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…
It is a strange and fascinating inversion of life by art that, as Oscar Wilde’s own life unravelled towards its final, dark ruin, his dramas became ever lighter and funnier. An Ideal Husband is only capped by The Importance of Being Earnest for glittering wit, engaging humour, and a brilliantly twisting plot which holds our…
A sense of real excitement surrounded the revival (and UK premiere) of Franz von Suppé’s A Trip to Africa at the Maddermarket Theatre, the culmination of several years of work by conductor Dario Salvi, who found and meticulously researched and restored the score and libretto with his wife Hannah after a 94-year performance hiatus. There…
Any great opera experience is, to some extent, a process of discovery. Whether I find myself reimagining a familiar piece thanks to incisive direction, noticing an aria afresh due to some exceptional singing, or quite simply getting my head around a completely new work at Tête à Tête or Grimeborn, it’s always what I learned…