There’s no escaping destiny, as a horrified Flora learns when the ‘fat pig from the north’ soon bounds onto the stage to claim his bride. The
Pig is, of course, a prince who has been cursed and Flora quickly falls in love. She is determined to break the spell and release her prince
from his muddy sty.

The Enchanted Pig follows a predictable path, including all the required elements for a fairytale: love, misery and magic, but this is not to its detriment: children love stories to follow the rules and any festive show needs a happy ending.

The energy of the music (by Jonathan Dove) and comedy in the lyrics (by Alasdair Middleton) certainly held the attention of both children and adults in the audience. The small theatre gives the show an intimate atmosphere and actors interact with audience to hilarious effect. Suitable for families and children over the age of seven, The Enchanted Pig makes a great alternative to a traditional pantomime.

By Lucy Dixon
Buy Tickets

When Rapunzel (Edith Tankus) meets her Patrizio (played by a Bertie Wooster-esque Pieter Lawman), there’s is no coy courting. Within moments they are bumping and grinding up a tree to the toe tapping beat of a live funk band. Kneehigh’s irreverent approach continues when an overly soppy scene descends into Cat Stevens lyrics and the Prince’s evil brother is held up by a sheep with a gun. Mike Shepherd’s Mother Gotherl is suitably maniacal in Westwood’s bold floral prints and a series of mad Marie Antoinette wigs.

Rice makes great use of puppetry and inventive staging and there’s enough to keep children engaged. But after two hours and twenty minutes, the audience were starting to flag. It’s as though they have flung in every conceivable trick and effect to ‘liven up’ the show for the young audience but the result is a dragging plot.

The energy, humour and visual gags of previous Kneehigh productions -Wagstaffe, Nights at the Circus and Red Shoes - appealed to children as they were. All the glitter balls, bubbles, and cabaret of Rapunzel just prolong the panto. With buckets of style but dragging substance, Kneehigh have underestimated their audience.

By Helen Russell
Buy Tickets

The original 4 hour opera has been squeezed, reduced and reinvented as a 3 hour musical. What were once powerful operatic numbers have become ordinary. At times, the action is pushed forwards too quickly. It seems as though Bess has only just arrived before Porgy is blurting out ‘Bess, you is my woman’.

The shining light in this production is OT Fagbenle as the devious Sportin’ Life. His slick delivery of ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’ mixed with deliciously smooth choreography is superb. Bess’ far too sudden and unmotivated descent into her old ways can almost be forgiven after his seduction with ‘There’s a boat dat’s leaving for New York’.

This works well enough, but there is not enough spectacle. It’s become a melancholy musical but it is missing the big emotional numbers that draw the audience in. Worth a visit for the good performances and to try and fathom why Trevor Nunn decided to work this reinvention, which is sadly a demotion from its original glory.

By Stephanie Payne
Buy Tickets

The ‘plot’ is the tale of King Arthur’s (Tim Curry) quest for the Holy Grail. The Grail turns out to be a metaphor for inner happiness, and the quest somehow turns out to be the staging of a West End musical. But enough of that. The whole point is to re-hash the songs, scenes and jokes from the Grail films and cram in as many other Python moments as possible. Most of the great moments from the films are here – the Knights of Ni, the Killer Rabbit and the re-surfacing of Life of Brian’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. Idle has gambled on the huge affection for the characters and jokes created by the Python team - and it pays off.

The newer songs and jokes aren’t nearly as funny as the originals, and some of the laughs feel like the sentimental chuckles that arise when watching a nostalgic ‘top 50′ programme on a Sunday night. Tim Curry is a decidedly louche King Arthur and seems to lack energy - perhaps because he is reprising his role from Broadway.

But the supporting cast are excellent and of special note are the knights who raise the energy levels of the show while essentially impersonating the Pythons. Hannah Waddingham as the Lady of the Lake stands out as brilliant. Not only a great singer, she perfectly lampoons divas like Mariah Carey, forever singing fifty notes where one would do.

The dance routines are fast and funny, and scenes from the film, such as when Arthur cuts off the limbs of the ferocious Black Knight, have been brilliantly transferred onto the stage. So sit back and enjoy an educational evening with the production that explores the reality and significance of the early Anglo-Saxon period. With Scandinavian fish slapping.

By Zoe Grainge
Buy Tickets

The character of Jim Tyrone is based on O’Neill’s brother, who died from alcoholism at the age of 45. The play was written partly in tribute,
and partly as an act of absolution for the brother who died unable to forgive himself for the damage he had inflicted upon his family. Despite an
undercurrent of emotional tension, the mood is buoyant. Josie and Hogan fling good-natured insults at each other and there is enjoyable interplay between the two and Tyrone as they indulge in mock-bullying of a haughty neighbour.

The gentle comedy of the production’s first half serves to ease the audience into the emotionally charged scenes to follow. In a poignant and immenselypowerful two-hander between Josie and Tyrone, emotions reach a turbulent climax and there is a urgent sense of Tyrone’s desperation to exorcise his demons. O’Neill’s struggle to come to terms with his brother’s destructive behaviour is reflected in Josie’s battle to deal with
the ’sins’ of the man she loves.

A Moon for the Misbegotten is unquestionably a remarkable play that delivers a captivating blend of humour, violence, tenderness, tragedy and redemption. But it is the thoroughly superb performances of the cast that make this production a must-see. The tangible chemistry between
Spacey and Best makes their scenes together utterly engaging. Best handles a broad spectrum of emotional states with expertise and is enchanting. Spacey is fantastic; delivering humorous lines with the sort of deliciousness we’ve come to expect from him, while also commanding a hugely powerful portrayal of a man consumed with rage and sadness. Simply not to be missed.

By Kirsty Brown
Buy Tickets

Niki Flaks’ highly energetic production opens with a barrage of laughter. The merriment continues until the interval but never do we gain a real sense of the unsettlement of the three sisters and their claustrophic situation. Keeping energy levels so high throughout, prevents the natural ebb and flow of action, energy and pace and so stops the crucial moments of the play having any real impact.

Flacks commands some fine performances, notably from George Sweeney’s Chebutykin, a character resigned to his lost hopes and dreams, and Ranjit Krishnanma’s heartbreaking Kulygin, devoted to his unfaithful wife. Their small moments of stillness and quiet are so satisfying that it is frustrating that the audience is given so little time to take them in. Instead they are moved on, sucked up in a whirlwind of energy and high-emotion that drives this production.

The sparse set uses furniture to create a sense of the space rather than to dress it, and costumes nod towards the period through corduroy and long skirts: everything is contrived merely to hint at rather than create a world. But with actors and director busily exploring and experimenting, the audience never receives a rich and substantial production, full of the depth and range of emotions that are so prevalent in Chekhov’s work.

By Ailsa Ilott

The young, music-made Sunny (played by Dwayne Wint) falls for Rose (Camilla Beeput), and their subsequent relationship fuels hostility between an ancient family feud, and ex-Eastender Michelle Collins plays a brilliantly brassy, hard-as-nails, Ma Baker.

But Daddy Cool is less about plot and characters, and more about the sheer energy of Boney M’s original music. Many numbers originally written in the 70s and 80s have been re-interpreted but Rivers of Babylone, Brown Girl In the Ring, and One Way Ticket are all here - rattled off with gusto.

Inevitably, the audience are hauled to their feet for a dance, and even if Rivers of Babylon is repeated one too many times at the close, Daddy
Cool can be forgiven for being a rollicking good show. My advice is to catch it on a miserable winter afternoon: you won’t stay glum for long.

By Lucia Cockcroft
Buy Tickets

Viv’s unpredictable, and often uncontrollable, behaviour becomes less endearing to her conservative husband, and he conspires with her family to have her committed. Once she is in an asylum, Tom never visits and files separation papers from America.

Posner’s sparse production could have been cold and unforgiving. But instead it draws the audience towards the protagonists and solicits an empathy with Viv’s unjust treatment. The supporting characters take turns at narration, marking the passage of time from when the couple marry in 1915 to Viv’s death in 1947.

Much hinges on the central performances, and Frances O’Connor reveals glimpses of terrifying hyperactivity without ever resorting to the carpet-chewing clichés of madness. Viv is a snob and an adulteress, yet O’Connor
sympathetically creates a woman in desperate need of understanding.

Viv is a social embarrassment to her husband and family, and Will Keen – seen recently in The Changling at the Barbican – portrays Eliot as
repressed and utterly ill-equipped emotionally to deal with his wife. If there is a problem with the play, it is that it is hard to see what Viv finds attractive in Tom, but Hastings’ excellent script tells us she wanted ‘something for herself’ that her family could not take away.

The play is tragic without being a tragedy, and shows us the staggering ignorance of mental illness. The bitter irony of Viv’s late diagnosis is a deft touch worthy of Chekhov.

By Zoe Grainge
Buy Tickets

A Voyage Round My Father was made into a radio play as early as 1963, before Alec Guinness made the part his own in the West End in 1971 and Laurence Olivier was given a crack at it for television in 1982. After a well deserved rest, the Father was resurrected by Sharrock’s production at the Donmar in June with Derek Jacobi at the helm.

Jacobi is unsentimental as the old boy, straight as a ramrod, mixing his cross-examination in the divorce court with cross-examining at home. Incorrigible and unmoveable, Jacobi’s Father is a fiercely independent creature made up of twitches and clenched irritability.

He is well supported by Christopher Benjamin’s beautifully pompous Headmaster, who imparts lessons on the perils of ‘dreams’, the merits of cross-country running, and ‘cake’ as a thinly veiled euphemism for buggery. Joanna David is a perfect prude as Mortimer’s mother, busying herself with straightening her cardigan whenever such unsavoury matters as sex are mentioned. Mortimer’s first wife, Elizabeth, is played with poise and precision by Natasha Little who makes a worthy opponent for her cantankerous father in law.

Dominic Rowan is warm and likeable as the son, protective towards his younger self (played by a variety of fine young actors) and is quietly devastated by his father’s deterioration. Jacobi makes a compelling invalid and it is physically uncomfortable watching his demise. What’s more, the pace of the play is such that you really do feel like you’re watching a man die on stage.

Because A Voyage Round My Father is really just that: a voyage around a central character, rather than a dramatic evolution. This accumulation of anecdotes would no doubt make a witty memoir, but on stage the static reminiscences can feel slow and pondering. One can’t help wishing that Mortimer had been a little less British and a little braver: give me a voyage to the centre any day.

By Helen Russell
Buy Tickets

Employing a minimal set and only four actors, the production relies heavily on the versatility of the
cast - in particular the superb slapstick performances by the Clowns, Simon Gregor and Rupert Degas. Their mercurial character-switches, sometimes in mid sentence, were hilarious and performed with a daring that threatened to steal the show from Edwards.

The 39 Steps is an exercise in self-mockery from start to finish, but Maria Aitken’s actors bring a unique gloss to the typecast figures of the foppish, daring Englishman and the dour Scot, even while falling back on obvious visual and verbal gags - including a shadow-puppet show featuring a stick man and a stag in a ‘compromising’ position. Using the limitations of the set and employing the actors to change the scenery added another dimension to this modern take on the age-old tradition of the adventure novel. Of particular note was the chase scene across the Scottish highlands, with Degas and Gregor assuming the shapes of the physical obstacles in the path of Hannay and Pamela (played by an adequate Catherine McCormack).

Maria Aitkens has proven once again that she can direct just as well as she can act and her production of The 39 Steps manages to be fresh and innovative without losing anything of the novel’s quaint appeal.
Buy Tickets