Here’s What She Said To Me: What do we pass on?

Utopia Theatre, a leading voice for African Theatre in the UK, presents Here’s What She Said To Me, a powerful piece of storytelling drama that follows three generations of proud African women connecting with each other across two continents, across time and space. Written by Oladipo Agbolaje and directed by Mojisola Elufowoju, this moving show demonstrates a rich cultural heritage and consciousness. Continue reading

Hello and Goodbye: “When the time comes…”

Marking the return of in-house productions to the Studio, York Theatre Royal Associate Artist John R. Wilkinson – Genesis Future Director Award 2018 (Young Vic) – directs internationally acclaimed playwright Athol Fugard’s deceptively simple domestic drama Hello and Goodbye. Continue reading

When The Rain Stops Falling: inherited tragedies

A York premiere and launch production for new theatre company Rigmarole, Andrew Bovell’s award-winning 2008 play When the Rain Stops Falling addresses the most important issue of our times: “Are we prepared to pass on the damage from the past to our children?” Continue reading

Under Three Moons: models for male friendship

“I bet when they get older they’re going to look back on tonight and say, that was a night that was, by that fire, that was a night.” Spanning half a lifetime, Daniel Kanaber’s new play Under Three Moons takes place on three nights across three decades of two friends’ lives. Through the lense of a friendship through multiple comings of age, this succinct fringe script explores how men relate to each other today. From a school trip to France as teenagers, to a surf shack in their twenties, to Christmas in their thirties, Mike and Paul meet up and talk into the night. From boyhood to manhood to fatherhood, these are the nights they share. Continue reading

A View From The Bridge: “How dark the room became when he looked at me”

Directed by Juliet Forster (Romeo & Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre; Sense and Sensibility for Theatre by the Lake), Arthur Miller’s potboiler case study of commuco-production between York Theatre Royal and Royal & Derngate Northampton. Continue reading

The Night Watch: our quietest battles

Adapted by Hattie Naylor and directed by Alastair Whatley, The Night Watch is a fairly faithful adaptation of Sarah Waters’ World War II domestic romance novel, co-produced by York Theatre Royal and Original Theatre Company. Continue reading

Sh!t-faced Shakespeare® – Macbeth: classics for the disenfranchised

Sh!tfaced Shakespeare is exactly as billed; classically trained actors performing a serious Shakespeare play, while one of them is seriously drunk. “With one cast member selected at random and given four hours to drink before every show, we present to you classical theatre as it was always meant to be seen.” With a firm belief in making the Bard accessible again after centuries of dry, stiff performances, Magnificent Bastard Productions proudly delight in resurrecting the hen-night-stag-do chaos inherent in some of the plays’ dirtier passages. Continue reading

Bad Girls The Musical: appropriately disturbing

Set in a British women’s prison, Maureen Chadwick and Ann McManus’ now-thirteen-year-old musical adaptation of their own ITV series returns to York, this time storming the stage at John Cooper Studio on Monkgate, presented with jubilation by local amateur production company NE Musicals. Continue reading

Hamlet at Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre: One may smile, and smile, and be a villain

We all know this solemn tale of revenge guest starring the skull of “Poor Yorick” back to front, right? And yet somehow, the production team behind Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre manage to bring fresh mischief and flair to the most quoted and studied play ever written. It’s so easy to misread Hamlet as a dry, drawn tale of woe and dwelling, to stuff these clever “words, words, words” into a dusty artefact in your mind’s eye and leave them there for academics to fuss over. But that would be doing yourself, and the play, a great disservice. Continue reading