Grief. How to deal with it. How to cope when you have lost a beloved one. That difficult subject has been turned on its head in the MTC production of Meet Me at Dawn. British playwright Zinnie Harris has written an intriguing mystery, in which clarity is sought, but not readily provided … deliberately. Even though the truth…
Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810 – 1891) was the master of smoke and mirrors; the ultimate flimflam man. Although often down on his luck and short of money, he always managed to find a way out. That had something to do with his vivid imagination and a lot more to do with his grounded wife, Charity….
I wept tears of joy watching Ron Howard’s stellar documentary charting the life of one of the greatest operatic tenors to have blessed the planet. Including never before publicly seen photos and footage, Pavarotti is insightful and compelling. The music icon sold more than 100 million records in his lifetime. Dubbed “The People’s Tenor”, Pavarotti…
Mad. In a good way. That’s how I’d describe Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All by Jonas Jonasson, author of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden. Here’s the blurb: It’s never too late to start again. And again. It’s always awkward…
A crucible is a vessel in which substances are heated to high temperatures; when impure elements are melted away, only the pure parts remain. Metaphorically speaking, it therefore represents the perfect titular description for American playwright Arthur Miller’s award-winning classic The Crucible, a play which was itself written as an extended metaphor of the hysteria…
In 1613 William Shakespeare (played in All is True by Kenneth Branagh) was the most famous writer in England. But then his beloved Globe Theatre burned to the ground during a performance of his final play Henry VIII after a prop misfired. Shakespeare retired following that disaster and returned home to Stratford-upon-Avon. There he pottered…
A man mistreats a woman in a relationship – emotionally or physically, or both. The warning signs are there, so why doesn’t the woman leave? Why doesn’t she get out at the first sign of a red flag? If only, it was that simple. Truth be told, expressing regret, saying they will be better, that…
Noel Coward, at the age of 25, wrote and starred in The Vortex, opening in December in 1924, which settled into a long London run. Sheridan Morley tells us in his biography of Noel Coward, A Talent to Amuse: On the principle that success breeds other successes, once The Vortex was an established hit both…
Sixty-five minutes of glorious mayhem. That is what you get with this extraordinarily detailed production. It is set against the sprawling layout of a full house – broken into five rooms – a major video screen as a backdrop and two smaller TVs, stage left and right. The cast does a mighty job with the material, which…
What an uplifting experience Hour of the Wolf is. It is 65 minutes of intriguing, immersive theatre that sees 12 characters interacting across a dozen rooms, arranged as a labyrinth within the Merlyn Theatre and dock. Patrons can choose to wander from room to room at will, follow one or more performers, or a combination thereof. We…
