In his first ever UK tour, Fane Productions and Kilimanjaro present an evening with the bestselling, much-loved author and LGBTQ+ activist, Armistead Maupin. Continue reading
We do not always want to exorcise our ghosts. Not all our ghosts frighten us. Some ghosts are our angels, our protectors, too much of a comfort for us to let them go. In this, too, lies their frightening potential. This is the quiet tragedy of Mira (Lachele Carl), the elderly protagonist of Eve Leigh’s play The Trick. Continue reading
Malorie Blackman’s widely taught and celebrated is brought to the stage by a plethora of theatre companies; York Theatre Royal, Pilot Theatre, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, Derby Theatre and Mercury Theatre Colchester co-produce this evocative theatrical adaptation by Sabrina Mahfouz, directed by Esther Richardson. Continue reading
“I’ve got two dads. One’s black, so that makes me black, so I’m told.” It is with these words that David Judge begins SparkPlug, his semi-autobiographical account of growing up as a mixed-race child in the eighties and nineties. For the most part, he plays his father (also called Dave), examining his own childhood through the eyes of a white man, married to a white woman, who is giving birth to a child fathered by a black man. Continue reading
In the black box studio tucked away under the stairs at York Theatre Royal, Arthur and Jane are already waiting for the audience to arrive, lolling on the sofa and quietly laughing at inside jokes. Written by Matthew Seagar and directed by Paul Brotherstone, In Other Words is achingly familiar. The play combines the little-understood late effects of Alzheimer’s disease with flashbacks to forgetting the milk and dancing in the living room. Memories and reality blend together for Arthur (Seagar) and Jane (Angela Hardie) through shifting light and fluid physicality as they narrate and reflect on their love story together. The pair bring this powerful story to life with precision and heart. Continue reading
It is usually easy to impose your own zeitgeist onto a piece of live theatre, because there is so much ambiguity – so many variables for each viewer to interpret however they wish. It is a struggle to forage the attraction of adapting Graham Greene’s noir thriller, which now seems largely irrelevant, but Bryony Lavery is enough of a draw to intrigue those who have or haven’t read the original novel. Continue reading