The Beauty Queen of Leenane: theatre at its best

Martin McDonagh’s dark, comic thriller set in 1990 Galway, Ireland, follows great success in the West End and Off-Broadway to appear in a new guise at Hull Truck Theatre, directed by Mark Babych. Tony Award-winning The Beauty Queen of Leenane is an exhilarating character study of 40-year-old Maureen Folan (Siobhan O’Kelly) and her 70-year-old mother Mag (Maggie McCarthy). 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

His Perfect Wife by Natasha Bell: the uncomfortable space between life and self

Alexandra and Marc Southwood have everything. A beautiful home in York, England, comfortable jobs, two children and a neat handful of married friends. That is, until Alexandra fails to show up to work one morning and becomes the missing piece that makes this perfect suburban puzzle fall apart. 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

An Inspector Calls: Do socialists dream of electric bombs?

Blitz sirens and torches usher the buzzing anticipation surrounding J. B. Priestley’s widely-studied classic thriller into focus on a small boy searching for a hiding place. From playing friends, or coming bombs, he tugs at soupy red velvet curtains and sneaks between the folds. Continue reading

Monogamy: A Portrait of the Grand and the Delicate

York Theatre Royal’s proscenium arch becomes a cross-section of TV chef Caroline’s (the West End’s Janie Dee) show-home kitchen: a faux-Swedish minimalist Pinterest fantasy of muted teal glossy tiles and pine with a modest botanic garnish and a family dinner table modest enough to tell an on-screen story that will resonate with the wider audience. But it doesn’t take long to make a mess on these counters. Continue reading

Dress for strong currents and wade into The River

Director Andy Love of Wildgoose Theatre continues his vein of delivering hitherto unseen plays to York with this sumptuous psychological drama by Jez Butterworth, set in a log cabin near a river, somewhere in modern England. The specifics of their surroundings are white noise, while the minutia of the dialogue is honed to a piercing point. Poetry and illustrious speeches furnish what appears to be a confident, if burgeoning, dynamic between The Man (George Stagnell) and The Woman (Claire Morley). These are people at home with each other, themselves and the outdoors. Continue reading