling too festive. Nonetheless, nice to spend a couple of hours supporting friends and the local village hall. A surprising and impressive elephant somehow made its way into the script. I'd be supposed if it didn't also find its way onto next year's panto.

Mrs Warren's Profession

Wednesday 23 July, 2025

Exploring gender roles, the class struggle, mother-daughter relationships and societal hypocrisy, this should still be superbly relevant. Starring Imelda Staunton and Robert Glenister, this should have been exciting and well-acted. I found it too shouty (particularly between mother and real-life daughter) to be considered good and too obvious to be enjoyable. Kate disagreed on both points though so and so did most of the reviews so ... 

The Comedy About Spies

Saturday 5th July 2025

No Brian, as he was back at Fron with Nita, after her mid-week fall. Hence Subs and I saw Echo after dinner for two on Thursday and Hans, Clare and I saw this hilarious matinee after a delicious lunch for 3 at Dishoom. (I limped there with what turned out to be the start of plantar fasciitis.)

The opening scene is one of the funniest things I've witnessed and the whole thing was brilliant which is why (writing this in March 2026), B and I are booked to see it this year!

Echo

Thursday 3rd July 2025

My first Royal Court experience. I would have thought it was interesting and experimental, except that it was another play where the actor hasn't read the script and is instructed in real time by the playwright. In this case, the playwright (Nassim Soleimanpour) was on video from his home in Berlin, where we saw the real rug, his wife and his dog. The actor was Milly Alcock, I believe, one of the few I hadn't heard of in a stellar cast. It would be mean to say we got the short straw but Toby Jones, Fiona Shaw, Adrian Leicester, Jodie Whittaker were amongst the possibilities.

This was more successful than the oak tree but still, for me, limited in its impact (so much so that, writing this - March 2026 - much later than I should have, I had to google it up before I could recall anything about it). 

There was the Persian rug - more valuable the more it is walked on - and reflections on what it is to be a migrant, particularly one that may never be able to return home (to Iran, in this case). Nassim was warm and enigmatic and his interactions with his wife were sweet, but I'm not quite sure what the "play" was, whether another actor is needed or whether this was just a talk or documentary hiding as theatre.  

An Oak Tree

Wednesday 7 May 2025

What sounded fascinating - a play where the actor has never seen a script or a performance and learns what has happened from an onstage prompt at the same time as the audience - was ... interesting but not compelling. 

A grieving father visits an oak tree that he thinks is his dead daughter, who perished in a car accident. The man that killed his daughter is a stage hypnotist and the two meet when the grieving father volunteers to go on stage. The writer plays the hypnotist, a different actor plays the grieving father (parent) each night. Interesting idea? Yes. Bold idea? Hmm, may be. Hubris? Certainly.  

What might have been a gut-wrenchingly emotional play is stripped of emotion and resonance by stylistic folly. The actor is forced to lurch from one scene to another, to react, not act, while the forward momentum and audience attention is constantly interrupted by "director/actor" conversations that jerk the audience out of the play and into the theatre. The watcher is forcefully and repeatedly made to confront the fact that they are watching a dubiously-successful, experimental play. 

The Score

Wednesday 9 April 2025

Brian Cox played JS Bach and his wife, his wife. (That's Nicole Ansari-Cox.)

They (luckily perhaps!) had great chemistry on stage and a convincing love and affection.  Frederick the Great (Stephen Hagan) is no less diabolical for being played with great comic flair. Still a powerful tale of tyranny in war, a theme that resonates in every conflict. 

The reviews were mixed but I thought this rather fine.