“This strip of saltmarsh, not quite the land, not quite the sea”: the wet, uncompromising North Norfolk coastline forms the setting for Jeremy Page’s 2008 novel Salt, newly adapted for the stage by Robin McLoughlin, who also stars in fEast’s touring production as the charismatic Kipper, a mysterious, defensive man with a fascination for chemistry,…
One of the best things about Shakespeare is his endless capacity to surprise you. This is partly because he simply wrote so much: they may be more than four centuries old, but his plays still have the capacity to hit us afresh – particularly if, like Measure for Measure, they lurk quietly amidst his collected…
“In the lands of the North where the black rocks stand guard against the cold sea, in the dark night that is very long, the men of the Northlands sit by their great log fire and they tell a tale…” Peter Firmin looked at the 12th-century Lewis Chessmen in the British Museum, and saw Nogs:…
On a clean, largely clear stage, dotted with a few barrels and benches, a tidy vegetable stand to one side and a pub sign, The Four Bears, to the other, a stormy sky lours menacingly at us, cradling a high, full moon at its corner. Cambridge University Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s Ruddigore starts as it…
We tend to think of Victorian society as morally strict, judgemental, and socially tense: and Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore, while confirming all the above, savagely pokes fun at Victorian ideals of social and moral perfection, pushing stereotypes to extremes in order to satirise the question of private and public goodness from all sorts of different…
“Feminism is like the hoovering: you just have to keep doing it,” once said Liz Lochhead, former Makar (poet laureate) of Scotland; and Lochhead has been true to her word, with a distinguished literary career often featuring feminist icons: Medea, Mary Queen of Scots, and here Mary Godwin, daughter of pioneering thinker Mary Wollstonecraft (author of A…
Giant snores reverberate across Westacre Theatre’s wide stage as we settle down for Andy Naylor’s bespoke adaptation of The Selfish Giant, Oscar Wilde’s heartfelt fairytale about selfishness, loneliness and love. Through a translucent screen showing a projection of the Giant’s castle, we can just catch tantalising glimpses of his beautiful garden beyond as the story…
The Fisher Theatre has developed an enviable reputation over the last few years for putting on an excellent pantomime at Christmas, and I’ve seen tired London theatregoers light up when describing brilliance found in Bungay, but until now all that has been the work of visiting professional theatre companies. This year, building on the strength…
A Christmas Carol, Dickens’ 24-hour tour into the mind of a damaged, embittered and miserly soul who is on the brink of total isolation, but whose spirit is revived by the cosmic intervention of four ghosts one fateful Christmas Eve, has become part of our national Christmas psyche. Transmuted into countless adaptations on film and…
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is a children’s novel, rather than a play: accordingly, the Maddermarket’s Christmas staging, using an adaptation of Joan Aiken’s book by Russ Tunney, keeps our mind firmly on the physicality of the original book, with a huge open volume taking centre stage at all times. Some characters literally emerge from…