Chichester Festival Theatre
The Vortex, Chichester Festival Theatre review - naturalism clogs up Coward's pipesSaturday, 06 May 2023![]() Sometimes I go outside and look at our kitchen drain. Where there should be a vortex there’s a largely static pool. Tree roots have recently grown through the old pipes, their clumps colonised with fat, dog hair and coleslaw bits, and though a bit... Read more... |
The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Lyric Hammersmith review - matchless revival of a contemporary classicMonday, 18 October 2021![]() “You can’t kick a cow in Leenane without some bastard holding a grudge for 20 years,” sighs Pato Dooley (Adam Best) prophetically; he has already started making his escape from that particular Galway village, doing lonely stints on London building... Read more... |
First Person: Rachel O'Riordan on the enduring power of a sad, funny, and extraordinary playWednesday, 13 October 2021![]() The Beauty Queen of Leenane is a vicious, sad and extraordinary play.On the surface, Martin McDonagh's play, first seen 25 years ago and revived now in a collaboration between Chichester Festival Theatre and my home base, the Lyric Hammersmith... Read more... |
First Person: Andrea Levy's husband recalls her path toward becoming a novelistThursday, 07 October 2021![]() The opening sentence of Andrea’s 2010 historical novel The Long Song is in the voice of Thomas Kinsman, who is introducing the reader to his mother, July."The book you are now holding in your hand was born of a craving," Kinsman declares. "My mama... Read more... |
South Pacific, Chichester Festival Theatre review - gloriously revived and also refreshedSaturday, 17 July 2021![]() We’ve come to learn what socially distanced means but, 72 years ago, the distance that concerned Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers was that between racial groups in the United States. With a catalogue of hits behind them, they turned to ... Read more... |
Flowers for Mrs Harris, Chichester Festival Theatre online review - a warmly open-hearted weepieMonday, 13 April 2020![]() 18 months or so after it opened in Chichester, Flowers for Mrs Harris launches a sequence of streamed productions from the West Sussex venue just in time to allow a new British musical to join the ever-swelling ranks of theatrical offerings online.... Read more... |
Macbeth, Chichester Festival Theatre review - cosmic yet closely craftedTuesday, 01 October 2019![]() There’s a fine balance between the cosmic and the closely crafted in director Paul Miller’s Macbeth, his first production in the expansive space that is Chichester’s main stage. It comes across as a drama unravelling in the wide open spaces of... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: playwright William NicholsonSaturday, 27 April 2019![]() It is 30 years since Shadowlands, William Nicholson's much-loved play about CS Lewis's unexpected love affair with Joy Gresham, an American poet, was first seen on stage. The famous academic and author of the Narnia books, apparently content in his... Read more... |
Charlotte Jones: ‘Plays come from your scar tissue’Tuesday, 10 July 2018![]() I think it’s always a dangerous sport to try and consciously unravel where your ideas come from. Lest you break the spell and inadvertently silence yourself…There’s always the superficial reasons, of course: the geography and the history of a play.... Read more... |
Quiz, Noël Coward Theatre, review - entertaining confectionWednesday, 11 April 2018![]() You could be forgiven for not remembering the “coughing major” brouhaha in 2001, coming as it did the day before 9/11, when we had rather more pressing matters to attend to than a contestant being accused of cheating on television quiz show. But... Read more... |
'You win in the end!' Deborah Bruce introduces her play 'The House They Grew Up In'Friday, 14 July 2017![]() My inspiration for The House They Grew Up In, my new play at Chichester Festival Theatre came about five years ago, in the café of an art gallery near my house. This café had a slightly intimidating air, full of its own importance, as if the art in... Read more... |
10 Questions for actress Tracy-Ann Oberman: 'it's made me pretty fearless'Monday, 03 July 2017![]() What do you call a woman who murdered Dirty Den, is the darling of TV comedy producers, writes radio plays about the golden age of Hollywood, hosted and judged Channel 4’s Jewish Mum of the Year, was until just a few weeks ago tap dancing through... Read more... |
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