Calendar Girls was a real hoot when it came out as a movie featuring Helen Mirren and Julie Walters in 2003. I wish I could say the same about the play I saw at the Athenaeum Theatre – but in all good conscience I can’t. Tim Firth adapted the script from his hit film, which…
Death becomes her. That’s a rather facetious reference to what kicks off the key character’s journey in this dramatic sci-fi horror – a re-imagining of the 1990 film of the same name. Five medical students are obsessed by the mystery of what lies beyond the confines of life. They decide to undertake a daring and…
Heal the Living is a French art house drama with decidedly European sensibilities dealing with the touchy subject of organ donation. It is actually three stories in one, based on a novel by Maylis de Kerangal. Three young surfers leave before dawn on a pilgrimage to the raging sea. They are on their way back home when…
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical is a showcase of all that is great about musical theatre. The music is outstanding – hit after glorious hit – with superb voices to match. The story is beautifully crafted, with plenty of humour, heart and pathos. The staging is colourful, the set changes frequent and seamless, and the pacing…
The Dancer is an unusual story about achievement, heartbreak and pain. This period film concerns a dancer who rewrote the rule book. Born in the American Midwest, nothing in her background destined farm girl Loïe Fuller (Soko) to become the toast of Europe’s Belle Epoque cabarets. But – hidden behind metres of silk, her arms…
The animated Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie is the first feature film based on the popular series of children’s’ books. Written and illustrated by Dav Pilkey, the series has sold over 70 million copies worldwide. It centres around George Beard (voiced by Kevin Hart) and Harold Hutchins (Thomas Middleditch). They’re best friends and overly…
In 1973, former Wimbledon champion Bobby Riggs played women’s champion Billie Jean King in a spectacular tennis match – dubbed the Battle of the Sexes – at the Houston Astrodome. Riggs was also a serial tennis hustler, gambling addict and sexist braggart. It proved a landmark that ultimately had repercussions for the status of women’s tennis and…
Slapstick humour abounds in MTC’s revival of Noel Coward’s outrageous comedy Hay Fever. Set in an English country house in the 1920s, the play deals with the four eccentric members of the Bliss family and their outlandish behaviour. Each invites a guest to spend the weekend, without initially telling the others. Sorel (Imogen Sage) and…
In the mid to late 70s, Neil Young had a particularly productive period in his songwriting, it was shortly after the release of the grief-ridden Tonight’s the Night, and Zuma, which featured “Cortez, the Killer,” and his too brief exploration with Stephen Stills that produced one album, Long May You Run. David Briggs, often Young’s…
As a long-time fan of Kate Forsyth, I was thrilled to received an ARC of her new novel, Beauty in Thorns. This passionate and compassionate re-imagining of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale is centred on the Pre-Raphaelite artists and poets in England, and sweeps readers up into their lives, loves, losses, desires and dreams. This is how the…
